Histories of Trade as Histories of Civilisation 3030800865, 9783030800864

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Histories of Trade as Histories of Civilisation Edited by

a n t on e l l a a l i m e n t o a r i s de l l a fon ta n a

Histories of Trade as Histories of Civilisation

Antonella Alimento · Aris Della Fontana Editors

Histories of Trade as Histories of Civilisation

Editors Antonella Alimento Department of Civilisations and Forms of Knowledge University of Pisa Pisa, Italy

Aris Della Fontana Faculty of Humanities Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa Pisa, Italy Faculty of Arts University of Lausanne Lausanne, Switzerland

ISBN 978-3-030-80086-4 ISBN 978-3-030-80087-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80087-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

This collaborative volume brings together international specialists on the history of economic ideas, institutions and political thought with the aim of analysing histories of trade as histories of civilisation. It is based on a thematically focused international colloquium held at the University of Pisa, on 23–24 September 2019, under the title Histories of Trade as Histories of Civilisation. Selected papers from these meetings have been thoroughly revised and complemented by an additionally commissioned chapter. The editors want to thank Paul Cheney, Monica Lupetti and Marco E. L. Guidi for their papers and presentations, as well as the colleagues and students whose participation in this meeting enriched our discussions. This book is part of a research project carried out within the PRIN (Progetto di Ricerca di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale) 2015 project Alla ricerca del negoziante patriota. Mercantilismi, moralità economiche e mercanti nell’Europa mediterranea (secc. XVII–XIX). While they were read and evaluated by both editors, the chapters by Arnaud Orain, Arnault Skornicki, Alida Clemente and Aris Della Fontana were edited by Antonella Alimento, and those by Koen Stapelbroek, William J. Ashworth, Antonella Alimento, Ere Nokkala and Jenny Mander were edited by Aris Della Fontana. While Chapter 1, “Histories of Trade: Civilisation and Political Economy in the Long Eighteenth Century,” is the result of a common reflection, the first, second and fourth sections were written by Aris Della Fontana, and the third, fifth and sixth by Antonella Alimento. v

Contents

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Histories of Trade: Civilisation and Political Economy in the Long Eighteenth Century Antonella Alimento and Aris Della Fontana Figurism, Temporal Goods and the Manifestation of the Divine: The History of Trade Among Eighteenth-Century Jansenist Pedagogues Arnaud Orain

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The Physiocratic Counter-History of Trade Arnault Skornicki

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The History of Trade and the Legitimacy of the Dutch Republic Koen Stapelbroek

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Emulation, Wealth and Civilisation: Works on the History of Trade and Industry in Early Modern England William J. Ashworth Re-employing Sources to Reflect on Merchants and Sovereigns: Medici Nostalgia and Civilisation in Eighteenth-Century Livorno Antonella Alimento

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August Ludwig Schlözer’s General History of Trade and of Seafaring (1758): Cameralism, Natural History, and the Rise of Civilisation Ere Nokkala

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From Contemporary Models to the Glories of Antiquity: Power, Decline and National Virtues in the Neapolitan Histories of Trade Alida Clemente The City, War and Modern Civilisation from the Perspective of Raynal’s Histoire Des Deux Indes Jenny Mander In the Mirror of Rome: Commerce, Conquest and Civilisation Between Venice, Spain and France (1781–1800) Aris Della Fontana

Index

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Notes on Contributors

Antonella Alimento is Associate Professor at the University of Pisa. She holds a Ph.D. in Early Modern History from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and is a historian of the eighteenth century who specialises in European Political and Economic History. She has published a range of articles on the history of finance and the European circulation and reception of late mercantilism and physiocratic economic thought, along with the monograph Réformes fiscales et crises politiques dans la France de Louis XV. De la taille tarifée au cadastre général (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2008). She edited the volume War, Trade and Neutrality. Europe and the Mediterranean in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2011) and, with Koen Stapelbroek, The Politics of Commercial Treaties in the Eighteenth Century: Balance of Power, Balance of Trade (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017), and, with Gianluigi Goggi, Autour de l’abbé Raynal: genèse et enjeux politiques de l’“Histoire des deux Indes” (Ferney-Voltaire: Centre international d’étude du xviiie siècle, 2018). She is currently completing two books on French ideas and practices aimed at establishing commercial reciprocity during the long eighteenth century, and on the processes involved in the hybridisation of administrative knowledge in eighteenth-century Europe. William J. Ashworth is Reader in History at the University of Liverpool. He has researched a broad number of themes including the history of science, technology, industry, trade and political economies. He has published widely in various journals and published three books, Customs ix

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and Excise: Trade, Production and Consumption in England, 1640–1845 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), The Industrial Revolution: The State, Knowledge and Global Trade (London: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2017) and The Trinity Circle: Anxiety, Intelligence, and Knowledge Creation in Nineteenth-Century England (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2021). Alida Clemente is Assistant Professor of Economic History at the University of Foggia. She studies the economic and social history of Naples and southern Italy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She has published several studies at the intersection of economic and intellectual history, including Il Lusso ‘cattivo’. Dinamiche del consumo nella Napoli del Settecento (Rome: Carocci, 2011). Her main publications in English include: “Innovation in the Capital City: Central Policies, Markets, and Migrant Skills in Neapolitan Ceramic Manufacturing in the Eighteenth Century,” in Cities and Innovation in Early Modern Europe, ed. Karel Davids and Bert De Munck (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014); “Luxury and Taste in Eighteenth-Century Naples: Representations, Ideas and Social Practices at the Intersection Between the Global and the Local,” in A Taste for Luxury in Early Modern Europe: Display, Acquisition and Boundaries, ed. Johanna Ilmakunnas and Jon Stobart (London: Bloomsbury, 2017); and, with Rosa Del Prete, “Cultural Creativity and Symbolic Economy in Early Modern Naples: Music and Theatre as Cultural Industries,” in Cities and Creativity from the Renaissance to the Present, ed. Ilja Van Damme, Bert De Munck and Andrew Miles (New York: Routledge, 2018). She has edited, with Dag Lindström and Jon Stobart, Micro-geographies of the Western City, c. 1750–1900 (London: Routledge, 2021). Aris Della Fontana is a Ph.D. student at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and at the Université de Lausanne. His doctoral research is on eighteenth-century Venetian economic reform debates, with a particular emphasis on the reception of European political economy. He is an associate of the research project Enlightenment Agrarian Republics (Swiss National Science Foundation, FNS). He has published articles on the English reception of François Fénelon’s Télémaque and on the political meaning of the Regency of Philippe of Orléans (1715–1723). A chapter on the English reception of Jacques-Joseph Duguet’s Institution d’un Prince is forthcoming.

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Jenny Mander is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge and CoDirector of the Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement. Her recent publications include a critical edition of Book 10 of Raynal’s Histoire philosophique et politique des Deux Indes (Ferney-Voltaire: Centre Internationale d’Étude du XVIII Siècle Ferney-Voltaire, 2020); with David Midgley and Christine D. Beaule, Transnational perspectives on the conquest and colonization of Latin America (New York: Routledge, 2020), with Courtney, Raynal’s Histoire des deux Indes. Colonialism, networks and global exchange (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2015). She has also published a range of articles and chapters on the rise of the European novel and its intersection with the exchange of books and ideas in the long eighteenth century. She is currently working on eighteenth-century interpretations of the practice of hospitality and the place given to narrative and personal testimony in the contact between merchants and migrants on the move. Ere Nokkala is University Researcher at the University of Helsinki. He is a member of the Helsinki Centre for Intellectual History, where he focuses on eighteenth-century Germany, Scandinavia and Finland. His publications include From Natural Law to Political Economy: JHG von Justi on State, Commerce and International Order (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2019) and the volume Cameralism and the Enlightenment: Happiness, Governance and Reform in Transnational Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2020), co-edited with Nicholas B. Miller. He has published widely in aspects of cameralism, natural law and early modern republicanism, including in History of European Ideas, European Review of History, and History of Political Economy. Nokkala is co-director of the International Research Network on Cameralism across the World of Enlightenment. He has held fellowships at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, the Herzog August Bibliothek and the Lichtenberg-Kolleg–The Göttingen Institute for Advanced Study. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2010 from the European University Institute in Florence. Arnaud Orain is Professor of Economics at the European Studies Institute of the University Paris 8. He was Davis Fellow of the Princeton University Department of History in 2015–2016 and joint member of Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies schools of Historical Studies and Social Science in 2020–2021. He has published and directed numerous articles and books devoted to the history of economic thought in the

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French Enlightenment, with a particular emphasis on Anti-Physiocracy and on culture, religion, colonies and political economy. He recently published La politique du merveilleux. Une autre histoire du Système de Law, 1695–1795 (Paris: Fayard, 2018), which was awarded the title of Best Book of 2019 by the European Society for the History of Economic Thought. Arnault Skornicki is Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Paris Nanterre and member of the Institut des Sciences Sociales du Politique. He has published L’Économiste, la cour et la patrie. L’économie politique dans la France des Lumières (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2011), La nouvelle histoire des idées politiques (with Jérôme Tournadre; Paris: La Découverte, 2015), La grande Soif de l’État. Michel Foucault avec les sciences sociales (Paris: Les Prairies Ordinaires, 2015), and a range of articles and edited volumes on European eighteenth-century political thought, the Foucaldian theory of the state and methodological issues in the history of ideas. He is currently completing a book on the history of the transnational figures of the “roi citoyen” or “patriot king” in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Koen Stapelbroek is an Associate Professor at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Director of the Helsinki Centre for Intellectual History and currently a Research Fellow at the University of Sydney. He has published Love, Self-Deceit and Money: Commerce and Morality in the Early Neapolitan Enlightenment (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008) and a range of articles and edited volumes on European eighteenthcentury political thought and the history of commercial institutions. He is completing two monographs on European perceptions of the rise and fall of the Dutch trade republic and on the history of free trade and its regulatory institutions.

CHAPTER 1

Histories of Trade: Civilisation and Political Economy in the Long Eighteenth Century Antonella Alimento and Aris Della Fontana

Histoire Philosophique, Political Economy and the Theory of Civilisation “After having read the descriptions of three or four thousand battles, and the substance of some hundreds of treaties, I do not find myself one jot wiser than when I began; because from them I learn nothing but events.” It was for this reason, Voltaire concluded in his Nouvelles Considérations sur l’histoire (1744), that “we neglect studies infinitely

A. Alimento Department of Civilisations and Forms of Knowledge, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] A. Della Fontana (B) Faculty of Humanities, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] Faculty of Arts, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Alimento and A. Della Fontana (eds.), Histories of Trade as Histories of Civilisation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80087-1_1

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more useful and important.”1 Breaking away from the sterile compilation of the past, typical of traditional dynastic and military history and of erudition in general, histoire philosophique expressed this widespread intellectual need to lift the veil from événements temporels. The result was a survey of the past in which the desire to grasp the structure of historical mechanisms and the meaning of events, as well as to problematise the notions of historical change and evolution, intertwined in the search for an interpretative and narrative dimension. The many questions put to the past did not in fact receive an unambiguous answer. Indeed, the analytical depth that characterised this historiographical trend gave rise to a variegated debate in which heterogeneous, competing and even antithetical readings and re-readings of the past were addressed. Moreover, the projection onto the past of the questions and theoretical paradigms of the authors under consideration contributed decisively to the explication of this field of tension around the construction of historical truth. Convinced of the exemplary value of history, the historians involved in this discussion did not hide the sociopolitical and philosophical implications of their analyses. For this reason, rather than depreciating this historiographical activity in view of its ideological bent or its partisan and “propagandist” nature, it is essential to appreciate its original discursive wealth so as to bring out new facets of European intellectual history.2 In this sense, the emergence and flowering of a specific genre, that of the histories of trade—which enhanced, by thematising it, the interest in history present in the economic reflection of the period—can only be understood within the framework of this historiographical innovation,3

1 Voltaire, “Nouvelles considérations sur l’histoire,” Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire (Paris: Lahure, 1860), vol. XI, 12–13. 2 Arnaldo Momigliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13: nos. 3–4 (1950): 285–315; Haydn Mason, “Optimism, Progress, and Philosophical History,” in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, ed. Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 204–205 and 211; Sophie Bourgault and Robert Sparling, “Introduction,” in A Companion to Enlightenment Historiography, ed. Sophie Bourgault and Robert Sparling (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 1–3, 8–12 and 15–21. 3 Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce: Globalization and the French Monarchy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 87–88.

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which in any case also incorporated the precious methodological acquisitions of antiquarianism and erudition.4 In fact, this veritable histoire des hommes included in the list of objects worthy of historical investigation not only religions, political institutions, customs, human understanding and taste, but also trade and the economy in general. As Arnaldo Momigliano noted, “what at first transpired in the background now leapt into the foreground.”5 Commerce became a protagonist of this revision of historiographical hierarchies, since investigating its evolution over the centuries made it possible to grasp causal links, processes and dialectical models hitherto ignored, the understanding of which enriched the history of European societies. And in this regard Hume pointed out that, unlike the history of the arts and sciences, on which “chance, […] or secret and unknown causes” had a “great influence,” the history of trade constituted an appropriate and promising field of investigation since its dynamics were based on relatively intelligible and customarily regular general causes.6 Last but not least, the study of trade as a heuristic tool available to historians seemed particularly valuable, and even essential, since it was felt that it, as a “motor force,” had assumed a defining and constitutive value relative to the history of more recent centuries. The history of trade thus took on the features of a “grand narrative.”7 Significantly, Forbonnais, in his Elémens du commerce (1754), had no doubts: after the rounding

4 Denys Hay, Annalists and Historians: Western Historiography from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Centuries (London-New York: Routledge, 2016 [1977]), 169, 174–175, 179 and 184; Pierre Briant, Alexandre des Lumières. Fragments d’histoire européenne (Paris: Gallimard, 2012), 141–150. 5 Arnaldo Momigliano, Sui fondamenti della storia antica (Turin: Einaudi, 1984), 314– 315. 6 David Hume, Political Essays, ed. Knud Haakonssen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006 [1994]), 59–60. On this, see also: J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. II, Narratives of Civil Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 184. 7 Carl Wennerlind, “David Hume’s Political Philosophy: A Theory of Commercial Modernization,” Hume Studies 28, no. 2 (November 2002): 247–248 and 254; J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. IV, Barbarians, Savages and Empires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 230–232; J. G. A. Pocock, “From The Ancient Constitution to Barbarism and Religion; The Machiavellian Moment, the History of Political Thought and the History of Historiography,” History of European Ideas 43, no. 2 (2017): 140.

