The enlightenment above national context: Political economy in eighteenth-century Scotland and Naples

The Historical Journal

Volumn 40, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 667-697

  Robertson, John ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ENLIGHTENMENT; INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT; POLITICAL ECONOMY;

ITALY; UK, SCOTLAND;

EID: 0031420110     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X9700736X     Document Type: Article

References (215)

1. R. Porter and M. Teich, eds., The Enlightenment in national context (Cambridge, 1981). The subsequent repetition of the formula in collections on subjects as diverse as the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, Romanticism, and Revolution, coupled with the unexamined assumption that the ‘national’ context could be taken as a given, would appear to suggest a successful publishing proposition.
2. Roy Porter, ‘The Enlightenment in England’
3. Nicholas Phillipson, ‘The Scottish Enlightenment’, chapters 1 and 2 respectively in The Enlightenment in national context.
4. H. R. Trevor-Roper, ‘The Scottish Enlightenment’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, LXVIII (1967), 1635–1658
5. but the seminal moment in the rediscovery of the Scottish Enlightenment was the Cambridge Special Subject on ‘Hume, Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment’, created and directed by Duncan Forbes during the 1960s. Referring to it in his Hume's philosophical politics (Cambridge, 1975), p. xi, Forbes notes that he was not allowed to call it simply ‘The Scottish Enlightenment’, since that was ‘still a somewhat backwoods kind of affair’.
6. Thus, before all: Forbes, Hume's philosophical politics, and his ‘Sceptical whiggism, commerce and liberty’, in A. S. Skinner and T. Wilson, eds., Essays on Adam Smith (Oxford, 1975).
7. Also, as a small sample of recent work, Nicholas Phillipson, Hume (London, 1990)
8. John B. Stewart, Opinion andreform in Hume's political philosophy (Princeton, N. J., 1992)
9. Knud Haakonssen, The science of the legislator: the natural jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith (Cambridge, 1981)
10. Donald Winch, Adam Smith's politics: an essay in historiographic revision (Cambridge, 1978)
11. Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff, eds., Wealth and virtue: the shaping of political economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983)
12. John Robertson, The Scottish Enlightenment and the militia issue (Edinburgh, 1984).
13. R. B. Sher, Church and university in the Scottish Enlightenment: the Moderate literati of Edinburgh (Princeton and Edinburgh, 1985)
14. R. B. Sher, ‘Professors of virtue: the social history of the Edinburgh moral philosophy chair in the eighteenth century’, and James Moore, ‘The two systems of Francis Hutcheson: on the origins of the Scottish Enlightenment’, both in M. A. Stewart, ed., Studies in the philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment (Oxford, 1990)
15. R. B. Sher, ‘Commerce, religion and the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Glasgow’, in T. M. Devine and G. Jackson, eds., Glasgow. Volume I: beginnings to 1830 (Manchester, 1995)
16. A. Hook and R. B. Sher, eds., The Glasgow Enlightenment (East Linton, 1995), part 1 ‘The university and Enlightenment culture’
17. R. L. Emerson, Professors, patronage and politics: the Aberdeen universities in the eighteenth century (Aberdeen, 1992)
18. P. B. Wood, The Aberdeen Enlightenment: the arts curriculum in the Aberdeen universities, 1717–1800 (Aberdeen, 1994).
19. David Hume to William Strahan, [August 1770], in J. Y. T. Greig, ed., The letters of David Hume (2 vols., Oxford, 1969), 11, 230.
20. David Allan, Virtue, learning and the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1993).
21. In its emphasis on continuity, Allan's approach complements that of scholars who would underline the Enlightenment's debt to seventeenth-century natural science: see, for example, R. L. Emerson, ‘Science and moral philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment’, in Stewart, ed., Studies in the philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment.
22. But there are also differences, noted by Emerson in a review of Allan's book in Eighteenth-century Scotland, Newsletter of the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society, VIII (1994), 16–17.
23. Colin Kidd, Subverting Scotland's past. Scottish whig historians and the creation of an Anglo-British identity, 1689–c.1830 (Cambridge, 1993)
24. ‘Gaelic antiquity and national identity in Enlightenment Scotland and Ireland’, English Historical Review, CIX (1994), 1197–1224.
25. Daniel Mornet, Les origines intellectuelles de la Revolution française 1715–1787 (Paris, 1933)
26. Daniel Roche, ‘Milieux académiques provinciaux et société des lumières’, in Livre et société dans la France du XVIIIe Siècle, vol. 1 (Paris, 1965)
27. Le siècle des lumières en province: académies et académiciens provinciaux 1680–1789 (2 vols., Paris, 1978).
28. Their work is acknowledged by Nicholas Phillipson,‘Culture and society in the eighteenth-century province: the case of Edinburgh and the Scottish Enlightenment’, in L. Stone, ed., The university in society, II: Europe, Scotland and the United States from the 16th to the 20th century (Princeton, 1975), p. 407
29. Sher, Church and university in the Scottish Enlightenment, p. 11.
30. Sher is now pursuing the more recent methodological insights of Roger Chartier, The cultural origins of the French Revolution (Durham and London, 1991), in a study of the role of the book-trade in the Scottish Enlightenment.
