The Economic Turn

Recasting Political Economy in Eighteenth-Century Europe

Steven Kaplan, Sophus Reinert

• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781783088553
• eBook ISBN: 9781783088577
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

The mid-eighteenth century witnessed what might be dubbed an economic turn that resolutely changed the trajectory of world history. The discipline of economics itself emerged amidst this turn, and it is frequently traced back to the work of François Quesnay and his school of Physiocracy. Though lionized by the subsequent historiography of economics, the theoretical postulates and policy consequences of Physiocracy were disastrous at the time, resulting in a veritable subsistence trauma in France. This galvanized relentless and diverse critiques of the doctrine not only in France but also throughout the European world that have, hitherto, been largely neglected by scholars. Though Physiocracy was an integral part of the economic turn, it was rapidly overcome, both theoretically and practically, with durable and important consequences for the history of political economy. The Economic Turn brings together some of the leading historians of that moment to fundamentally recast our understanding of the origins and diverse natures of political economy in the Enlightenment.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Contributors
• Chapter One  The Economic Turn in Enlightenment Europe
• Chapter Two  The Physiocratic Movement: A Revision
• Chapter Three  The Political Economy of Colonization: From Composite Monarchy to Nation
• Chapter Four  Against the Chinese Model: The Debate on Cultural Facts and Physiocratic Epistemology
• Chapter Five  “Le superflu, chose très nécessaire”: Physiocracy and Its Discontents in the Eighteenth-Century Luxury Debate
• Chapter Six  François Véron de Forbonnais and the Invention of Antiphysiocracy
• Chapter Seven  Between Mercantilism and Physiocracy: Forbonnais’s ‘Est modus in Rebus’ Vision
• Chapter Eight  Physiocrat Arithmetic versus Ratios: The Analytical Economics of Jean-Joseph-Louis Graslin
• Chapter Nine  Galiani: Grain and Governance
• Chapter Ten  “Live and Die Proprietors and Free”: Morellet Dismantles the Dialogues and Defends the Radical Liberal Break
• Chapter Eleven  “Is the Feeling of Humanity not More Sacred than The Right of Property?”: Diderot’s Antiphysiocracy in His Apology of Abbé Galiani
• Chapter Twelve  De facto Policies and Intellectual Agendas of an Eighteenth-Century Milanese Agricultural Academy: Physiocratic Resonances in the Società patriotica
• Chapter Thirteen  Sensationism, Modern Natural Law and the “Science of Commerce” at the Heart of the Controversy between Mably and the Physiocrats
• Chapter Fourteen  ‘One Must Make War on the Lunatics’: The Physiocrats’ Attacks on Linguet, the Iconoclast (1767–1775)
• Chapter Fifteen  The Grain Question as the Social Question: Necker’s Antiphysiocracy
• Chapter Sixteen  Physiocracy in Sweden: A Note on the Problem of Inventing Tradition
• Chapter Seventeen  Spain and the Economic Work of Jacques Accarias de Serionne
• Chapter Eighteen  Captured by the Commercial Paradigm: Physiocracy Going Dutch
• Chapter Nineteen  Cameralism, Physiocracy and Antiphysiocracy in the Germanies
• Chapter Twenty  No Way Back to Quesnay: Say’s Opposition to Physiocracy
• Chapter Twenty-One  “A Sublimely Stupid Idea”: Physiocracy in Italy from the Enlightenment to Fascism
• Chapter Twenty-Two  Epilogue: Political Economy and the Social
• Index