State and energy, 19th-20th century: seminar 2002-2006.

Summary Opening up to competition, development of renewable energies, volatility of oil prices, global warming... With the widespread awareness of the challenges to be met, energy issues are exciting. These challenges are not only economic but also real social issues. It is on the specificities of the "French energy model" and the role of the State that historians, economists and actors have been regularly examining for three years in a seminar organized by the Committee for the Economic and Financial History of France. Indeed, if there is one industrial field in which the State has been a legislator, operator, regulator and financier since the beginning of the 19th century, it is energy. Energy (coal, gas, electricity, oil) has been the driving force behind the different phases of industrialization, and has proved to be a strategic sector, as well as a privileged field for the emergence of the notion of public service. What are the different roles of the State in this field? How have these complex relationships between the State and the operators developed over time? What is the genealogy of the model of the large public company that put its monopoly at the service of the nation? Why is energy a privileged sector of public action? The thirty or so texts and testimonies gathered in these proceedings retrace, analyze and provide a better understanding of the main mechanisms of this history.