31. Knud Haakonssen, ‘Enlightenment philosophy in Scotland and Germany: recent German Scholarship’, in K. Eibl, ed., Entwicklungsschwellen im 18. Jahrhundert, Aufklärung, Jg. 4, Heft 1, (Hamburg, 1990)
32. most recently, Fania Oz-Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment: Scottish civic discourse in eighteenth-century Germany (Oxford, 1995).
33. Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1995), is an up-to-date, even-handed outline of the Enlightenment in broadly these terms.
34. John Pocock, ‘Clergy and commerce: the conservative Enlightenment in England’, in R. Ajello and others, L 'età dei lumi: studi storici sul settecento europeo in onore di Franco Venturi (Naples, 1985).
35. Mario Mirri, ‘Dalla storia dei “lumi” e delle “riforme” alla storia degli “antichi stati italiani”’, in M. Verga and A. Fratoianni, eds., Pompeo Neri, Atti del Colloquio di Studi di Castelfiorentino, 6–7 Maggio 1988 (Castelfiorentino, 1992), pp. 401–540
36. I owe this reference to the kindness of Constanza D'Elia. See also: Cesare Mozzarelli and Gianni Venturi, eds., L'Europa delle corti alla fine dell ‘Antico Regime (Rome, 1991).
37. Franco Venturi, Illuministi italiani, vols. III, v, and (with others) VII (Milan and Naples, 1958, 1962, 1965)
38. Settecento riformatore, vols. I–V (IV and V each in two parts) (Turin, 1969–1990).
39. The work remains unfinished. For an assessment of Venturi's approach in relation to the Enlightenment in Scotland, see my ‘The Scottish Enlightenment’, Rivista Storica Italiana, CVIII (1996), 792–829; this elaborates the critique of the ‘national context’ approach to the Scottish Enlightenment outlined above.
40. As a variant of the approach, Venturi also attempted exhaustively to recount what Italians were in a position to know about developments elsewhere in the European world. But this enterprise, occupying the central, translated volumes of Settecento riformatore, seems to me one almost impossible to repeat, Venturi himself being unable to sustain its coherence. See my ‘Franco Venturi's Enlightenment’, Past and Present, CXXXVII (1992), 183–206, for a review and further bibliographical references.
41. Franco Venturi, Utopia and reform in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 123–126.
42. Mirri, ‘Dalla storia …’, pp. 471–532.
43. Venturi's sense of the significance of the 1730s is apparent in Settecento riformatore, I: Da Muratori a Beccaria, 1730–1764 (Turin, 1969)
44. for an overview of the chronology of the Enlightenment, his ‘The European Enlightenment’, in Italy and the Enlightenment, pp. 1–32.
45. For comment, my ‘Franco Venturi's Enlightenment’, pp. 186–187.
46. On Venturi's tendency to blur the line between ‘reform’ and reforms: Mirri, ‘Dalla storia…’, pp. 520–532.
47. If the Enlightenment was rarely able to work effectively in government, however, it was not thereby a-political: an understanding of the Enlightenment akin to Venturi's remains incompatible with that of Reinhard Koselleck, Critique and crisis: Enlightenment and the pathogenesis of modern society (Oxford, 1988, originally published in German in 1959)
48. or with that recently offered by Dena Goodman, The republic of letters: a cultural history of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca and London, 1994). The latter's rehabilitation of the salons and the salonnières, welcome and overdue in itself, is taken to the puzzling length of asserting that ‘the project of Enlightenment could not withstand the stresses of publication’ (p. 214).
49. on the German reception of political economy in particular: Keith Tribe, Governing economy: the reformation of German economic discourse, 1750–1840 (Cambridge, 1988), esp. chs. 6–7.
50. Two recent studies of, respectively, Italian and Scottish political economy between the claims of cosmopolitanism and patriotism are: Maria Luisa Pesante, ‘Nation and public happiness in two Italian political economists’
51. and Donald Winch, ‘Nationalism and cosmopolitanism in the early histories of political economy’, both in Manuela Albertone and Alberto Masoero, eds., Political economy and national realities, Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, Studi, 31 (Turin, 1994).
52. David Armitage, ‘The Scottish vision of empire: intellectual origins of the Darien venture’, in John Robertson, ed., A union for empire: political thought and the Union of 1707 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 97–118.