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of the Cape of Good Hope and the discovery of America, which transformed the face of commerce, the history of trade had become “part of [the history] of the states.”8 By this interpretation, the perception that trade had had revolutionary consequences which could not be overlooked by any large-scale historiographical work is clearly detectable in the centrality that commercial events assume in the Modern Part (published between 1759 and 1765) of the Universal History from the Earliest Account of Time to the Present. This appears even more significant when we consider that universal histories were “gigantic collectors of stereotypes” which, in the light of their “duration and diffusion, better record the change in ways of thinking than works marked by strong creative individuality.”9 And if in this specific historiographical operation commerce, in particular the development of overseas trade, was conceived as an agent of development and freedom,10 in others its impact was interpreted according to markedly problematic, and therefore much more multifaceted, analyses. This is precisely the central point. The histories of trade provided an original contribution to the construction of the theory of civilisation. This preceded the coining of the unifying term (“civilisation”), which appears for the first time in Mirabeau’s Ami des hommes (1756) and marked a fundamental change of gear with respect to the analytical dominance of particular determinants that still characterised Montesquieu’s science des mœurs .11 In fact, since the reconstruction of the genesis and implications of economic events required a démarche that went beyond the 8 François Véron de Forbonnais, Elémens du commerce, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Briasson, David, Le Breton, Durand, 1754), vol. I, 28. 9 Giuseppe Ricuperati, “Comparatismo, storia universale, storia delle civiltà. Il mutamento dei paradigmi dalla “crisi della coscienza europea” all’Illuminismo,” in Le passioni dello storico. Studi in onore di Giuseppe Giarrizzo, ed. Antonio Coco (Catania: Edizioni del Prisma, 1999), 566. 10 Guido Abbattista, “The English Universal History: Publishing, Authorship and Historiography in a European Project (1736–1790),” Storia della storiografia 39 (2001): 101–105. See also: Brett Bowden, The Strange Persistence of Universal History in Political Thought (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017), 13–16, 33–34 and 103. 11 Céline Spector, “Science des mœurs et théorie de la civilisation: de L’Esprit des

lois de Montesquieu à l’école historique écossaise,” in Les équivoques de la civilisation, ed. Bertrand Binoche (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2005), 83–104. For a different interpretation, see: Catherine Larrère, “Montesquieu et l’histoire du commerce,” in Le temps de Montesquieu, ed. Michel Porret and Catherine Volpilhac-Auger (Geneva: Droz, 2002), 326–331.

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“contingent rhapsody of events,” those who practised the history of trade maintained that the stories of individual peoples were part of a common adventure built through multiple and prolonged interactions that can be deciphered and unified. Postulating the human race as an entity that was dynamic and therefore subject to metamorphosis, the authors of these stories believed it possible to trace individual events to a unitary process whose phenomenology could be grasped through a grammar capable of aggregating times and spaces in a narrative that made them commensurable. In this sense, this real genetic analysis finally made the profound diversity between eras and peoples comprehensible, and this resulted in considerable attention being paid to the rhythms of development and qualitative change, captured through a comparative examination sometimes characterised by hierarchical evaluations. Indeed, delineating the time of commercial civilisation meant organising specific histories and understanding the causes of new developments as well as setbacks and deviations. Precisely because the term “civilisation” referred to concepts from different semantic fields—as “fact” but also “value”—its use lent itself to various purposes. Conceptualising, as happened during the eighteenth century, civilisation as a spontaneous process, “the fruit of human will but not of its intention,” endowed with a sense of direction and a common thread effectively summed up in the notion of improvement, did not necessarily lead to an overgeneralisation of the idea of progress as a continuous, automatic and linear instance. Used in this way, the concept of civilisation did not have the apologetic character that it assumed in the nineteenth century, when the eighteenth-century use of the term was replaced by that of civilisations (in the plural), for obvious classification and hierarchical reasons.12

12 Georges Benrekassa, “Civilisation, Civilité,” in Dictionnaire européen des Lumières, ed. Michel Delon (Paris: PUF, 1997), 219–221; Jochen Schlobach, “Progress,” in Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, ed. Michel Delon (London: Routledge, 2001), 1103; Bertrand Binoche, “Civilisation: le mot, le schème et la maître-mot,” in Les équivoques de la civilisation, 9–30; Haydn Mason, “Optimism, progress, and philosophical history,” in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, ed. Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 205–210; Christophe Charle and Daniel Roche, “L’Europe, pourquoi, comment, jusqu’où,” in Europe. Encyclopédie Historique, ed. Christophe Charle and Daniel Roche (Arles: Actes Sud, 2018), 31–32. See also the papers by Céline Spector and Antoine Lilti in Penser l’Europe au XVIII e siècle. Commerce, civilisation, empire, ed. Antoine Lilti and Céline Spector (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2014), 93–115 and 139–166.

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Evidently, the considerable attention paid to trade as a factor of historical reshaping was entwined with the awareness that it acted as a key which unlocked the identity and perspectives of eighteenth-century Europe, all the more so if this had become a real “affair of state.”13 History, then, as a vector of transformation, phenomenology of metamorphosis, at that point became a constitutive dimension of the representation of the present.14 And yet, many histories of trade did not limit themselves to understanding contemporaneity as the result of an evolutionary process, and did not attempt to reconstruct the genesis of eighteenth-century economic structures in order to better understand their characteristics. In point of fact, many of these works exhibited a desire to actively interact with history—historiography is a “mode of thinking” through which reason “is experienced and verified”15 —in order to study the pages of its great book in the light of the challenging and intricate questions posed by the present. Therefore, what separates the history of trade from erudition, giving it a markedly civil imprint, is its auxiliary status as a vehicle for economic reflection. This being so, it is noteworthy that in the “Catalogue d’une bibliothèque d’économie politique,” added to the Prospectus d’un nouveau dictionnaire de commerce (1769), Morellet had titled the first section “Histoire et état du commerce.” He apparently saw the study of the history of trade as a useful heuristic method for reflecting on the mechanisms of the eighteenth-century economy.16 Furthermore, we might consider the fact that a significant number of theoretical works and pamphlets opened with a history of trade, which served the author not as a platform for displaying his own culture, but as an essential

13 Hume, Political Essays, ed. Haakonssen, 52; Christopher Brooke, “Eighteenthcentury Carthage,” in Béla Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky, and Richard Whatmore, “Introduction. Power, prosperity, and peace in Enlightenment thought,” in Commerce and Peace in the Enlightenement, ed. Béla Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky and Richard Whatmore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 111. 14 Marc André Bernier, “Préface. Lumières et histoire. Ou les métamorphoses de l’ex-

emplarité,” in Lumières et histoire. Enlightenment and History, ed. Tristan Coignard, Peggy Davis, Alicia C. Montoya (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2013), 7–21. 15 Catherine Volpilhac-Auger, Montesquieu. Une histoire de temps (Lyon: ENS, 2017), 15, 79–81, 88–91 and 214. 16 André Morellet, Prospectus d’un nouveau dictionnaire de commerce (Paris: Frères Estienne, 1769), 48–50.

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logical and argumentative technique.17 For these reasons, it is legitimate to see this literary genre as a peculiar dimension and declination of eighteenth-century political economy, which was an instrument through which to understand and influence the conduct of governments.18 Significant proof of this is the essential function performed by Georges-Marie Butel-Dumont and François Véron de Forbonnais’s histoires du commerce within the theoretical elaboration of the science du commerce by Gournay’s circle.19 These authors were driven by the conviction that the past—with its strong normative value—was still alive. In effect, as a multidimensional accumulation of experiences that can teach useful lessons, which also derive from the cognitive appreciation of the alterity of certain historical circumstances, “it continues to ‘knock on the door’ of the present.” Having said that, the search for recurring mechanisms and geometries did not imply a denial of the existence of irregularities and exceptional cases. In particular, many histories of trade revealed that infinite and therefore incalculable variables were influencing reality. In short, circumstances and the random factors that acted on them were taken into consideration due to their ability to change or overturn those states of affairs whose essence and direction seemed beyond question. “Never did the Venetians believe the power of their country to be more firmly established, or rely with greater confidence on the continuance and increase of its opulence, than towards the close of the fifteenth century” but, William Robertson noted, in that very moment “two events (which they could neither foresee nor prevent) happened, that proved fatal to both” namely “the discovery of America” and “the opening [of] a direct course of navigation to the East Indies, by the Cape of Good Hope.” And, the Scottish writer claimed, the historical impact of those events not only brought about the decline of Venetian economic hegemony but also the rise of an era-defining transition: “Of all occurrences in the history of the human

17 Regarding this, we refer to the chronology contained in Table 1.1. 18 Steven L. Kaplan and Sophus A. Reinert, eds., The Economic Turn: Recasting Political

Economy in Enlightenment Europe (London: Anthem Press, 2019). 19 Paul Cheney, “Constitution and Economy in David Hume’s Enlightenment,” in

David Hume’s Political Economy, ed. Carl Wennerlind and Margaret Schabas (London: Routledge, 2008), 223–224; Paul Cheney, “L’histoire du commerce. Genre littéraire et méthode en économie politique,” in Le cercle de Gournay, Savoirs économiques et pratiques administratives en France au milieu du XVIII e siècle, ed. Loïc Charles, Frédéric Lefebvre and Christine Théré (Paris: INED, 2011), 282 and 284–287.

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race, these are undoubtedly the most interesting,” since “they occasioned a remarkable change of intercourse among the different quarters of the globe, and finally established those commercial ideas and arrangements which constitute the chief distinction between the manners and policy of ancient and of modern times.”20 In short, by recording change and putting the relationship between the creation of wealth and the birth and decline of civilisation at the core of their reflection, the histories of trade allow us to look at the intellectual, cultural and political history of eighteenth-century Europe from a remarkably innovative angle.

Constitution, Conquest and the Antiquity of Commerce The argumentative force of the history of trade genre is clearly demonstrated by the debate aimed at understanding the extent to which a particular national civilisation, with its specific political constitution, possessed the prerequisites to welcome mercantile activity and undertake to make it flourish. It is therefore telling that the Histoire du commerce de France (1606), a real incunabulum of this historiographical genre, insisted that the French monarchy could and should increase its development of commerce and manufacturing. Its author, Isaac de Laffemas, son of the more famous economist Barthélemy de Laffemas, praised Henry IV, who, by restoring “the security and freedom of traffic” and promoting manufacturing, had revived the French economy after a period of decline. Apropos of this, he noted that the “wisdom” of the sovereign lay in his awareness that without trade a kingdom would be condemned to be “poor and needy,” and that “the greatness and richness of a Prince consists in the wellbeing of his subjects.” Furthermore, these were constants of universal application. In fact, mercantile activities marked in a decisive way the physiology and very identity of political societies:

20 William Robertson, An Historical Disquisition Concerning the Knowledge Which the Ancients Had of India; and the Progress of Trade with That Country Prior to the Discovery of the Passage to It by the Cape of Good Hope (…) (London: Strahan/Cadell, 1791), 131. This work was translated into French and German in 1792.

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Everyone takes part in Trade, not today, but in all times, and it seems that we are naturally inclined to it, because as soon as children begin to babble, they exchange and swap an endless number of toys among themselves […] and it must be believed that for men there is nothing so ordinary and frequent as bartering, trafficking and making contracts.

Intent on submitting proof of the importance of trade for the “harmony of the body politic,” Laffemas looked to the past to demonstrate that “there is no Kingdom that can prosper, nor any Republic that can survive without commerce,” and that “Trafficking is noble and the greatest have exercised it.” For example, the Romans’ “reverence towards Trafic” was so strong that “they prohibited all other activities on the days of fairs and markets.” Therefore, according to Laffemas, France not only could not ignore these eloquent examples, but also ought to treasure its own history, which illustrated both the mistakes made and the means of remedying them. To be sure, if the ruinous decline of French textile products—once the best in the world—was a consequence of “laziness” and “negligence,” and of a certain “disdain for the arts,” then it was vital to rediscover the honour and importance of these professions, enticing the “most experienced workers” back to their homeland with “bonuses, privileges and exemptions.”21 However, not everyone believed that commerce was an activity suited to all political societies. For example, in his Aanwysing der heilsame politike gronden en maximen van de republike van Holland en West-Vriesland (1669),22 which was well known throughout Europe thanks to translations in English and French, the Dutch economist and businessman Pieter de la Court argued that only republics could guarantee the wellbeing of their citizens and illustrated this assertion with a historical parable whose leitmotiv was the symbiosis between freedom and commercial prosperity. In fact, “traffick” and “manufactures” flourished only in republics such as Sidon, Tyre and Carthage, and in the Italian city-states of Florence, Pisa

21 Isaac de Laffemas, L’histoire du commerce de France. Enrichie des plus notables antiquitez du traffic des païs estranges (Paris: Toussaincts du Bray, 1606), 9–17, 39–80, 92–97, 122–136, 155 and 164–165. 22 Pieter de la Court, Aanwysing der heilsame politike gronden en maximen van de republike van Holland en West-Vriesland (Leiden-Rotterdam: Hakkens, 1669). An earlier version was published in 1662: Interest van Holland, ofte, Gronden van Hollands-welvaren (Amsterdam: J. C. van der Gracht, 1662).

