In the mid-nineteenth century Jules Janin wrote that France had become “the Grand Nation of grocers”, in his introduction to L. Curmer’s physiognomic tome, his eight volume Les Francais peints par eux-memes (1840-42).

Whereas England was “A Nation of Shopkeepers“, as Napoleon is commonly noted to have said. (Although it is originally from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776))