53. John Robertson, ed., A union for empire: political thought and the Union of 1707, esp. ch. 8: ‘An elusive sovereignty: the course of the Union debate in Scotland 1698–1707’.
54. T. C. Smout, ‘Where had the Scottish economy got to by the third quarter of the eighteenth century?’, in Hont and Ignatieff, eds., Wealth and virtue, pp. 45–72.
55. David Hume, ‘Of commerce’ (1752), in Essays moral, political and literary, eds. T. H. Green and T. H. Grose (London, 1898), 1, 295–299.
56. Hume, ‘Of the balance of trade’ (1752), which was principally addressed to the question of money; subsequently reinforced by ‘Of the jealousy of trade’ (added to the 1758 edition of the Essays), a statement specifically of the mutual advantages of free trade. Both in Essays, 1, 330–345, 345–8.
57. Hume, ‘Of the balance of power’, with supporting observations in ‘Of the populousness of ancient nations’ and the earlier ‘Of the rise and progress of the arts and sciences’ (1742), Essays, 1, 348–356, 399, 181.
58. Hume, ‘Jealousy of trade’, Essays, 1, 348.
59. See further on the ‘rich country–poor country’ theme, Istvan Hont, ‘The “rich country-poor country” debate in Scottish classical political economy’, in Hont and Ignatieff, eds., Wealth and virtue, pp. 271–315
60. on the balance of power, John Robertson, ‘Universal monarchy and the liberties of Europe: David Hume's critique of an English whig doctrine’, in Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner, eds., Political discourse in early modern Britain (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 349–373.
61. Also Istvan Hont, ‘The rhapsody of public debt: David Hume and voluntary state bankruptcy’, Political discourse in early modern Britain. pp. 328–331.
62. On English free trade arguments, and also their mercantilist targets, Joyce Appleby, Economic thought and ideology in seventeenth-century England (Princeton, 1978)
63. on the French, Lionel Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV: the political and social origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton, 1965); in both works, however, the external preconditions attached to free trade are played down.
64. Jean-François Melon, Essai politique sur le commerce (Amsterdam, 1734, with a second, enlarged edition in 1736, subsequently reprinted in 1742, 1754 and 1761).
65. I have used the edition of Amsterdam, 1754. The methodological chapters ‘Del'Arithmétique Politique ’ and ‘Des Systèmes’ (chs. xxiv and xxv in the 1754 edn) were not in the first edition. On the context of the book, Paul Harsin, ‘Introduction’, to Dutot, Réflexions politiques sur les finances et le commerce (1738, repr. Liège, 1935), pp. xvi–xxi.
66. Widely read in the eighteenth century, Melon has been neglected by historians of economic thought, perhaps because he is difficult to fit into the received categories of the discipline. A recent study is that of Catherine Larrère, L'Invention de l'economie au XVIIIe siècle: du droit naturel à la physiocratie (Paris, 1992); but despite noting the difficulty of categorization, Larrère still treats Melon alongside Forbonnais as an exponent of'mercantilism’. See esp. pp. 95–134.
67. Melon, Essai politique, ‘Conclusion’, pp. 363–367.
68. Melon, Essai politique. ch. i, ‘Principes’, pp. 1–5, 11–12.
69. Melon, Essai politique. chs. viii, ‘De l'Industrie’, ix, ‘Du Luxe’, pp. 82–120.
70. Melon, Essai politique. pp. 264–270. Melon's calculation was that sixteen in every twenty inhabitants were ‘laboureurs’, a term he annotated as including ‘vignerons’ and ‘cultivateurs’.
71. Melon, Essai politique. ch. vii, ‘Du Gouvernement Militaire’, pp. 73–74, 81–2.
72. Melon, Essai politique. ch. ii, ‘Du Bled’, pp. 25–26.
73. Melon, Essai politique. ch. xi, ‘De la Liberte du Commerce’, pp. 139–142.
74. Essai politique. ch. x, ‘De l'Exportation et de l'Importation’, pp. 120–123.
75. Essai politique. ch. xxii, ‘De la Balance du Commerce’, p. 264.
76. Essai politique. ch. vi, ‘Des Compagnies Exclusives’, pp. 55–72, also pp. 145–6.
77. [Charles de Ferrare] Dutot, Réflexions politiques sur les finances et le commerce, ou l'on examine quelles ont été sur les revenus, les denrées, le change étranger, et consequémment sur notre commerce, les influences des augmentations et des diminutions des valeurs numéraires des monnoies (1738), ed. Paul Harsin (2 vols., Liège, 1935), 1, 1–2
78. ‘Avertissement de l'Auteur’. For what little is known about Dutot: Harsin, ‘Introduction’, pp. xi–xii, xxi–xxviii.
79. Dutot, Réflexions politiques sur les finances, 1, 195, 238–241.
80. Réflexions politiques sur les finances. 1, 247–276.
81. Rene-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, Marquis D'Argenson, Considérations sur legouvernement ancien et présent de la France (Amsterdam, 1764).