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and Milan, but only as long as they were able to maintain “free government.” De la Court was certain of this: while the grave consequences of wars and natural events could be overcome by means of industry, there was no antidote to oppression—the result of subjugation by a monarchy, or the end of “popular government”—since merchants would inevitably relocate to where their free activity was not limited. Further confirmation of this truth could, moreover, be deduced from recent Dutch history, over which loomed the danger that the power-hungry “Stadtholders” and “Captain-Generals” could compromise the splendid wellbeing that, thanks to freedom, Holland had established.23 In a way that was paradoxical only in appearance, De la Court’s thesis could find implicit acceptance even in the monarchical states. In France, for example, vehement opposition to the work of Jean-Baptiste Colbert did not come, as Lionel Rothkrug had claimed in a very influential book,24 from mercantile circles—which supported the principles of “free trade” in the face of an allegedly bellicose economic policy—but, rather, from a heterogenous front in which, alongside the former clients of the disgraced Superintendent of Finances Nicolas Fouquet and a group of “false” nobles fearing an investigation into their titles, the noblesse d’épée also featured. This social group feared that the Controller-General of Finances might transform the kingdom into a commercial state in which traditional political and social hierarchies would count for little. It was instead vital for France to remain a nation with a military spirit and an agricultural foundation, and for this reason, as argued by the Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire D.M.R (1668), an anonymous pamphlet directed with extreme violence against Colbert, it was necessary to renounce the establishment of overseas trading companies (1664) and the favouring of manufacturing and the protectionist tariffs of 1667, and to support instead the agricultural sector by ensuring freedom of trade.25

23 The English translation has been used: Pieter de la Court, The True Interest and Political Maxims of the Republick of Holland and West-Friesland (London: n.p., 1702), 419–443. 24 Lionel Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV: The Political and Social Origins of French Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965). 25 Moritz Isenmann, Der «Colbertismus» und die Ursprünge des wirtschaftlichen Liberalismus. Französische Außenhandelspolitik im Zeitalter Ludwigs XIV , unpublished Habilitationsschrift, University of Cologne (2016). We would like to thank Moritz Isenmann for discussing these issues with us.

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It was in these circumstances that Colbert commissioned Pierre-Daniel Huet to write his celebrated Histoire du commerce et de la navigation des anciens, the manuscript version of which was completed in October 1669.26 Although hidden behind a mountain of typically erudite information,27 the thrust of the entire text is that trade, rather than being a dangerously subversive novelty, was a dimension that had already shaped and conditioned the life of civilisations—republics and monarchies alike— of the ancient world.28 Accordingly, after having scorned “the scant intelligence” of the Laconians, whose “rigid and austere discipline” had prevented the development of trade,29 Huet provides the translation of a passage from Plutarch’s Life of Solon, which in his opinion represented “the most illustrious testimony from antiquity in favour of commerce, and of those who practise it”: In that Time, according to Hesiod’s Account, no kind of Work was shameful, and the arts did not create any difference between men. Trade was also held in great Honour for bringing into the country certain goods from abroad, favouring alliances with the Kings, and providing knowledge about many things. Some Merchants even founded great cities, for instance the one who founded Marseille […] They say that Thales too applied himself to Trade, like the Mathematician Hippocrates, and like Plato, who only undertook to travel to Egypt to sell his oil.30

However, in addition to rehabilitating the image and role of the merchants, the Histoire du commerce also celebrated the deeds of the peoples who devoted themselves assiduously to trade, which allowed them to achieve otherwise unimaginable levels of prosperity and power.

26 The manuscript ends with the following words, “À Paris, 15 8.bre 1669.” PierreDaniel Huet, Histoire sommaire du commerce et de la navigation des anciens. A Monsieur Colbert Ministre d’Estat, 1669, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Suppl. fr. 5307, 164r. 27 This style is even more evident in the manuscript version, where the annotations and citations, almost absent in the printed editions, are extremely dense and abundant. See Pierre-Daniel Huet, Histoire sommaire. 28 In contrast, Briant argues that Huet did not develop a genuine thesis: Pierre Briant, Alexandre des Lumières, 334. Cheney has a similar view: Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce, 29. 29 [Pierre-Daniel Huet], Histoire du commerce et de la navigation des anciens (Paris: Antoine-Urbain Coustelier, 1716), 76–77. 30 Ibid., 82–83.

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And this is the aspect that Huet emphasised, since he believed that it was thriving commercial activity that supported and decisively increased military capabilities. In point of fact, thanks both to their accumulated wealth and the experience gained sailing the seas, the Phoenicians and the Phocians had been able to build fleets of ships whose “number” and “strength” were fearsome. Equipped with “all kinds of tools and machines for maritime and terrestrial warfare,” Marseille never claimed to have “control of the seas,” but it always vigorously and successfully opposed “those who attempted to obtain it.”31 That in late seventeenth-century France there was a ripened awareness that, in the modern age, it was even more true and evident that commerce was a crucial resource for supporting the power relations of the states, is confirmed by another work, the Mémoires sur le commerce des Hollandois, written in the 1690s but published for the first time in 1712, and traditionally attributed to Huet.32 After noting that “according to the present Conduct of the several States of Europe, there are very few things in Government which deserve more Attention than Commerce,” the author of this text affirms without hesitation that “a great State cannot prosper, nor remain at peace, if it has not a great Trade.” In fact, only through commerce can it acquire the “riches” and “abundance” without which “it can undertake nothing advantageous, either to aid and assist its Allies, or extend its Limits.” As evidence, the book referred to the metamorphoses experienced by Holland and England. The latter, after the “skilful” Elizabeth had induced her subjects to apply themselves to trade, was able to gather naval forces which “later became the terror of the ocean and other seas,” and which in turn safeguarded and guaranteed the work of the merchants. Even so, nothing could be compared to what the Dutch had managed to do thanks to commerce: “It will ever be a Subject of Astonishment, that a handful of Merchants, that fled into a little Country which produced scarce enough to subsist its new Inhabitants, should beat down the exorbitant Power of the Spanish Monarchy and oblige it to sue for

31 Ibid., 32–33, 84–88 and 206–210. 32 P. J. Blok, “Mémoire touchant le négoce et la navigation des Hollandois,” Bijdragen

en Mededeelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 24 (1903). On this work, see also the chapter by Koen Stapelbroek in this volume. We have used and are quoting from the following edition: [Pierre-Daniel Huet], Mémoires sur le commerce des Hollandois […] (Amsterdam: Villard & Changuion, 1718). Translations of this work into English, Spanish, Dutch and German were published in 1717: on this, see Table 1.1.

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peace; that they founded such a powerful state capable at present in some manner to hold the Balance between all the other Powers of Europe.” It is therefore not surprising that against those who held that the French genius was not suitable for commerce, this text states that “in France there had been and there still were men who have all the necessary abilities and experience to carry on a vast Trade.” In this regard, convinced that France possessed natural resources of unparalleled quantity and quality but had not protected trade “as was necessary,” the author even subscribed to the words of the English nobleman John Belasyse, who stated that “if God should one Day make the Turks know what they could do at Sea, and the French how far they might extend their Commerce, all Europe would soon be conquered by those Powers.”33 In the light of all this, the Histoire du commerce could not portray Rome as an exemplary model.34 Certainly, Huet admits, it was improbable that a wise people like the Romans did not know how much “trade was necessary for their subsistence, and for the increase of their wealth” and consequently it was never knowingly hindered, as had occurred in Sparta. Ruling over an increasingly large area, it would have been foolish to disconnect the commercial networks they had come to control and from which they derived reasonable benefits. However, to Huet’s mind it was the inability to make the most of this circumstance that testified, in an emblematic way, to the limits and contradictions of their politics, which did not earmark trade as a priority. The Romans, who had gone to war to “make conquests,” and who “cultivated navigation mainly in relation to war,” when controlling “most of the known world” could have given life to trade on a considerable scale “if their concern to assert and extend their domination had not been their main and almost only activity.” Moreover, although sometimes this commerce was favoured, “it should not be obscured that […] the merchants were made to feel the disfavour accorded to their work,” which was not coincidentally forbidden to senators. On this point, Cicero was right when he poured scorn on the idea that commerce ought to be the responsibility of “people with low status.” “Trade, says he, is mean, if it has only a small Profit for its Object. But it is blameless if it is large and abundant.”

33 [Pierre-Daniel Huet], Mémoires sur le commerce des Hollandois, v–x; [Pierre-Daniel Huet], Histoire du commerce et de la navigation des anciens, 32–33. 34 Catherine Larrère, “Montesquieu et l’histoire du commerce,” 321–322.

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Evidently, in the context of this chiaroscuro assessment of Roman history, Huet looked rather sympathetically towards those emperors who had distinguished themselves by promoting commerce. For instance, during the “long” and “happy” reign of Augustus, it reached such a “flourishing” state that large ships set out from the Red Sea to sail as far as the Indies and Ethiopia. Septimius Severus, for his part, is praised because, when returning from war against the Parthians, he wanted to pass through Egypt to determine how it might have enriched the Empire. But the highest praise was reserved for Probus. His “great Designs”—undermined by a “conspiracy of soldiers”—were aimed at “universal peace” and the conversion of all that war consumed—“men, jobs, expenses”— into resources designed to further the “public good.” In other words, being aware that “one of the greatest riches of a state consists in the arms and industry of its subjects,” he intended to place the “cultivation of the land,” the “study of the sciences,” “navigation” and “commerce” at the centre of Roman politics.35 This predilection for wise and enlightened rulers who were not driven to conquer by a burning desire for sheer domination, but did so in order to expand trade, explains Huet’s fascination with Philip II of Macedon and, most of all, with his son, Alexander the Great. The former had tried to become the “master of the sea” mainly because he was aware of the considerable economic advantages that this would have given him. Alexander, on the other hand, after defeating the Persian Empire, and particularly after conquering Tyre and founding Alexandria, had the great merit of bringing about a “great revolution in the affairs of commerce,” within which important trade developed between the West and the East. In the wake of Huet, Montesquieu also appreciated this fundamental historical discontinuity, identifying in Alexander the judicious conqueror par excellence who, instead of indulging in ephemeral predation, preferred to establish a trading network that would ultimately have been beneficial also to the vanquished peoples.36

35 [Pierre-Daniel Huet], Histoire du commerce et de la navigation des anciens, 120, 174, 186, 255, 266–272, 347–354, 406, 413–425, 432 and 442–443. 36 [Pierre-Daniel Huet], Histoire du commerce et de la navigation des anciens, 34, 49 and 89–92; Pierre Briant, Alexandre des Lumières, 329–350; Catherine Larrère, “Montesquieu et l’histoire du commerce,” 322–326 and 331–333; Andrew Scott Bibby, Montesquieu’s Political Economy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 81–83 and 183; Catherine Volpilhac-Auger, Montesquieu. Une histoire de temps, 14 and 144–153.

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Moreover, it is significant that one of the few references to events of the author’s day contained in the Histoire du commerce goes back to insisting on the interlocking nature of prosperity and power. Indeed, noting that, far from being limited to the Baltic Sea, Muscovy trade also involved the White, North, Black and Caspian Seas, Huet states that these people could have drawn “immense profits” from that situation if they had overcome the “negligence” and “coarseness” that kept them from “cultivating the arts,” and if they had set aside the “diffident and suspicious spirit” that made them unwilling to trade with foreigners. The French churchman has no doubts on this: If it should happen, that in course of Time there should rise up among them a wise Prince, who, recognising the errors of this base and barbarous politics, took care to remedy it, reforming the ferocious spirit and the harsh and unsociable mores of the Muscovites; and if he needed, as he could, the Multitude of his Subjects, which reside in the vast Extent of his Dominion […] and with whom he could establish large armies and the wealth that he could amass through commerce, this nation would become formidable to all its Neighbours.37

And what is more interesting is the fact that, in contrast to the printed version, the manuscript announces that—thanks to Tsar Feodor III Alekséyevich (1676–1682)—such awareness was in fact emerging.38 In short, Huet depicted the image of an ideal sovereign who possessed the symbolic attributes that would exert a certain fascination on Louis XIV, who in the 1660s compared his work to that of the emperors of classical antiquity, and in particular identified himself with Alexander the Great. As we know, in the context of the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, Colbert sided with the latter, considering ancient allegory a dangerous procedure since it also absorbed the criticisms of a particular model.39 But given that on the one hand Huet’s work was not propagandist, being intended for circulation within governmental circles, and 37 [Pierre-Daniel Huet], Histoire du commerce et de la navigation des anciens, 236–237. 38 Pierre-Daniel Huet, Histoire sommaire du commerce et de la navigation des anciens,

92r. 39 Chantal Grell and Christian Michel, L’École des Princes ou Alexandre disgracié. Essai sur la mythologie monarchique de la France absolutiste (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1988), 8, 65–76 and 116; Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 3, 28, 35, 68 and 131; Chantal Grell, Le Dix-huitième siècle et l’antiquité en

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that on the other it depicted antiquity and in particular Alexander the Great with very original and modern features, the Controller General must have considered it a resource well-suited to his political needs. As it happened, Colbert, who in 1664 had founded the French East India Company, was trying to convince the Sun King that warfare as an end in itself was a short-sighted strategy, and that economic development and the traders were neither a danger to nor beneath the dignity of the monarchy, but rather the only channel through which military power could be reinvigorated.40 What is more, that the Histoire du commerce and the aforementioned Mémoires sur le commerce des Hollandois could be used by the sectors of the French ruling classes intent on putting the commercial question at the heart of the debate, is demonstrated by the fact that both were first published in a time period that in large part overlapped with that of the Regency (1715–1723).41 In other words, they coincided with the political experiment that led to Law’s bank, and which in general, by virtue of its relative political and cultural ouverture, aimed at impressing a new direction on French economic policy by, on the one hand, recognising the honour and indispensability of the merchants and, on the other, opening up to Russia and rethinking relations with Holland.42 Thus, starting with Huet’s Histoire, the construction of the past, far from being a scholarly exercise, was placed more or less explicitly and directly at the service of reform plans aimed at transforming France into a full-fledged mercantile kingdom.

