The topic is complex, but France was (and still is) a very centralized country, compared to the UK, Netherlands, Denmark, or what would become Germany. And you

The topic is complex, but France was (and still is) a very centralized country, compared to the UK, Netherlands, Denmark, or what would become Germany. And you had fewer, bigger land owners. It is often argued that it is only through competition with all those neighbors that it managed to modernize. That's what Rodrik alluded to in the talk I mentioned earlier. And still today, agriculture is more important to our French psyché than it tends to be in other countries in the north and the west.