82. On his life and thought, and on the editions of the Considerations, Nannerl O. Keohane, Philosophy and the state in France: the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Princeton, 1980), pp. 376–391; Keohane, however, does not discuss the concluding ‘Essai’.
83. D'Argenson, Considérations sur le gouvernement de la France, pp. 215–298, esp. 263–8, 292–4.
84. Melon was a fellow Bordelais, and a founder member of the Academy of Bordeaux, to which Montesquieu was elected in 1716; if Montesquieu did not become a member of the Entresol, in which D'Argenson was prominent, they had several other opportunities to meet: Robert Shackleton, Montesquieu: a critical biography (Oxford, 1961), pp. 21, 39, 56, 63–6, 184, 211–12, 381.
85. Montesquieu, De l'esprit des lois (1748), in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Roger Caillois, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (2 vols., Paris, 1951), II: book xx, chs. iv–v, xxi-xxii.
86. De l'esprit des lois. xx, ix, xii.
87. De l'esprit des lois. xix, xxvii.
88. Montesquieu's concern over the French ambition to universal monarchy was earlier voiced in his Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle en Europe (1734, but withdrawn immediately after publication), printed in Oeuvres complètes, II, 19–38.
89. Several passages from the Reflexions were reproduced or paraphrased in the Esprit des lois, including a reference to the deluded ambition of Louis XIV: Esprit des lois, ix, vii.
90. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, xx, i–ii; xxi, xx.
91. Hume, Essays, I, 289n (a note criticising Melon's calculation that 16 parts of 20 in France were labourers or peasants), 314n (a note casting suspicion on Dutot's facts).
92. Hume, ‘Of public credit’, Essays, 1, 363n: Hume removed the passage from the 1770 edition of the Essays.
93. Hume, ‘Of money’, Essays, 1, 314n.
94. Hont, ‘The rhapsody of public debt’, p. 331.
95. More generally, Peter Groenewegen, ‘La “French connection”: influences françaises sur l'économie politique Britannique’, Dix-Huitième Siècle, XXVI (1994), 20–25.
96. Turgot to Hume, 23 July 1766, in E. Rotwein, ed., David Hume: writings on economics (Edinburgh, 1955), p. 255.
97. Almost twenty years earlier Hume himself had politely criticized Montesquieu for excessive enthusiasm for the English model.‘Il paroit’ – he wrote after reading the Esprit des lois – ‘que nous avons en Angleterre une trop grande jalousie de la balance de commerce.’ Hume to Montesquieu, 10 April 1749, in The letters of David Hume, 1, 136–137.
98. See also Robertson, ‘Universal monarchy and the liberties of Europe’, pp. 368–371.
99. Sir James Steuart, An inquiry into the principles of political oeconomy (1767), ed. Andrew S. Skinner (2 vols., Edinburgh and London, 1966), 1, preface, 4–5. Steuart was in exile from 1746 until 1763, during which time he lived and travelled in France, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy.
100. An inquiry into the principles of political oeconomy. 1, preface, p. 8
101. book II, ch. xxiv, p. 292.
102. book II, book II, ch. xxix, pp. 363–365.
103. See also A. S. Skinner, ‘Sir James Steuart: international relations’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, xv (1963), 438–450
104. Hont, ‘The “rich country–poor country” debate’, pp. 296–298.
105. But A. S. Skinner's more recent attempt to narrow the gulf between Hume and Steuart, in ‘National realities: David Hume: precursor of Sir James Steuart ?’, in Albertone and Masoero, Political economy and national realities, pp. 45–51, seems to me to be mistaken. Hume and Steuart may have shared a respect for circumstances: Hume's contention, however, was that the circumstances of Europe now made possible free trade between nations, without an arbiter.
106. Adam Smith, An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations (1776), eds. R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner and W. B. Todd (Oxford 1976), book 1, ch. i, para. 4 (hereafter in the form I.i.4).
107. See Arthur I. Bloomfield, ‘Adam Smith and the theory of international trade’, in Skinner and Wilson, eds., Essays on Adam Smith, pp. 455–481
108. as Bloomfield notes (pp. 457–8), Smith was closer to the concept of comparative advantage than Jacob Viner would acknowledge: Jacob Viner, Studies in the theory of international trade (London, 1937), pp. 104–106, 438–41.
109. Smith, Wealth of nations, IV.vii.c.8o.
110. Wealth of nations. IV.iii.c.9–13.
111. Wealth of nations. IV.vii.c.75–79: the retention of the proposal after the American Colonies had declared their independence underlined its counterfactual character.