France, 1680–1789 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1995), 353–364, 451–452 and 654– 664. 40 Moritz Isenmann, Der «Colbertismus» und die Ursprünge, 213–263; Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce, 30. On Colbert and his commission of Huet, see also Pierre Briant, Alexandre des Lumières, 62 and 333–335. 41 The Histoire was published in 1716. The Mémoires were published as Grand trésor historique et politique du florissant commerce des hollandois in 1712, 1713 and 1714, and in 1717 and 1718 as Mémoires sur le commerce des Hollandois. 42 On the Regency, see Alexandre Dupilet, La régence absolue. Philippe d’Orléans et la polysynodie (1715–1718) (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2011), 112–121, 343–345, and 372; Laurent Lemarchand, Paris ou Versailles? La monarchie absolue entre deux capitales (1715– 1723) (Paris: Éditions du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 2014), 218–229; Éric Schnakenbourg, “La France et le Développement de l’Influence russe en Europe du Nord dans la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle,” in Guerres et paix en Europe centrale aux époques moderne et contemporaine, ed. D. Toller (Paris: Pups, 2003), 585–596.

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From Past to Present: The Power of Prosperity, Science of Commerce and a New Political Anthropology It is more than likely that the same circles which promoted the publication of both Huet’s work and the Mémoires also played an important part in that of the Dictionnaire Universel de commerce (1723–1730). Indeed, in the Préface historique that opened this text, Jacques Savary Des Bruslons not only reiterated that the power of the states depended on trade, but—in the wake of Huet and in the context of a history of civilisation focused on economic primacy—discovered in Russia a case study of fundamental importance. Savary reconstructed what Huet had only been able to glimpse and envisage, that is, the astonishing flowering of Russian trade—“already so consolidated and extended”—thanks to the arrival of a sovereign who at last had grasped the favourable geographical position and the natural wealth of that country. Peter I, the architect of this metamorphosis, had been able to overturn the fortunes of the “aggressive” and “lazy” nation, which had been “forbidden to communicate with foreigners,” making it an economic power of European importance. Savary praised the great application of a sovereign who, removing the “marks of his Grandeur,” conversed with the most skilled traders, went into the “workshops of the most able artisans,” learned to use the compass and naval charts, and penetrated the “secrets of the Bank and of exchange.” In particular, the Préface historique underlined the great political nous that Peter I had demonstrated not only by opening new ports, but also by building a large fleet that had protected the expansion of Russian maritime trade. It is reasonable to think that by means of this exaltation of the Russian sovereign Savary, along with the government and administrative circles that sponsored the Dictionnaire, wanted to present the young Louis XV with a role model, one to admire and emulate. They firmly believed, in the wake of Colbert, that the fortunes of France depended on it abandoning the nefarious symbiosis between militarism and dynastic interests. If, as Melon asserted in his Essai politique sur le commerce (1734)—which not coincidentally celebrated Peter I—the strength of a state corresponded to the “number of Citizens, and the utility of their work,” then it was essential to capitalise on France’s enormous natural and human resources. In other words, it was necessary to invite the nobility to engage in productive activities, to attract specialised workers, to regenerate the merchant navy

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after the cuts made by Louis XIV, and to protect it through the creation of a powerful navy. Last but not least, it was important to dispense with Dutch intermediation by issuing an act of navigation based on the English model and establishing direct commercial relations with nations that, like Russia, could supply their own goods in exchange for French ones.43 Lending weight to this campaign, which aimed to transform the kingdom of France into a trading nation, were other writers who, taking Laffemas as a pattern, sought to confirm the viability of this aspiration by delving into French history. Such was the case, for example, of Claude Carlier’s Dissertation sur l’état du Commerce en France sous les rois de la première et de la seconde race (1753), according to which both the Gauls and the Franks had had a thriving trade. For his part, Simon Clicquot de Blervache maintained that, within the twenty-two kingdoms considered in his Dissertation sur l’état du commerce en France, depuis Hugues Capet jusqu’à François I (1756), “Commerce […] was not really protected except by the kings who were less occupied with the desire to make conquests, but were more concerned to make their subjects happy; and that France has been more formidable in the centuries when trade was more flourishing.”44 Be that as it may, in the early decades of the eighteenth century a significant shift in the genre of the history of trade took place, as such works increasingly began to touch on the present. This trend gave expression to the view that contemporary history resulted from a dynamic process—the path of civilisation—that unequivocally connected it to ancient history. At the same time, however, simply because these history writers wanted to piece together this evolution in terms of its logic, they paid particular attention to moments of discontinuity and, more precisely, to the peculiar novelty and utility of recent history. This is clear not only in the aforementioned case of Savary, but also in the Preface to the British 43 Jacques Savary Des Bruslons, Préface historique, in Dictionnaire universel de commerce (Paris: J. Estienne, 1723), i–xxviii; Jean-François Melon, Essai politique sur le commerce (1734), 105; Antonella Alimento, “Peter the Great in the French Economic and Political Culture of the Eighteenth Century,” in Le Siècle des Lumières, vol. 7, Pierre Premier et la «fenêtre sur l’Europe», ed. Sergueï Karp (Moscow: Naouka, forthcoming). 44 Claude Carlier, Dissertation sur l’état du Commerce en France, sous les rois de la première et de la seconde race (Amiens: Veuve Godart, 1753), 3–4, 8, 58–59, 106–108, 126, 138–142, 160–166 and 454–457; Simon Clicquot de Blervache, Dissertation sur l’état du commerce en France, depuis hugues capet jusqu’à François I (Amiens: Chez la veuve Godart, 1756), 92.

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Merchant (1721). After having recounted the revolutions in trade from the time of the Phoenicians to the consolidation of the English commercial empire, Charles King wanted to point out the fearsome progress made by France: if only sixty years earlier this nation seemed destined not to make “any tolerable Figure in Traffick,” it was now becoming “next to us,” “the greatest Trading Nation in Europe.” It was therefore vital that the government took heed of this danger and did everything to ensure that the English economy would not be damaged.45 The awareness that the features of contemporary history should be studied in depth since they offered valuable information for the development of a winning economic policy is even clearer in the Négotiant Anglois (1753), the French translation of King’s work. Forbonnais, who translated the English text, had shortly before written the entry “Commerce” for the Encyclopédie (1753), in which he subdivided the history of trade into six periods, the last of which tellingly began in 1664, with the creation of the Compagnie française pour le commerce des Indes orientales and the establishing of the tarif that unified the country under a single level of customs, thus giving domestic industries special protection. According to Forbonnais’s interpretation, France had finally acquired “great influence […] in the affairs of Europe,” which hitherto had been the prerogative of England and Holland. But precisely because France was a young commercial power it did not yet possess the theoretical tools developed by its two rivals, which, foreseeing that “trade would become the basis of political interests and the balance of powers,” “made it a science and their prime objective.” Thus, rather than “imitating their operations without understanding their principles,” Forbonnais argued that it was necessary to start by appropriating this science, which had set in motion inescapable innovation and a change of pace from the norms of the centuries of classical antiquity and the Middle Ages.46 True to this position, Forbonnais—who was, as might be expected, a member of Gournay’s circle, which was committed to devising a nouvelle

45 Charles King, Preface, in The British Merchant; or, Commerce Preserved (London: J. Darby, 1721), vol. I, vii–xxxviii. 46 François Véron Duverger de Forbonnais, “Commerce,” in Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (Paris: Briasson, David, Le Breton and Durand, 1753), vol. III, 690–699; Forbonnais, “Discours préliminaire du Traducteur,” Le négotiant anglois, ou traduction libre du livre intitulé: The British Merchant […] (Dresden-Paris: Frères Estienne, 1753), vol. I, i–clviij.

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science du commerce—translated the British Merchant, adding to the original version an Idée générale du Commerce de la Grande Bretagne et de ses effets. In this text, he pinpointed and analysed the main reasons for Britain’s extraordinary economic rise. Apart from the presence of an institution, the Bank of England, that played a valuable role as creator of paper money and manipulator of coinage, the key to this primacy was to be found in its ability to offer European and colonial consumers products that varied from time to time. In this regard, it was undeniable that the effective management of the colonial economy made it possible to draw substantial benefits. “England does a prodigious trade in its commodities and manufacturers with its American colonies, the proceeds of which supplement what it does with the rest of Europe,” the French economist noted, having probably investigated the subject further when he took part in the publication of Georges-Marie Butel-Dumont’s Histoire et commerce des colonies angloises dans l’Amérique septentrionale (1755).47 In turn, the totality of Britain’s operations helped to maintain an active balance of trade, which was essential for sustaining domestic demand and for averting a rise in unemployment.48 Finally, and no less importantly, being mindful of the important function performed in this process by tools designed to measure and evaluate the performance of the British economy, Forbonnais added to the Négotiant Anglois a translation of “Of the Use of Political Arithmetick,” taken from Charles Davenant’s Discourses on the Publick Revenues, and on the Trade of England (1698).49 As said, even in England, an appraisal of the past gave substance to the theory that the strength of a nation was closely related to its commercial capabilities. In the Preface to the British Merchant (1721), in fact, when trying to convince his countrymen “that Great Britain can be only truly Great and Powerful by Trade and Industry,” King noted how “all antient Kingdoms and States knew that Commerce was the very Axis of

47 On this, see also: [Georges-Marie Butel-Dumont], Histoire et commerce des Antilles angloises [Paris: n.p., 1758]. 48 [François Véron Duverger de Forbonnais], “Idée générale du Commerce de la Grande Bretagne et de ses effets,” in Le négotiant anglois, vol. I, xxx–clviij. 49 [François Véron Duverger de Forbonnais], “De l’usage de l’Arithmétique Politique dans le commerce et le finances par M. Davenant en 1698,” in Le négotiant anglois, vol. I, clix–cxcii; Antonella Alimento, “Beyond the Treaty of Utrecht: Véron de Forbonnais’s French Translation of the British Merchant (1753),” in History of European Ideas 40, no. 8 (2014): 1044–1066.

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their Power.” And, he added, “we now see the Difference between those Countries that have Commerce and those that have none.” Hence the ability of Holland to resist the attacks of the most formidable European sovereigns was explicable only in the light of its prosperous trade.50 For his part, Joshua Gee held that the considerable economic improvements achieved thanks to Colbert had enabled France not only “to maintain a war against the most powerful confederacy that ever formed in these latter times,” but also “to dispute the dominion of the seas against the united powers both of England and Holland.” And, as in France so also across the Channel, the corollary of this discourse was the questioning of De la Court’s thesis, which contended that trade “will never become considerable anywhere but in Republicks.” In actual fact, though recognising that “the greatest Part of the Trade of the World was established and carried on to a great Height in free Cities before it began in Monarchies,” Gee pointed out that “wise Princes” like Solomon and Alexander had already intuited the great advantages of trade. Naturally, this also led to a vigorous rehabilitation of the figure of the merchant, whose work generated benefits for society as a whole, and in particular the nobility. “As Commerce flourishes,” Gee noted in relation to this, “Lands rise in Value; and as the Inhabitants of Towns and Cities increase, consequently the Consumption of Provisions, which is the Support of the Landed Interest.” For this reason, rather than believing that trade was a disreputable profession, Gee looked with admiration at Piedmont, where “even Counts or Earls have become Fabricators in the Silk Manufacture.”51 It is in England that we can observe a significant twist in the discourse aimed at defending the honour of commerce and its essential function in the sinews of power. For, as it happened, it possessed the preconditions needed to convey, in an almost explicit way, a much more radical political anthropology than that of Huet, his French interpreters and King himself. A typical example of this is found in the Plan of the English Commerce (1728). Against those who denied any “Dignity” or “Degree” to the “trading World,” labelling it derisively through the “rather common Denomination of Mechanicks,” Daniel Defoe unhesitatingly asserted that

50 Charles King, Preface, in The British Merchant, vol. I, v, xix–xx and xxix. 51 Joshua Gee, The Preface, in The Trade and Navigation of Great Britain Considered

(London: S. Buckley, 1729), i–xvi [unnumbered pages].

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“the most noble Descendants of Adam’s Family, and in whom the Primogeniture remained, were really Mechanicks.” Noah, he added, was “the first Ship-Carpenter,” and it was not by chance that Sidon, founded by his grandson, was the city where navigation was born and where the earliest commerce developed. The prosperous city of Tyre was a colony of Sidon, and Defoe repeated what the prophet Ezekiel had said about it: “Thy wise Men were thy Pilots, and thy Merchants are Princes; or as some read it, Thy Princes are Merchants.” It is worthy of attention that the English author believed that the Tyrians “increased […] to such a Prodigy of Business, as […] was never equalled in the World, except just now, (viz.) by the great Trade carryed on at this Time in England.” In short, for Defoe there was a strong identity between the two nations, which undeniably demonstrates the major founding role played, in both cases, by the unfolding of commercial activities: Are we a rich, a populous, a powerful Nation, and in some Respects the greatest in all those particulars in the World, and do we not boast of being so? ‘Tis evident it was all derived from Trade. Our Merchants are Princes, greater and richer, and more powerful than some sovereign Princes.

