Abstract EN:

How is it that over a period of three centuries (from the end of the fifteenth to the end of the eighteenth century), the population of Guingamp hardly developed (having between three thousand and four thousand inhabitants), whereas the city enjoyed a sight, economic activities and institutions that were on the whole favorable to its own development? The answer must probably be sought in its demographic structures (relatively late wedding age, high infant and juvenile mortality), as well as in a peculiar social basis (large number of clerics, and especially numerous religious communities, rather few members of the nobility, and a "third estate" made of many low wage earners), which could barely be helpful so far as the expansion of the town was concerned. One may also allow for the lack of spirit of individual enterprise among its inhabitants who - like the main tradesmen from the middle-class - could have afforded (mostly from a financial point of view) to change, or at least to shift, the way things went, but appear not to have been very enterprising people, as they were quite satisfied with their own business. The example of Jacques Le Brun in the seventeenth century is most appropriated. Prosperous as his business was, he would rather invest his wealth, accumulated through wine trading, in buying land or "stone" (buildings) than in commercial activity. So he managed very quickly to become an ally of some famous families belonging to Breton aristocracy, before becoming himself a member of the nobility, as he assumed the title of squire.