112. Istvan Hont, ‘The political economy of the “unnatural and retrograde” order: Adam Smith and natural liberty’, in Maxine Berg et al., Französische Revolution und Politische Ökonomie, Schriften aus dem Karl-Marx–Haus Trier, 41 (Trier, 1989), where the criticism of the systematic reformer in book VI of the Theory of moral sentiments is associated with Smith's critique of Physiocratic dogmatism.
113. Smith, Wealth of nations, IV.ii.30
114. Following the Austrian seizure of Naples in 1707 it was repeated by Alessandro Riccardi in a ‘Memoria’, published by Giuseppe Ricuperati as an appendix to ‘Alessandro Riccardi e le richieste del ceto civile a l'Austria nel 1707 ’, Rivista Storica Italiana, LXXXI (1969), 770–777.
115. Pietro Giannone, Istoria civile del regno di Napoli (4 vols., Naples, 1723), in, 544–5; the judgement then informed his historical narrative of Spanish rule in vol. IV.
116. Paolo Mattia Doria, La vita civile (1709), 2nd edn (Augusta, 1710), part III, cap. i, p. 383.
117. Paolo Mattia Doria, Massime delgoverno spagnolo a Napoli (written c. 1709–10), eds. G. Galasso and V. Conti (Naples, 1973); esp. pp. 21–43, also 69–70 for the comment on the natural abundance of the Regno.
118. See the editors' introduction for the circumstances of the work's composition; for an imaginative elaboration of the ‘provincial’ theme, see Giuseppe Giarrizzo, ‘Un “ regno governato in provincia”: Napoli tra Austria e Spagna (1690–1740)’, in G. Papuli, ed., P. M. Doria fra rinovamento e tradizione (Galatina, 1985), pp. 311–325.
119. Paolo Mattia Doria, ‘Del commercio del regno di Napoli’ (c. 1739–40), printed in E. Vidal, Il pensiero civile di Paolo Mattia Doria negli scritti inediti (Milan, 1953), pp. 161–229; the phrase likening the kingdom to ‘ una bottega piena di tutte le merci al vivere necessarie’ occurs on p. 165; on foreign commerce and the proposal of a company, see esp. pp. 190–206.
120. For comment on the work, and the circumstances of its composition: Franco Venturi, Settecento riformatore, 1: Da Muratori a Beccaria, 1730–1764 (Turin, 1969), pp. 39–46.
121. Doria, ‘Del commercio del regno di Napoli’, pp. 166–168. The distinction between types of commerce may be traced back to the Vita Civile: Parte Seconda, cap in ‘Della economia’, pp. 324–5
122. a discussion amplified in an addition to the third (1729) edition: La Vita Civile, terza impressione, dall'autore ricorretta, e di molte aggiunzioni adornata (Naples, 1729), pp. 334–350.
123. Doria's mounting francophobia was vented in two late manuscript tracts: ‘Il commercio mercantile’ (c. 1740), published in Manoscritti Napoletani di Paolo Mattia Doria, vol. IV, ed. Pasquale di Fabrizio (Galatina, 1981), pp. 277–353
124. ‘Il politico alla moda’ (c. 1739–1740)
125. printed as an appendix to V. Conti, Paolo Mattia Doria: dalla repubblica dei togati all repubblica dei notabili (Florence, 1978).
126. For interpretations of the evolution of Doria's economic and political thinking: Raffaele Ajello, ‘Diritto ed economia in P. M. Doria’
127. and Salvatore Rotta,‘Paolo Mattia Doria rivisitato’, both in Doria fra rinovamento e tradizione, pp. 93–126, 389–431.
128. On this decade, Venturi, DaMuratori a Beccaria, ch. 2: ‘Nella guerra di successione austriaca’, esp. pp. 70–98
129. on Neapolitan commercial relations with France and England: R. Romano, Le commerce du royaume de Naples avec la France et les pays de l'Adriatique au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1951)
130. introduction, and Eugenio Lo Sardo, Napoli e Londra nel secolo XVIII: le relazioni economiche (Naples, 1991).
131. Edgar Zévort, Le Marquis D'Argenson et le Ministère des Affaires Etrangeres, du 18 Novembre 1744 au 10 Janvier 1747 (Paris, 1880), pp. 56–59
132. also Venturi, Da Muratori a Beccaria, p. 65.
133. On the Barbary pirates: Lo Sardo, Napoli e Londra, pp. 22–32.
134. There were certainly no illusions at the head of the Neapolitan government, where Carlo Borbone's Tuscan chief minister, Bernardo Tanucci, made a characteristically hard-headed assessment of the problem in 1743, quoted in Raffaele Ajello, Arcana Juris: diritto e politica nel settecento italiano (Naples, 1976), pp. 411–413.