Defoe therefore relied on the objective reality of history to deconstruct the prejudices which interpreted the genesis of power in an abstract way when, instead, “trade is the foundation of wealth, and wealth of power,” and which relegated merchants to the lower levels of the socio-political hierarchy. This, then, needed to be overturned: If Usefulness gives an Addition to the Character, either of Men or Things, as without doubt it does; Trading-men will have the Preference in almost all the Disputes you can bring: There is not a Nation in the known World, but have tasted the Benefit, and owe their Prosperity to the useful Improvements of Commerce: Even the self-vain Gentry, that would decry Trade as a universal Mechanism, are they not every where depending upon it for their most necessary Supplies?52

Plainly, such a statement chimed with an interpretation of the origins of political society that placed the progressive affirmation of trade relations at its centre. “It is to trade, or the intercourse of buying and selling, that 52 [Daniel Defoe], A Plan of the English Commerce (London: C. Rivington, 1728), 6–10.

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we ascribe the beginning of civility and society; […] and when this had improved men’s circumstances, the desire of keeping and quietly enjoying the property, so obtained, introduced, and established equal, limited, and legal governments,” we read, for example, in an anonymous “Historical Dissertation on Trade or Traffic” that appeared in 1748 in the Universal Magazine of Knowledge, which significantly was used in the free port of Livorno to defend the autonomy of the merchant class and with it the cultural legacy of the Medici.53 Creating a contemporary history of trade had by then become a priority because it was perceived that, in a historical period that was, so to speak, accelerated, many innovations had emerged that had to be understood. Yet antiquity remained a precious repository to rummage in with a curiosity that was no stranger to acute political sensibility.

The Politics of Time: Decline, Peace and the Jealousy of Trade As emerged from Forbonnais’s emulative analysis of the rise of English commerce, the history of trade was a literary genre that made an original contribution not only to the comparison of individual national histories, but also to their integration into a common, interconnected history— that of commercial civilisation—which made it possible to assimilate their distinctive features with greater clarity.54 When following the construction of this discourse closely, the context of the ancient Italian states appears decisive. Being lucidly aware that economic hegemony had passed to the nations of central and northern Europe, and mindful of the phenomenologies of both decay and greatness, and more generally of the “politics of time,” various Italian reformers looked to history to explain the disruption and overturning of international economic power relations.55

53 A. Bristoliensis, “An Historical Dissertation on Trade or Traffic,” in The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, vol. III (July 1748), 3–7. On the Tuscan reception of this text, see the chapter by Antonella Alimento in this volume. 54 On this see also the chapter by Koen Stapelbroek in this volume. 55 Sophus A. Reinert, “Lessons on the Rise and Fall of Great Powers: Conquest,

Commerce, and Decline in Enlightenment Italy,” The American Historical Review 115,

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The Tuscan Giovanni Francesco Pagnini, for example, attributed the great prosperity of late medieval Florence to a specific historical circumstance. Having been born in a “not too fertile” country that was “confined within tight borders,” the Florentines had of “necessity” to become traders. As other nations were still living in economic torpor, they could become their “Agents and Suppliers.” Thus there was formed a virtuous circle in which the Florentines imported foreign wool, worked it and then exported the finished product; then, with the proceeds, they bought and sold products made by others. In short, by serving Europe as a “universal commercial agent,” they controlled the consumption of others. However, nothing was more fragile than the “foundations” on which this “building” rested, namely “the ignorance and indolence of the neighbouring countries.” “It only required them to open their eyes and recognise for once their real interests, for the people who flourished at their expense to be weakened.” That being so, the Tuscan economist believed that the identity and destiny of Florence—“the instability and short duration” of its wealth—were inscribed in those highlighted by Mirabeau in Philosophie rurale (1763), from which he quoted the following passage: From the differentiation and the rapprochement of the various societies, a new, secondary and false kind of societies was born, less secure in their foundation and duration, as well as less likely to expand territorially and too slight to form large Empires. And despite being free, rich and powerful within their own little borders, they were iridescent and ephemeral because of their excesses, their negligence, or because of the actions of their neighbours, and because of the nature of their constitutive state over-exposed to competition. These were the merchant societies.

Thus what was bound to happen, happened. From the fifteenth century the Flemish and English developed their own textile industries, and to better support them prohibited the export of “raw cloth.” They then also wanted to manage for themselves the marketing of the final product. Eventually, these competitors, gradually improving the quality of their work, “overtook our factories in terms of credit.” All this caused

no. 5 (December 2010): 1395, 1400–1402, 1410–1412 and 1421. On this, and in particular the symbiosis between historical investigation and economic reflection in the Genovesi school, see also the chapter by Alida Clemente in this volume.

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very serious damage to Florence, which had repercussions of a structural nature. In fact, given the “insuperable differences of circumstances present from those of that time, both inside and outside our city,” Pagnini deemed it “totally impossible” that Florentine trade could ever return to the flourishing state that “our compatriots once had” or “equal that of other Nations [now] more renowned in commerce.”56 Angelo Pavesi, an officer of the Supreme Council of Economics of the State of Milan, thought differently. As he saw it, the momentous impact that was usually attributed to the success of the economic centres of northern Europe should not be overstated. In his Memorie per servire alla storia del commercio dello Stato di Milano, e di quello della Città, e Provincia di Como in particolare (1778) he turned to history to show that it was possible to compete with those nations. Against all revisionism, it was first of all important to remember that in the past, unlike in the eighteenth century, Como had traded remarkably well. In particular, wool and silk manufacturing stood out for its large workforce, its productivity and export capacity. “These might seem like exaggerations to those who look only at the present,” he commented caustically. The existence of this historical precedent ought to belie any fatalism: if manufacturing had flourished in the past, “there is no reason of any substance” why it should not “expand” even today. Pavesi stressed that these discussions had to be faced by freeing oneself from the “almost comprehensive prejudice” that attributed the success of the northern countries to their “climate” and their “soil.” That being the case, England’s manufacturing development was nothing more than an outcome of effective legislation: it was, in other words, “the work of Men,” rather than being “as commonly believed,” reliant on “nature.” But what was most important is the fact that this legislation—the “privileges,” “exemptions,” the regulation of “good manufacturing” and the duties on foreign products—had made the factories of Como and Milan great even earlier: If such facts were known, as they deserve to be, we would not be so amazed by the modern policies of England, France, Holland, about which we are better informed than our own, because we read their books more than ours.

56 Giovanni Francesco Pagnini, Della decima e di varie altre gravezze imposte dal comune di Firenze (Lisbon, Lucca [but: Florence: Bouchard], 1765–1766), vol. II, 143–48.

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These “policies” seem in many ways “original” but were nothing more than “copies of our best regulations,” from which these nations had the guile to have “profited very well.” The history of the homeland, and in particular the wise economic policy that made Como and Milan great, thus pointed to the path of regeneration.57 A native of Veneto, G.B. Martin Sola, also identified the root of economic decline in the abandonment of ancient principles. In a handwritten paper of the 1760s, he explained that since the end of the sixteenth-century wars, the loss of important territories, piracy, plagues and numerous diplomatic disputes had resulted in serious human and material costs and had absorbed all the energies of Venetian politics. The needs of the treasury then gave rise to periodic increases in indirect taxation, which damaged Venetian competitiveness. Furthermore, navigation was so insecure that not only did the nobles prefer to shift their capital towards agriculture but “in a short time even the merchants almost abandoned commerce.” Thus traffic began to be controlled by people intent on pursuing only their own interests, and in consequence the ruling classes no longer used their ability to guide economic development in the ways that had once made Venice great. Sola referred in particular to the “political balances” (“bilanci politici”) in other words, an in-depth examination of the composition of the population, its work and its overseas commercial relations. This made it possible to develop a coherent economic policy based on facilitating manufacturing production and export trade. For all that, Sola states that the “abandonment of the ancient maxims” would not have had such ruinous consequences if in the same period they had not been “accepted” by other nations. The English, for example, in the wake of William Petty’s political arithmetic, set about drawing up budgets into which—“like us before them”!—they analytically subdivided not only the population, but also the commercial transactions made with various nations, in order to ascertain if they were useful or harmful. And for this reason they grew substantially, as later did the French, who “woke up” under the direction of Colbert. In fact, the first “arithmetic” or “political” budgets appeared in France, being drafted both nationally and regionally. “Born and raised in Venice” and “now used in all the other nations,” these principles, now that a 57 Angelo Pavesi, Memorie per servire alla storia del commercio dello Stato di Milano, e di quello della Città, e Provincia di Como in particolare (Como: Staurenghi, 1778), 1–7, 13–17, 2–46, 62–74 and 124.

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certain calm had returned, needed to be reapplied, “after being usurped by foreigners.” There was no other way in which to regain the prosperity that had once set the Republic apart.58 However, the countries at the top of the economic tree were also awake to the usefulness of reflecting on national and international economic history.59 Adam Anderson, for instance, believed it necessary to undertake a “particular Enquiry” to understand “how, and from what Causes and Instruments; at what Periods of time; and from what various and respective Places, or Countries” the “inestimable Benefits” of commerce had materialised. And this was all the truer considering that “to the instrumentality of Commerce alone, the Britannic Empire is most peculiarly indebted; for its Opulence and Grandeur; its Improvements in Arts and Knowledge.” Nevertheless, in An Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce (1764), Anderson did not reconstruct the route by which his country had become a trading power for reasons of self-aggrandisement. One of his main objectives was actually to demonstrate that this economic growth, no matter how amazing, was simply a consequence of well-considered political, that is, human choices. Destiny or nature were not acceptable explanatory criteria but were instead dangerous and counter-productive since they led to the notion, based on an essentially unhistorical vision, that British commercial prosperity was untouchable and therefore eternal. Knowing this, Anderson insisted on the need to repudiate opinions “dogmatically delivered as Axioms.” William Petty, for example, was convinced that France, “by reason of natural and perpetual impediments, can never arrive at naval Greatness.” Recent history had exposed this as false prejudice. No less misguided was the theory contained in the previously cited The True Interest and Political Maxims of the Republick of Holland (1702), according to which “commerce cannot prosper in arbitrary Governments.” France, Anderson noted, “is undoubtedly a great arbitrary Government; yet, by dint of incessant Application, more especially ever since Colbert’s ministry, attended with steady Counsels in her commercial Pursuits, she at length arrived to a great and extensive Degree of Commerce.” And even Josiah Child, asserting that “the French were not much to be feared on account

58 Deputati alla regolazione delle tariffe mercantili di Venezia e della Terraferma, busta no. 94 ([G. B. Martin Sola], Com. G.), 1–9, Archivio di Stato, Venice. 59 On this subject see also the chapter by John Ashworth in this volume.

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of planting of foreign Colonies,” “fell into a like dogmatical Error”: “we have since had the most interesting Demonstration of the direct contrary!” In short, Anderson invited his compatriots to remain vigilant and aware of the unavoidably precarious nature of their economic wellbeing, which had to be preserved by creatively emulating the economic wisdom of one’s ancestors. This also involved learning not to ignore the possibility that nations now in difficulty, such as Spain and Portugal, could regenerate and become formidable competitors: Experience tells us that where a moral Impossibility does not interpose, Perseverance in uniform National Measures produces very unexpected and almost surprizing Effects in Commercial, Manufactural, and Nautical Pursuits [...]. A Time may come (and, with respect to one of the said two Nations, seems in part to draw near) when the Scales may fall from their Eyes, so as to discovers and pursue their true and solid Interest!”

History thus becomes a school of anti-dogmatism and intellectual flexibility, providing the tools through which to interpret reality and consequently act effectively and proactively.60 From these words, the awareness that the reality of international commerce tended to run counter to the interests of states shows through quite clearly. Political economy thus became a patriotic discourse to which a certain animated rivalry was not unknown. And yet there were many who noticed that trade could make politics based on military confrontation, and in particular on the search for territorial expansion, non-viable. Hence, in his Essai politique sur le commerce (1734), published soon after the start of the War of the Polish Succession, Jean-François Melon turned with concern to the past to bear out that the time of the “spirit of conquest” was now over. In truth, the strategy of ancient Rome was only successful because it benefited from certain fortunate historical circumstances and also because “the spirit of commerce and conservation was in its infancy, so to speak, and had not had time to perfect itself; instead, at the beginning the spirit of conquest was even more impetuous.” But in eighteenth-century Europe, enlightened by the “spirit of peace,” this unequal relationship had finally been turned upside down:

60 Adam Anderson, An Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce […] (London: A. Millar, J. and R. Tonson, et al., 1764), I, v–ix.

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The right equilibrium will always prevent a Power from rising through its conquests enough to make it fear; and if momentary interests disturb this happy harmony, the Winner can no longer hope to extend his Boundaries. All will unite to thwart his dangerous advance.

