La construction d'un système statistique : Le cas des statistiques du commerce intérieur en France de 1945 à la fin des années 1960

This paper studies the construction of quantitative data for the French national trade between 1945 and the 1970s. Our purpose is to provide an account of the establishment of a statistical system specific to this economic sector. By statistical system we imply the apparatus and devices that were put together in order to produce statistical information, in particular political willpower, the professional and institutional actors involved, the accounting frameworks, and the tools and classifications used. In the first section we provide an overview of the transformations of French trade during the period studied, while in the second section We examine the production of statistical data for this sector. In the third section, we study the conditions of emergence of these data, examining the role that particular merchants and political regimes might have had to provoke biases, and questioning the possible political use of these statistics. We show that the construction of a statistical system is not exclusively an institutional or a technical matter, but also that political decisions and particular interests play an important role in the construction of such a system.