135. Franco Venturi, ‘Alle origini dell'Illuminismo napoletano: dal carteggio di Bartolomeo Intieri’, Rivista Storica Italiana, LXXI (1959), 416–456: for expresssions of Intieri's philosophy, see especially his letters to Antonio Cocchi of 30 May 1752, 12 Feb., 18 June 1754, printed as an appendix to Venturi's article, pp. 433–4, 447–50.
136. See also Venturi, Da Muratori a Beccaria, pp. 552–562
137. Ajello, Arcana Juris, ch. vii ‘La critica del regime in Doria, Intieri e Broggia’, pp. 423–426
138. Vincenzo Ferrone, Scienza, natura, religione: mondo newtoniano e cultura Italiana nel primo settecento (Naples, 1982), pp. 486–525, 546–60.
139. The foundation of the chair, with the title ‘di commercio e di meccanica’, is described by Genovesi himself: ‘Vita di Antonio Genovesi’, in F. Venturi, ed, Antonio Genovesi Scritti (Turin, 1977), pp. 29–32 [reprinted from Illuministi italiani: V Riformatore napoletani (Milan and Naples, 1962)]
140. see also Venturi, Da Muratori a Beccaria, pp. 562–565.
141. Antonio Genovesi, Discorso sopra il vero fine delle lettere e delle scienze, printed along with the Ragionamento sopra i mezzipiu necessariiperfar rifiorire l'agricoltura del P. Abate D. Ubaldo Montelatici, colla Relazione dell ‘erba orobanche del Pier-Antonio Micheli (Naples, 1754), and with a dedication to Intieri.
142. Montelatici's work (which itself reprinted Micheli's earlier work of 1723) had been published in Florence in 1752: Montelatici was the founder of the Accademia dei Georgofili in Florence. All three works have been reprinted in the definitive edition of Genovesi's Scritti economici, ed. M. L. Perna, (2 vols., Naples, 1984): see esp. 1, 27, 29–57.
143. Storia de commercio della Gran Brettagna, scritta da John Cary, tradotta in nostra volgar lingua da Pietro Genovesi, con un Ragionamento sul commercio in universale, e alcune annotazioni riguardanti l'economia del nostro regno, di Antonio Genovesi (3 vols., Naples, 1757), reprinted in Scritti economici, 1, 111–618,11, 627–868.
144. The first volume (only) was translated by Genovesi's brother, Pietro, and the remainder by Antonio; the prefatory Ragionamento sul commercio was a precis of Genovesi's first course of lectures as holder of the Intieri chair. For his commitment to learning from British and French experience and economic writings: Ragionamento sul commercio, Scritti economici, I, 119–123
145. for early references to Hume, Ragionamento sul commercio, Scritti economici. I, 139, and Storia del commercio, 1, Annotazione n. 1, in Scritti economici, 1, 285 – in both cases the references related to money.
146. Essai sur l'état du commerce d'Angleterre, transl. Georges-Marie Butel-Dumont and Vincent de Gournay (2 vols., Paris, 1755)
147. on which see Perna, ‘Nota critica’, in her edition of Genovesi's Scritti economici, 11, 1290–1292.
148. The two translations of the Discours politiques were by J-B Le Blanc and Eleazar Mauvillon, and were both published in Amsterdam in 1754. Perna, in Scritti economici, 1, 1 39 note, believes that Genovesi knew both, but referred to the translation of Mauvillon. These early French translations did not include the 1758 essay ‘Of the jealousy of trade’.
149. An Italian translation of the Discorsi politici did not appear until 1767, the work of the Venetian Matteo Dandolo: see Maria Luisa Baldi, David Hume nel settecento italiano: filosofia ed economia (Florence, 1983), pp. 9, 174–8.
150. Antonio Genovesi, Delle lezioni di commercio o sia d'economia civile (Naples, 1765, 1767, 2nd edn 1768, 1770)
151. although the second edition is preferable, I have used the more accessible version of the first edition in the series Scrittori classici italiani di economia politica, ed. Pietro Custodi, vols. VII–X (Milan 1803–1804).
152. References will be to part, chapter and paragraph number, not to pages; in this case: part I, ‘Proemio’. Cf the similar praise of Melon for establishing comerce as an ‘art’ in Genovesi's first economic writing, the Discorso sopra il vero fine delle lettere e delle scienze, in Scritti economici, I, 29–30.
153. Spirito delle Leggi del Signor di Montesquieu, con le note dell’ Abate Antonio Genovesi (4 vols., Naples, 1777).
154. On Genovesi's formation as a political economist: Venturi, Da Muratori a Beccaria, pp. 565–574
155. Eluggero Pii,‘Le origini dell’ “Economia Civile ” in Antonio Genovesi’, Il Pensiero Politico, XIII (1979)
156. idem, Antonio Genovesi: dallapoliticaeconomica allapolitica civile (Florence, 1984), esp. chs. ii, v
157. Richard Bellamy, ‘ “Da metafisico a mercatante”: Antonio Genovesi and the development of a new language of commerce in eighteenth-century Naples’, in A. Pagden, ed., The languages of political theory in early modern Europe (Cambridge, 1987).