Trying to make Louis XV aware of this epochal transition, Melon did not deny the persistence of inter-state rivalry but emphasised its new character. It had in fact become a sort of jockeying for position within which the precautionary strengthening of defences was funded by the material and financial resources generated by commercial development.61 And it was precisely the imposition of this approach that evidenced the illogical and suicidal character of territorial conquest: “the more a state flourishes through commerce, the more it will fear war, the less it will desire conquest,” the Abbé de Saint-Pierre had noted in his Projet pour perfectionner le commerce de France (1733).62 The 1730s had in effect been a decisive turning point in the elaboration of this discourse, which outlines European pacification through commerce. As a matter of fact, in around 1734 Montesquieu wrote the Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle, in which he observed that the genetic mutation of power—which now had an economic foundation— moved in lockstep with the softening of relations between states, these having become “members of a grand Republic.”63 This was a view that he would later develop in the Esprit des lois (1748). Convinced that “the spirit of commerce unites the Nations,” in this work he argued that “two nations who trade together are rendered reciprocally dependent.”64 Nonetheless, the conviction, primarily evident in Melon, that

61 Melon, Essai politique sur le commerce, 97–99 and 107–108. 62 Charles-Irénée Castel de Saint-Pierre, “Projet pour perfectionner le commerce de

France,” in Les écrits de l’abbé Castel de Saint-Pierre, ed. Carole Dornier, Premier Mémoire, Seconde partie, Principaux avantages du grand commerce, Observation XIII (Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2018), online edition; Antonella Alimento, “Tax Reform, the Single Duty Project, and Melon’s dialogue with the Abbé de Saint-Pierre,” in Commerce Versus Conquest: The Political Economy of Jean-François Melon, ed. John Shovlin and Koen Stapelbroek (London: Routledge, forthcoming). 63 Montesquieu, “Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle,” in Œuvres complètes (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2000), vol. II, 342–343; Catherine Larrère, “Montesquieu et le «doux commerce: un paradigme du libéralisme,” Cahiers d’histoire. Revue d’histoire critique 123 (2014): 21–38. 64 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois (Geneva: Barrillot & Fils), vol. II, 2–3.

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the symbiosis between peace and commerce had materialised only in the modern age—becoming a key characteristic—did not exclude the possibility of having recourse to history to demonstrate its intrinsic coherence. This is the case, for example, in the use made in England of the image of Solomon, the “wise” sovereign distinguished for his “steady application to the Arts of Peace,” and, in particular for the development of commerce, which generated “immense riches.” “He made great acquisitions without making wars, and his successor, by making wars, lost those acquisitions,” concluded the previously cited Historical Dissertation on Trade or Traffic (1748).65 Yet, in a time marked by the consolidation of the military revolution, there was the feeling that the very interweaving of prosperity and power had brought into the open the “Jealousy of Trade,”66 which implied an “intensification of earlier, purely political, antagonism […] between states,”67 and which therefore emphasised the ambivalence of trade, which was at once “gentle” and “violent.”68 The problematic reflection on European civilisation developed by Raynal in the Histoire des deux Indes is an emblematic example of this tension.69 The situation occasioned reflections on how to manage economic competition so as to render it sustainable and even beneficial. Trade treaties were considered to be a trustworthy tool, which could help stabilise and harmonise international relations.70 Not by suppressing competition, but rather by channelling and formalising it, such agreements offered the possibility, even to the seemingly more vulnerable states, of playing a role in a 65 “An Historical Dissertation on Trade or Traffic,” 5; Thomas Fothergill, The Desireableness of Peace (Oxford: R. Clements, 1749), 6; Humphrey Prideaux, The Old and New Testament Connected (Glasgow: C. Buglass, 1764 [1715–1717]), vol. I, 6–7. On the binomial between peace and trade, see also the chapters by Ere Nokkala and Aris Della Fontana in this volume. 66 Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005). 67 Kapossy, Nakhimovsky and Whatmore, “Introduction,” 2–5. 68 Anoush Fraser Terjanian, Commerce and Its Discontents in Eighteenth-Century French

Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 2–3 and 11–16. 69 On this important work, see the chapter by Jenny Mander in this volume. 70 Antonella Alimento and Koen Stapelbroek, “Trade and Treaties: Balancing the Inter-

state system,” in The Politics of Commercial Treaties in the Eighteenth Century: Balance of Power, Balance of Trade, ed. Antonella Alimento and Koen Stapelbroek (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 1–75. On this, see also the chapter by Koen Stapelbroek in this volume.

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sustainable regime of global trade. Here again history offered valuable lessons. The Venetian Gabriel Marcello, author of the Species Facti Istorico del Commercio della Repubblica del principio sin’oggi (1771) thought in exactly this way. He in fact argued that the “greatness, richness and power” of the Republic had been due to the perseverance in negotiating, century after century, “Treaties of Friendship, and of Commerce” that had made accessible land, river and sea routes, secured the “freedom” and “immunity” of Venetian merchants, and guaranteed fiscal privileges that provided an advantage over competitors. However, after the twelfth century this practice—“the first and greatest Maxim of our ancestors”—ceased, because it was thought that the strength and prosperity it had given now made it superfluous. If for some centuries this seemed true, historical circumstances such as the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope, the many wars, the plagues and the loss of key commercial territories, had a strong negative impact on the Venetian economy, so much so that it was a “true miracle of Divine Providence that [the Republic] was maintained and preserved in the respectable state in which it can now be found.” What is more, even following these “many misfortunes,” England, Holland and France were able to “become more mercantile, and greater,” taking over “one part or another of our Commerce.” Caught in this position of vulnerability, it was once again essential to place treaties at the centre of trading efforts. To be sure, aggressive protectionism did nothing but irritate other nations, especially neighbouring ones, which were concluding agreements between themselves that gave them mutual advantages but penalised Venice, excluding it in an increasingly evident way from the main traffic flows. Consequently, since it could not afford “to remain in inaction, nor to remain tolerant and indolent spectators,” and since its “destiny” depended “totally” on the will of Maria Theresa of Austria, it had no choice but to agree a commercial treaty with her that would include a reciprocal lowering of tariffs. The “main point,” obviously, was “having or not having” something to offer. Marcello had no doubts about this. It is true, he admitted, that the “neighbouring Princes […] want to make Commerce in our place,” but their “opportunities are forced and unnatural and in no way as efficient and coherent as ours.” Instead, a city with a “safe” port and “convenient to the seas and the land,” and with “ease of transport through lagoons, rivers, canals,” equipped with “holy laws” and a “public exchange bank,” in “mercantile communication with all the markets of Europe and others,” and with an “abundant navy” and “free

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flag,” endowed with many arts and manufactories, was able to exert a negotiating influence that Maria Theresa—who “gladly listens to all plans for Commerce by whomever brings them to her”—would certainly not have ignored.71 Therefore, through the histories of trade there matured a multifaceted reflection on international trade: alongside the idea that there was an antagonism between nations, and that this would determine their rise or decline, there emerged not only the awareness that it was possible to harmonise this competition, but also—as we shall see shortly—the desire to re-establish commercial relations on interdependence and cooperation. Provided we take into account the radical diversity of historical–geographical contexts, and avoid any teleology, it would be quite fascinating to compare this eighteenth-century debate with that which surfaced in the following centuries. In fact, though resorting to new theoretical tools and responding to new political sensitivities, the tension between rivalry and reciprocity has persistently characterised the history of economic thought: the theorists of underdevelopment and unequal development on one side, and those of comparative advantage on the other, have respectively interpreted international trade as a dynamic based on irreconcilable or, conversely, strongly intertwined interests.72 Moreover, following the same genealogical approach, it should be emphasised how these histories of trade, reflecting on the mechanisms that underlie material growth, may offer useful ground on which to build a reflection for studies in development economics.73 71 Gabriel Marcello, Species Facti Istorico del Commercio della Repubblica dal principio sin’oggi, 1771, Miscellanea Cicogna 3038, 1–25 and 28–36 [unnumbered pages], Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Venice. 72 Andrea Maneschi, Comparative Advantage in International Trade: A Historical Perspective (Cheltenham: E. Elgar, 1998); Andre Gunder Frank, “The Development of Underdevelopment,” Monthly Review 41, no. 2 (September 1966), 17–18 and 21–23; Samir Amin, L’accumulation à l’échelle mondiale (Paris: Éditions Anthropos, 1970), I, 88–95 and 115–118; David Harvey, Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development (London: Verso, 2019), 147, 161–62, 185, 199–200, 206 and 22–27. 73 Jomo K.S. and Erik S. Reinert, eds., The Origins of Development Economics: How

Schools of Economic Thought Have Addressed Development (London: Zed, 2007); Michael Woolcock, Simon Szreter and Vijayendra Rao, “How and Why History Matters for Development Policy,” in History, Historians and Development Policy: A Necessary Dialogue, ed. C. A. Bayly, Vijayendra Rao, Simon Szreterand and Michael Woolcock (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 11–14 and 16–20.

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Histories of Trade Between True and False Civilisation The histories of trade written by Savary, Melon and the foremost exponents of the nouvelle science du commerce, assigned a key role to Tsar Peter because his decision-making had shown that empires formed through arms could go on to support and maintain themselves by dint of trade and industry alone. Precisely because Peter brought commerce and the arts to his country, his image took on a paradigmatic value during the 1760s. Indeed, the momentous transformation of his “ferocious” people became an important topic for reflection for those who pointed out the limits of commercial society and thus wrote works offering a critical examination of the link between the history of trade and the progress of civilisation. The debate on civilisation involved in particular the Abbot Baudeau, who analysed the relationship between economic development and the reshaping of moeurs and openly challenged the theorists of commercial humanism,74 like Hume, as well as the philosophes, like Voltaire, who in the Histoire de l’empire de Russie had written about the civilising effects of commercial society starting precisely from the example of Peter. Indeed, from 1763 Baudeau had made known his opinions on how the Europeans should relate to peoples who traded in human beings and on how to transform slaves into economic actors. In his Idées d’un citoyen sur la puissance du Roi et le commerce de la nation dans l’Orient, he had proposed creating on three French islands numerous “Colonies of Africans and Asiatics,” who would be given responsibility for the naturalisation of the cultivation of “fruits and commodities” from the Orient, as well as the development of manufacturing ventures in accordance with their knowledge and ability. Conceived as a means of strengthening the competitiveness of the French economy, Baudeau’s project stands out for its profound cultural and social implications: once they had arrived on the islands, the men purchased in the slave markets would thereafter be treated “like Citizens of your colonies, like Cultivators, like Artisans, after being civilised and disciplined in the very centre of your power.” They would also enjoy “every freedom and all the rights of their fellow citizens.” In short, thanks to this process of civilisation former African slaves

74 J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 194.

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and the free Asians who moved to the islands voluntarily would to all effects become French.75 Baudeau later bolstered his project of civilisation through “incorporation,” which excluded subjugation and deprivation of liberty, arguing for the need to encourage the practice of mixed marriages. Supported by the French colonial bureaux, this form of “soft” civilisation received its highest endorsement in the Histoire des deux Indes.76 Indeed, in its third edition, that of 1780, Diderot bracketed civilisation with freedom that had its origins in specific economic choices: the abolition of servitude is assimilated to the very essence of civilisation, as can be read in Volume V: “Enfranchisement or, the same under another name, the civilisation of an empire.” It is worthy of note that the idea that civilising a people equated to making it free, that is, no longer economically enslaved, was expressed by Diderot in relation to the history of trade and the work of Catherine II. Furthermore, the new meaning that the word civilisation took on in his view had its roots in the normative definition that Baudeau had given it, when he too dealt with the problem of the civilisation of Russia. In Monde politique, an essay published in 1766 in several issues of the Ephémérides du citoyen, Baudeau had sided with Voltaire against Rousseau: “by softening the customs of his people through commerce and the arts,” Peter had managed to alleviate the “rigour of the climate.” Despite this initially positive assessment, in subsequent issues of the journal Baudeau distanced himself from the type of civilisation carried out by the Tsar. This “emulative genius” should instead have started by removing internal obstacles, as Tsarina Catherine was doing by implementing a series of reforms aimed at “civilising the interior, naturalising customs, talents and arts.”77 To substantiate this affirmation, in the four issues of Monde politique of September 1766 Baudeau presented a tableau général of the reforms carried out by Catherine and, over and above that, hypothesised a social 75 Nicolas Baudeau, Idées d’un citoyen sur la puissance du Roi et le commerce de la

nation dans l’Orient (Amsterdam, 1763), 25. 76 Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, Histoire philosophiqueet politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, ed. Muriel Brot (Ferney-Voltaire: Centre international d’étude du XVIIIe siècle, 2010), vol. I, Book 5, 455–591. 77 Ephémérides du citoyen, ou Bibliothèque raisonnée des Sciences morales et politiques (Paris, Lacombe, 1767), vol. I, 29–32.

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development plan which provided for the adoption in Russia of “all the causes that generate the prosperity of States.” Following the “march of nature,” Baudeau proposed finding a rich province in the empire where foreign colonies could be created, colonies in which the foreigners would mix with the Russian population, and to which the Tsarina would need to grant complete freedom of trade and “avances” to make the development of agriculture possible. In proposing this project Baudeau did not only defend, in the form of an apologia, the colonisation plan launched by Catherine in 1763. The creation of a colony of foreigners was in fact the starting point for a wider programme of civilisation that was intended to ensure the prosperity of the nation as a whole. Essentially, there were three phases to Baudeau’s economic project, which, being also a process of civilisation, had to respect the timescale dictated by nature, which “proceeds slowly, with deliberation and method.” The slowness was due to the formation of a new social group that performed the function of establishing “civil” Russian society generally: that is, those “artisans and traders”—elsewhere called “shopkeepers and artisans”—who would emerge at the end of the process of economic development and civilisation that Baudeau, a keen reader of Hume, considered a “revolution.” During the first phase, which would last “five or six years,” the sovereign, not being able to depend on the “free and enterprising farmer,” as happened in England, had to draw on the “Royal Treasury” to make the land productive. Thanks to the “avances préliminaires,” profit was bound to increase, and Catherine had to ensure that the “richesses d’exploitation” remained in the hands of the farmers who had produced them. The transformation of the “good Farmers” into “rich landowners” led naturally to the second phase, characterised by comfort and prosperity, and the prerequisites for foreign trade sprang from this situation: “some free, educated and rich colonials want to enjoy their wellbeing: enjoyment involves consuming food, and useful and enjoyable goods, and therefore they need to be obtained from all over the world.” This openness to foreign trade stemmed from the fact that in this second phase “industry cannot yet be naturalised and perfected”: “the course of nature opposes this supposition.” The naturalisation and improvement of industry and the arts began with the third phase, which was characterised by the birth of the social group of “artisans and traders” to which Baudeau linked the prosperity, freedom and civilisation of Russian society

36

A. ALIMENTO AND A. DELLA FONTANA

in its entirety.78 As is evident, in composing this text Baudeau revealed a dual affinity: with Physiocratic thought and with the ideas of Hume. He first embraced Physiocracy between March and September 1766, but it was not until early 1767 that he adhered to it completely. His affinity with Hume is demonstrated by the importance he attached to the spread of the spirit of emulation, to the relationship between prosperity, the birth of the arts and the desire to enjoy them, and most importantly to the link between the birth of a new class of “artisans and traders” and the prosperity and civilisation of Russian society in general.79 Significantly, it was the Marquis of Mirabeau who further developed the normative meaning of the term civilisation, which he coined in his Ami des hommes by attacking the advocates of “progressive comsuptionism,”80 including Hume, on the basis that landowners could stem the cycle that from infancy to youth and maturity led inexorably to decline only if they oriented their consumption not to the purchase of luxury goods but to investment in agriculture. Often considered a work of Physiocracy or a product of agrarian thought, Ami des hommes was in reality a proposal advanced in the course of the Seven Years’ War in order to curb, through the civilising power of trade, the belligerency of the maritime powers. The plan for “universal trade protection” that Mirabeau considered the “only way to prosperity” did not work towards creating a fraternity between agricultural and frugal nations, but rather aimed at challenging, through the abolition of certain custom rights and prohibitions, the conflict between the nations dedicated to navigation whose prosperity derived from industry. To resolve the economic conflicts linked to international rivalry, Mirabeau counted on a trade agreement, underwritten by France, having a civilising effect on the nations in direct competition with each other. “Civilise your neighbours and, step by step,

78 Éphémérides du citoyen, vol. VI, 94, 115–120 and 128. 79 Éphémérides du citoyen, vol. VI, 9 and 128; Gianluigi Goggi and Georges Dulac,

“Diderot et l’abbé Baudeau: les colonies de Saratov et la civilisation de la Russie,” Recherches sur Diderot et sur l’Encyclopédie 14 (1993): 23–83. 80 M. Kwass, “Consumption and the World of Ideas: Consumer Revolution and the Moral Economy of the Marquis de Mirabeau,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 37, no. 2 (2004): 187–213.

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HISTORIES OF TRADE: CIVILISATION AND POLITICAL …

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if possible, the whole Universe, and you will have nothing more to fear,” he suggested.81 Once converted to Physiocracy, Mirabeau used the term civilisation to distance himself definitively from the model of commercial society that he had already called into question in Ami des hommes. He led this attack by harshly criticising Peter, accusing him of having introduced a “false civilisation,” a kind that he saw prevailing in many countries of Europe, where ancient barbarism, in his opinion, had been replaced by modern barbarism. The Russian sovereign was at fault for confusing. the effect with the cause, colours with light, the use of wealth with the source of wealth, the work of production with the work of artisans and traders, their earnings with the incomes that paid them. […] He did not concern himself with going and looking further for the source of the productivity of fruits, whose exchange supports and nourishes industry, and seeing the civilisation and prosperity of a state like plant cuttings, his only objective was to transport Industry and the Arts to his Empire.82

Having wanted to establish manufacturing activities and the arts in Russia, instead of focusing on agricultural investment and thereby the creation of the produit net —the only source which, being renewed annually, guaranteed the survival of those working in the arts and commerce—Peter had perverted the “ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés.”83 This had many severe repercussions. If the relationship between the states was undermined by an exclusivist and aggressive spirit, the life of men would be reduced to a search for exteriority. Instead of thinking to enrich their spiritual life and to participate in the administration of the territory in which they lived, they used their resources to acquire superfluous luxury goods, indulging in the artificial behaviour induced by the development of the

81 Victor de Riqueti Marquis de Mirabeau, Amis des hommes (Avignon: n.p., 1758), troisième partie, 49, 62 and 128; Antonella Alimento, “La formation intellectuelle et politique de Mirabeau au prisme de sa correspondance avec Frédéric de Sacconay (1730– 1760),” in Correspondance du marquis de Mirabeau et Marc Charles Frédéric de Sacconay (1731–1787). Itinéraire intellectuel à travers la Suisse et l’Europe des Lumières, ed. Auguste Bertholet and Béla Kapossy (Geneva: Slatkine, forthcoming). 82 Éphémérides du citoyen, vol. II, 12–14. 83 [Pierre-Paul Lemercier de La Rivière], L’ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques

(London: J. Nourse, 1767).

38

A. ALIMENTO AND A. DELLA FONTANA

mechanical arts,84 which had been at the centre of the reform projects to which many histories of trade, starting with the one published by Savary in 1723, alluded. In this sense, the predominance of reconstructions directed at grasping the mechanisms of economic development—in support of a scheme to promote trade and manufacturing—but not very interested in problematising its social consequences, led some to characterise the histories of trade precisely in the light of this void. This was the case with Giambattista Gherardo D’Arco, a member of the Mantuan nobility and not surprisingly an original interpreter of Physiocracy, who in 1782 noted that, starting with Huet, historians of trade had totally ignored the study of the “influence” that trade had had “on the thoughts and actions of those who dedicated themselves to it.” Commerce, D’Arco admitted, having stimulated industriousness and ingenuity, had generated “good taste,” softened customs and developed the sciences and the arts. Furthermore, by introducing a “calculating spirit” and love of freedom, it had laid the foundations for the “wisdom of the laws” and the “shrewdness of political institutions.” It was therefore undeniable that “civilisation,” that is, the “first of the revolutionary maxims in the customs of the nations,” was ascribable to commerce. Despite this, D’Arco cautioned the Habsburg ruling classes against the dangers connected to this dynamic. Reconstructing the history of the “trading peoples,” he underlined how they had gone through four fundamental stages: “poverty, industriousness and virtue”; “wealth, industry and goodness of manners”; “enrichment, inaction, lethargy and softness”; and “opulence, luxury […] and corruption.” These were the stages through which the nations “which were made supremely opulent by trade, and of which today only a distant memory remains” had experienced. D’Arco’s words therefore conveyed an explicit warning to a society, that of the eighteenth century, which he believed was possessed, both privately and publicly, by the “spirit of commerce,” in other words by a jealous, belligerent and blinding lust for gain that cancelled out the priority of “civil, political and military virtues” that comprised the one true foundation of society. To escape decadence, however, the nations that were “civilised and made flourishing by commerce” need not return to being “wild and barbarous.” Inviting them to do “penitence,” D’Arco 84 Catherine Larrère, “Mirabeau et les physiocrates: l’origine agrarienne de la civilisation,” in Binoche, Les équivoques de la civilisation, 83–104.

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HISTORIES OF TRADE: CIVILISATION AND POLITICAL …

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advised them to ensure that the production of wealth did not become excessive, so as to preserve, among the citizens, a “love” for “industriousness” and “hard work.” In addition, he hoped that Joseph II would become the guarantor of an agreement of “reciprocal freedom of trade” that would enable the European nations to overcome their rivalry and thus establish cooperative and fraternal relations.85 Although significative, D’Arco’s idea that, by definition, the histories of trade did nothing but reconstruct commercial civilisation in an uncritical and economistic way is not entirely satisfactory. In point of fact, within this historiographical genre—which we have investigated as a field of tension—there was room for highly critical and concerned views, as clearly shown by D’Arco’s own work.86 Although these appear to have been in a minority in purely quantitative terms, the histories of trade that analysed commercial civilisation from a critical perspective demonstrate that the genre gave voice to several different intellectual and political sensibilities.

Histories of Trade as Interconnected Studies The contributions collected in this essay demonstrate the wealth and variety of the themes dealt with in this peculiar literary genre. The fact that the past could prove itself of use in illuminating and understanding more fully contemporary economic dynamics emerges with considerable originality in the chapter by Arnaud Orain, which considers the second Jansenism of Charles Rollin, Jacques Vincent d’Asfeld and Jacques-Joseph Duguet. Firmly dedicated to the study of historical causality and concatenation, these writers demonstrated a marked appreciation for the history of trade. In fact, on the basis of a theory of history which stated that deciphering events enabled an understanding of the criteria that defined the path to material wealth and true prosperity decreed by God, they formulated an economic theology according to which, especially in the dynamics of trade, it was possible to reach out and touch the manifestation of the divine presence on earth. As emerges in the chapter by Arnault 85 Giambattista Gherardo D’Arco, Dell’influenza del commercio sopra i talenti e sui costumi (Cremona: L. Marini, 1782), 12–34, 42–46 and 72–114. 86 On this, see the last section of the chapter by Aris Della Fontana in this volume, as well as: Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce, 95–102; Paul Cheney, “Les économistes français et l’image de l’Amérique. L’essor du commerce transatlantique et l’effondrement du «gouvernement féodal»,” Dix-huitième Siècle 33 (2001): 238.

40

A. ALIMENTO AND A. DELLA FONTANA

Skornicki, it is precisely this marked readiness to use historical analysis in the construction and development of economic theory that distinguishes this epistemology from that of Physiocracy, whose authors put forward a genuine counter-history of trade. While the latter held that historical facts could neither strengthen nor even update or refine the truth of the laws of natural order—which are only revealed by economics—the authors of the histories of trade, according to an experimental and inductive approach that turns the past into a veritable laboratory, extracted rules of universal validity from the study of specific cases.87 As an attentive reader of the science du commerce and thus someone fully aware of the symbiosis between history and economic thought, Antonio Genovesi played a leading role in the diffusion in Italy, and in particular the Kingdom of Naples, of a pronounced sensitivity towards historical investigation. Emblematic of this are the histories of trade written by Nicola Fortunato and Michele de Jorio, and the chapter by Alida Clemente reveals both the continuity and discontinuity of their work with that of Genovesi. While the Neapolitan professor had shown himself to be interested mainly in telling the story of the triumph of the new trading powers, his followers focused their attention on national history in order to demonstrate the historical possibility of rebirth and to provide proposals for reforms capable of lifting the kingdom out of its mediocracy and commercial dependence. Similarly, the chapter by Antonella Alimento reconstructs the political and intellectual dynamics through which, in Livorno, an attempt was made to refer back to the Medicean past in order to influence the political economics of the House of Hasburg-Lorraine. Those involved in the publishing drive that resulted, in 1751, with the publication of two histories of trade argued that the model of civilisation created by the Medici—who themselves rose to power through trade—was particularly well-suited to a relaunch of the economy of the Grand Duchy given that it was based on the involvement of civil society and private enterprise.

87 Apart from the texts cited in the chapter by Skornicki, see also: Pierre-Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, “De la liberté du commerce des grains, ou histoire abrégée du commerce des blés en France,” in Ephémérides du citoyen, ou Bibliothèque raisonnée des sciences morales et politiques (Paris: Lacombe, 1769), vol. I, 37–82; Pierre-Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, “Analyse de l’Histoire philosophique et politique de l’établissement du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes,” in Ephémérides du citoyen, ou Bibliothèque raisonnée des sciences morales et politiques (Paris: Lacombe, 1772), vol. II, 173–185.

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Yet as well as being a tool for delving into national history, the histories of trade were also an effective instrument of emulation, since they made it possible to gain insights into the economic performance of other countries. This is particularly well demonstrated by the great interest with which seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English scholars attempted to understand the characteristics, and in particular the strengths, of France and the United Provinces, so as to reinforce the English economy. In this regard, the chapter by John Ashworth, which analyses a number of histories of trade, as well as other works featuring noticeable attention given to the recent economic history of these two nations, shows how England learned the importance of industrial protection from French Colbertism, and about the need for a strong navy, aggressive trading and a credible fiscal regime from the Dutch, to the extent that England’s commercial ascendancy can only be understood by bearing in mind the ability to maximise and combine these two aspects within a strong dynamic state. Nevertheless, the example of the United Provinces was not exempt from criticism, as demonstrated by Ere Nokkala, who in his chapter analyses the General History of Trade and of Seafaring (1758), the work in which August von Schlözer compared the Phoenicians to the contemporary United Provinces. After underlining the relative strengths of the commercial activities of both nations, Schlözer pointed out their weaknesses. Providing a clear demonstration of the fact that the histories of trade were also able to consider the limits and contradictions characterising certain populations and historical circumstances, Schlözer’s work attributes the decline of the Phoenicians and of Dutch trade to the fact that they broke an iron law applicable to the past as well as to the present, namely that the firm foundations of successful commercial nations should be sought in inner development, and more precisely in the virtuous interplay between demographic growth and an increased diversification of national production. The considerable interest aroused by the United Provinces is also highlighted by the chapter by Koen Stapelbroek: the historical journey of this nation served as an emblematic demonstration of how trade had become a politically vital element for every modern state, both nationally and internationally. It was therefore inevitable that the United Provinces would turn out to be a useful case study for critical reflections on the prospects of this new historical reality: in this sense, the country was considered both an agent capable of pacifying and balancing relations between states, and an obstacle to the development of a sustainable European regime of global trade.