158. On the comparable importance of French political economy, and of French translations of English economic writings, to the Milanese political economist Pietro Verri: Peter Groenewegen, ‘Pietro Verri's mature political economy of the Meditazioni: a case study in the highly developed transmission mechanism of ideas in pre-revolutionary Europe’, in Albertone and Masoero, Political economy and national realities, pp. 107–125.
159. Genovesi, Ragionamento sul commercio, in Scritti economici, I, 128–140
160. Storia del commercio, I annot. I, Scritti economici. I, 283–285
161. Lezioni di commercio, I, ch. vii, paras. ii–iv.
162. Genovesi, Lezioni di commercio, I, ch. xviii, paras. iv–vii.
163. The impact of the famines was a major pre-occupation of Franco Venturi: Settecento riformatore, V.i: L'Italia dei lumi, (1764–1790) (Turin, 1987), pp. 221–305 (Naples), 305–423 (the Papal States, Tuscany).
164. L'agricoltore sperimentato di Cosimo Trinci con alcune giunte dell’ abate Genovesi (Naples, 1764), Trinci's work having been published originally in Lucca in 1726
165. Riflessioni sull’ economia generale dei grani, tradotte dal Francese, con un discorso preliminare del Signor Abbate Genovesi (Naples, 1765)
166. Genovesi, ‘Idea dell'opera, o discorso preliminare’, Riflessioni sui grani, Scritti economici, 11, 1150–1154
167. repeated in Lezioni di commercio, 1, ch. xviii, paras. xxviii–xxxiii. It is worth reiterating how wide was the consensus among French economic writers in favour of freeing the grain trade, even before the advent of the Physiocrats. Melon, D'Argenson and the group associated with Gournay all advocated such a policy.
168. Genovesi, Ragionamento sul commercio, Scritti economici, I, 140–146
169. Storia del commercio, I, annot. I, Scritti economici. pp. 283–284.
170. Genovesi, Lezioni di commercio, I, ch. x: ‘Delle arti di lusso’, a discussion in which Genovesi cited Mandeville, Melon and Hume; on internal commerce, Ragionamento sul commercio, Scritti economici, I, 149–152.
171. Genovesi, Lezioni di commercio, part II, ch. vii: ‘Riflessioni del Signor Hume sopra i due ultimi capi del credito pubblico interno’
172. also ch. ix: ‘Della circolazione’, paras. v, xxvii
173. ch. xi: ‘De’ cambii’, paras. xvi–xvii (where Genovesi observed that Hume's arguments ran counter to ‘il commune sentimento di tutt'i politici e la speranza medesima’)
174. ch. xii: ‘Digressione sul bilancio di commercio’.
175. ‘Digressione sul bilancio di commercio’. I, ch. xvi, para. xvi.
176. ‘Digressione sul bilancio di commercio’. I, chs. xvii: ‘Del commercio’, paras. ii, iv–vi
177. ch. xix: ‘De’ principali effetti del commercio’, paras. xi–xvi.
178. ‘Digressione sul bilancio di commercio’. I, ch. xvii paras. iii, vii–xviii
179. ch. xx: ‘Regole generali del commercio esterno’, paras. i–xviii. Previously, with specific reference to the English: Ragionamento sul commercio, in Scritti economici, I, 153–163.
180. The headings under which Genovesi categorised different types of commerce echoed those adopted by Montesquieu: the carrying trade was ‘commercio d'economia’, while the import of others' manufactures was ‘commercio di lusso’: Lezioni di commercio, I, ch. xvi, para. xiv.
181. Genovesi, Lezioni di commercio, I, ch. xx, paras. xix (free ports), xx–xxi (exclusive companies)
182. previously, Storia del commercio, III, annot. 21 (in which he quoted, in a free translation, two paragraphs from Melon's Essai politique), in Scritti economici, II, 843–844.
183. Genovesi, Lezioni di commercio, part I, ch. xvi, para. vi.
184. Lezioni di commercio. I, ch. xvi, para. x
185. Storia del commercio, III, annot. 2, 7, and esp. 25, Scritti economici, II, 827, 830, 849–50.
186. Spirito delle leggi…con le note dell’ abate Genovesi, II, 183: note to bk. xix, ch. xxvii, with the comment ‘ tutto questo capitolo é lavorato sul solo modello degl'Inglesi’. Also p. 195: note to bk. xx, ch. ii: ‘il gran fonte delle guerre è il commercio’.
187. Genovesi, Lezioni di commercio, II, ch. vii, para., v note.
188. Genovesi, Storia del commercio, II, annot. 4, a suggestion capped with a quotation from Petrarch, in Scritti economici, 1, 479–480
189. also Lezioni di commercio, I, ch. xvi, para. vii note.
190. Genovesi, Lezioni di commercio, I, ch. xxii: ‘Dello stato, e delle naturali forze del Regno di Napoli per rispetto all'arti e al commercio’, offered a programme for the economic regeneration of the Kingdom. On commerce, paras. xxxii–xxxviii, expanded in the second edition (1768–70) to paras. xxxiii–xliii.
191. Later in the same work, part 11, ch. viii: ‘L'arte di far danaro’, paras. x–xiii, Genovesi reiterated his conviction of the kingdom's natural fertility, referring to Doria's manuscript ‘Del commercio del regno di Napoli’.
192. On Galiani's career, Furio Diaz, ‘Introduzione’ to Opere di Ferdinando Galiani, eds. F. Diaz and L. Guerci, in the series Illuministi italiani, vi (Milan and Naples, 1975), xi–cvi.
193. Most recently by Raffaele Ajello, in ‘I filosofi e la Regina. Il governo delle due Sicilie da Tanucci a Caracciolo (1776–86)’, Rivista Storica Italiana, CIII (1991), 398–454, 657–738; Venturi did not reach the final official phase of Galiani's career, but his patience had clearly been tried.
194. Ferdinando Galiani, Della moneta libri V (Naples, 1750), in Opere di Galiani, pp. 19–20: [Dedication to the king].
195. Galiani, Della moneta, ‘Proemio’, Opere, pp. 21–24
196. for subsequent criticism of Melon and Montesquieu, pp. 212, 243–4. The criticism of the latter was reinforced in the second edition of the work, in 1780: see Opere, p. 311, note xxxi.
197. A new ‘ Avviso dell'editore ’ in 1780, however, did enable Galiani belatedly to acknowledge his debts to his uncle, Celestino Galiani, and, above all, to Intieri, pp. 269–275.
198. Galiani, Della moneta, bk IV ‘Del corso della moneta’, ch. i, Opere, pp. 201–211
199. But he criticized the artificial increase of money supply, and especially the system of the ‘Scozzese’ John Law, ‘una delle più strane produzioni dell'intelletto humano’, pp. 237–240.
200. ‘una delle più strane produzioni dell'intelletto humano’. pp. 221–222.
201. ‘una delle più strane produzioni dell'intelletto humano’. pp. 246–248.
202. For Galiani's horrified response when the news reached Paris, see his letters to Tanucci, 19, 26 Mar., 1764, in Opere, pp. 896, 898–9.
203. Ferdinando Galiani, Dialogues sur le commerce des bleds (1770), from the published edition of 1770 reprinted in the Opere (rather than from the original MS, which was first edited and published in 1968): Dialogues I–III, esp. pp. 385–386, 412–15.
204. On the intellectual as well as numerical centrality of the Fifth Dialogue, which discussed the case of agricultural nations such as France: Franco Venturi, ‘Galiani tra Enciclopedisti e fisiocrati’, Rivista Storica Italiana, LXXII (1960), 54–55
205. Galiani, Dialogues des bleds, v, Opere, pp. 448–456; the translation, from pp. 455–6, is mine.
206. Dialogues des bleds. pp. 456–463,465–6.
207. Galiani, untitled consulta [sulla decadenza della ‘marineria’] (n.d.), in Opere, pp. 767–769
208. ‘Considerazioni sul trattato di commercio tra il Re e il Re Cristianissimo’ (c. 1777), in Opere, pp. 717–734.
209. Galiani, ‘Relazione di Galiani circa un projetto di trattato fra la Russia e il Regno di Sardegna e le prospettive di un trattato fra Russia e Regno di Napoli’ (1783)
210. printed as an appendix to Furio Diaz, ‘L'Abbate Galiani consigliere di commercio estero’, Rivista Storica Italiana, LXXX (1968), 887–892.
211. On Russia's entrance into Mediterranean politics: Franco Venturi, Settecento riformatore, in: La prima crisi dell’ antico regime, 1768–1776 (Turin, 1979), ch. 1
212. on the treaty with Russia: M. L. Cavalcanti, Le relazioni commerciali tra il regno di Napoli e la Russia 1777–1815: fatti e teorie (Geneva 1979), pp. 123–150.
213. Galiani, De' doveri dei principi neutrali (1782), ed. G. M. Monti (Bologna, 1942), pp. 5–8, 11–29, 369–84 (for Galiani's critique of reason of state).
214. Usually dismissed (as by Diaz, ‘Introduzione’, Opere, pp. xci–ii), the De' doveri would repay further study, especially of Galiani's attempt to disown the doctrine of reason of state (and his own reputation as ‘il Machiavellino’).
215. There is a (hostile) account of the context in which the book was written by Ajello, ‘I filosofi e la Regina’, pp. 692–693.