42

A. ALIMENTO AND A. DELLA FONTANA

Indeed, histories of trade also shaped a heated debate about the relationship between trade and hegemony. As the chapter of by Aris Della Fontana shows, the historiographical construction of the image of Ancient Rome involved diametrically opposed interpretations. Condemning Roman militarism, the Venetian Francesco Mengotti argued that trade was by definition doux. Thus, against imperial schemes based on the combination of “industry” and force,” he, a citizen of a militarily vulnerable state, asserted the need to conceive of international trade as an essentially pacifying dynamic, based on interdependency. Arguing explicitly against this view, the Spaniard Antonio de Torres instead claimed that the Roman case demonstrated how the “spirit of force” was compatible and even co-essential with the “spirit of commerce.” In this sense, he believed that only the combination of industriousness and capacity for war would allow Spain to strengthen its position in the European balance of power and gain a leading role in colonial expansion. The problematic encounter between the Old and New World is the central theme in the Histoire des Deux Indes by the abbé Raynal, analysed in the chapter by Jenny Mander. Highlighting the potentially catastrophic dangers generated by the persistence, in the global landscape of modernity, of “feudal” notions of patriotism, this famous work, which experienced an enormous circulation in numerous editions and translations,88 invites us to rethink commercial civilisation. Indeed, by outlining the presuppositions of a modern cosmopolitanism, Raynal hoped that hospitality, respect for others and cooperation would take the place of hostility, injustice and predation. To account for the space that this genre conquered on the European cultural and political scene, we thought it would be useful to provide scholars with an overview of the works cited in this volume. This list, which we hope can be augmented by further research in geographic areas that did not receive the attention they nevertheless deserved,89 has made

88 The work was translated into Dutch (1775–1783), English (1776), Italian (1776– 1777), German (1783–1788) and Spanish (1784–1790). On this, see Table 1.1. 89 To offer just one example, the histories of trade published in the German-speaking sphere are deserving of further study. See: Johann Gottfried G. Eichhorn, Geschicte des ostindischen Handels vor Mohammed (Gotha: C.-W. Ettinger, 1775); Christoph Meiners, Geschichte des Luxus der Athenienser von den ältesten Zeiten an bis auf den Tod Philipps von Makedonien (Cassel: Ph. O. Hampe, 1782); Friedrich Christoph

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HISTORIES OF TRADE: CIVILISATION AND POLITICAL …

43

it clear that there were periods in which the genre experienced moments of notable prevalence, and the fact that some histories, like Huet’s, were extensively circulated in translation (Table 1.1).90 It also compels us to consider the genre as an example of the more general problem of the social construction of memory and its relations with history, understood as a specific form of collective memory.91

Jonathan Fischers, Geschichte des teutschen Handels: der Schiffarth, Fischerei, Erfindungen, Künste, Gewerbe, Manufakturen, der Landwirthschaft, Polizey, Leibeigenschaft, des ZollMünz-und Bergwesens, des Wechselrechts, der Stadtwirthschaft, und des Luxus, 4 vols. (Hanover: In der Helwingschen Hofbuchhandlung, 1785–1792); Johann Isaac Berghaus, Geschichte des Schiffahrtskunde bey den vornehmsten Völker des Alterthums, 2 vols. (Leipzig: in der Gräffeschen Buchhandlung, 1792); Arnold-Herman-Ludwig Heeren, Ideen zur Politik, den Verkehr und der Handel der vornehmsten Völker der Alten Welt, 2 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1793–1796); Georg Friedrich Sartorius, Geschichte des Hanseatischen Bundes, 3 vols. (Göttingen: H. Dietrich, 1802–1808). 90 Translations in English (1717), Dutch (1722), Italian (1737), German (1763 and 1775) and Spanish were published. On this, see Table 1.1. 91 Peter Burke, Varieties of Cultural History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997); Jan Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Judith Pollmann, Memory in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

1709

1704

1702

1676

1669

[John Locke], “An Introductory Discourse, Containing the whole History of Navigation from its Original to this time,” in A Collection of Voyages and Travels (London: A. and J. Churchill),vol. I, ix–lxxvi

Isaac de Laffemas, L’histoire du commerce de France. Enrichie des plus notables antiquitez du traffic des païs estranges (Paris: Toussaincts du Bray) Pieter de la Court, Interest van Holland, ofte, Gronden van Hollands-welvaren (Amsterdam: J.. C. vander Gracht) [but see also the 2nd edition: 1669 - Pieter de la Court, Aanwysing der heilsame politike gronden en maximen van de republike van Holland en West-Vriesland (Leiden/Rotterdam: Hakkens)] Pierre-Daniel Huet, Histoire sommaire du commerce et de la navigation des Anciens, à Monsieur Colbert, Ministre d’Estat [manuscript, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, Supplément français 5307] Charles Molloy, “Preface,” in DeJure Maritimo Et Navali: Or, a Treatise of Affairs Maritime, and of Commerce. In Three Books (London: J. Bellinger, G. Dawes and R. Boulter), Vol. I, [18 pages, not numbered]

1606

1662

Original works

The histories of trade in the long eighteenth century

Year

Table 1.1

Johanna D. de Zoutelandt [trans.], Pieter de la Court, Mémoires De Jean de Wit Grand Pensionnaire de Hollande (Regensburg: E. Kinkius)

[Anonymous] [trans.], Pieter de la Court, The True Interest and Political Maxims of the Republick of Holland and West-Friesland (London)

Translations

44 A. ALIMENTO AND A. DELLA FONTANA

[Pierre-Daniel Huet], Le grand trésor historique et politique du florissant commerce des Hollandois dans tous les Etats et empires du monde (Rouen: Ruault) [Daniel Defoe], A General History of Trade, and Especially Consider’d as it Respects the British Commerce, As Well at Home, as to All Parts of the World […] (London: J. Baker) [Pierre-Daniel Huet], Histoire du commerce et de la navigation des anciens (Paris: F. Fournier and A. U. Coustelier)

1712

1719

1717

1716

1713

Original works

Year

HISTORIES OF TRADE: CIVILISATION AND POLITICAL …

(continued)

[Anonymous] [trans.], Pierre-Daniel Huet, The History of the Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients (London: B. Lintot and W. Meats) [Anonymous] [trans.], [Pierre-Daniel Huet], Memoirs of the Dutch Trade in All the States, Kingdoms, and Empires in the World (London: J. Sackfield and G. David) Pedro Francisco Goyeneche [trans.], [Pierre-Daniel Huet], Comercio de Holanda, o el gran thesoro historial y politico del floreciente comercio, que los holandeses tienen en todos sus estados y señoríos del mundo (Madrid: Imprenta Real, por J. Rodríguez Escobar) Anonymous [trans.], [Pierre-Daniel Huet], De Hollandsche Koophandel in alle gewesten des werelds, staatkundig verhandelt (Amsterdam) Friedrich Christoph Neubauer [trans.], [Pierre-Daniel Huet], Curieuse Nachricht von der Handlung des Holländer in allen Ländern und Reichen der Welt (Hannover: Förster) Anonymous [trans.], [Pierre-Daniel Huet], Memoirs of the Dutch Trade (London: Rivington)

Translations

1

45

1734

1730–1738

1729

1728

1723

Jacques Savary des Bruslons, “Préface historique,” in Dictionnaire Universel de Commerce […] (Paris: J. Estienne), vol. I, i–xxviii Ephraïm Chambers, “Commerce,” in Cyclopedia or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (London: J. and J. Knapton, J. Darby, D. Midwinter, et al.), vol. I, 273–264 [Daniel Defoe], A Plan of the English Commerce: Being a Compleat Prospect of the Trade of this Nation, as well the Home Trade as the Foreign (London: C. Rivington) [see ch, III and ch. IV, 109–151] Joshua Gee, The Trade and Navigation of Great Britain Considered (London: S. Buckley) [see “Preface,” [14 pages not numbered] and ch. I, 1–8] Charles Rollin, Histoire ancienne, des égyptiens, des carthaginois, des assyriens, des babyloniens, des mèdes et des perses, des macédoniens, des grecs, 13 vols. (Paris: Veuve Estienne) [see vol. I, 216–231, 241 and 270; vol. II, 569–610; vol. X, 284–286 and 449–450; vol. V, 280–284; vol. VI, 722; vol. IX, 283–284, 305 and 474–475; vol. X, 294–319, 341–342 and 356–451] [Jean-François Melon], Essai politique sur le commerce [see ch. VII, 96–108]

Charles King, “Preface,” in The British Merchant; or, Commerce Preserved (London: J. Darby), vol. I, vii–xxxviii

1721

1722

Original works

(continued)

Year

Table 1.1

[Anonymous] [trans.], Pierre-Daniel Huet, Historie van den Koophandel en zeevart de aloude volkeren op bevel van den Heer Colbert, Minister van Vrankryk (Delft)

Translations

46 A. ALIMENTO AND A. DELLA FONTANA

1751–1754

1751

1748

1747

1739

1737

Year

Jacques-Joseph Duguet, Institution d’un prince ou traité des qualitez, des vertus et des devoirs d’un souverain, 4 vols. (Leiden: Verbeek) [see vol. II, 247–286, 346–347 and 523–527] [A Merchant], “On the excellency, advantages, and antiquity of Commerce,” The Universal Magazine of Knowledge (London: J. Hinton), July 1747, vol. I, 69–71 [A. Bristoliensis], “An historical Dissertation on Trade or Traffic,” The Universal Magazine of Knowledge (London: J. Hinton), July 1748, vol. III, 3–7 and 66–68 Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des Lois, 2 vols. (Geneva: Barrillot & Fils) [see vol. II, Book XXI, 25–81] [G. B. Zanobetti], “Discorso preliminare ovvero dissertazione storica sopra il commercio,” in Del commercio dissertazione del sig. marchese Girolamo Belloni (Livorno: G. P. Fantechi), vii–xxxi [G. B. Zanobetti], “Dissertazione preliminare sopra il Commercio,” in Introduzione alla pratica del Commercio […] (Livorno: G. P. Fantechi), v–xxiii Johann Peter Schmidt, Allgemeine Geschichte der Handlung und Schiffahrt, der Manufacturen und Künste, des Finanz und Cameralwesens, zu allen Zeiten und bey allen Völkern, 2 vols. (Breßlau: J. J. Korn)

Original works

(continued)

Antongiuseppe Belloni [trans.], Pierre-Daniel Huet, Storia del commerzio, e della navigazione degli antichi di monsignore Huet (Venice: F. Pitteri)

Translations

1 HISTORIES OF TRADE: CIVILISATION AND POLITICAL …

47

1756

1755

1754–1755

1754

1753

1752

Year

Table 1.1

[Georges-Marie Butel-Dumont], Histoire et commerce des colonies angloises dans l’Amérique septentrionale (London: Le Breton) Simon Clicquot de Blervache, Dissertation sur l’état du commerce en France, depuis Hugues Capet jusqu’à François I (Amiens: Chez la veuve Godart)

François Véron Duverger de Forbonnais, “Commerce,” in Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (Paris: Briasson, David, Le Breton and Durand), vol. III, 690–699 [François Véron Duverger de Forbonnais], “Discours préliminaire du Traducteur,” in Le négotiant anglois, ou traduction libre du livre intitulé: The British Merchant […] (Dresden/Paris: Frères Estienne), vol. I, i–clviij Claude Carlier, Dissertation sur l’état du Commerce en France, sous les rois de la première et de la seconde race (Amiens: Veuve Godart) [François Véron Duverger de Forbonnais], Élémens du commerce (Leiden/Paris: Briasson, David, Le Breton and Durand, 2nd ed.) [see vol. I, ch. I, 1–90]

Original works

(continued)

[Anonymous] [trans.], Joshua Gee, “Brevi e generali riflessioni di un inglese sopra il commercio,” Magazzino Toscano (Livorno: Santini), March 1754–February 1755, vol. I, 424–432

[Anonymous] [trans.], Montesquieu, “Riflessioni del Sig. di Montesquieu […] sopra le rivoluzioni che ha patito il Commercio, estratte dal Libro dello Spirito delle Leggi,” Magazzino Italiano (Livorno), vol. I, 95–99 and 125–129; vol. II, 8–10 and 41–42

Translations

48 A. ALIMENTO AND A. DELLA FONTANA

1764

1763

1761

1760

(continued)

Philippe-Auguste de Sainte-Foix, Chevalier d’Arcq, Histoire du Commerce et de la Navigationdes Peuples anciens et modernes […], 2 vols. (Amsterdam, Paris: Desaint & Saillant, Durand, Vincent and Duchesne) August Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel och sjöfart uti the äldsta tider (Stockholm: Grefing) [Georges-Marie Butel-Dumont], Histoire et commerce des Antilles angloises [Paris] Nicola Fortunato, Riflessioni […] intorno al commercio antico e moderno del Regno di Napoli […] (Naples: Stamperia Simoniana) Honoré Lacombe de Prézel, Les Progrès du Commerce Thomas Heinrich [trans.], August Schlözer, Versuch einer (Amsterdam: Aux dépens de la Compagnie) allgemeinen Geschichte der Handlung und Seefahrt in den ältesten Zeiten (Rostock: Koppischen) Nicolas Baudeau, Idées d’un citoyen sur la puissance du [Anonymous] [trans.], Pierre-Daniel Huet, Geschichte der Roi et le commerce de la nation dans l’Orient Handlung und Schiffahrt der Alten (Frankfurt, Leipzig: (Amsterdam, 1763) Fleischerischen Buchhandlung) Francesco Algarotti, “Saggio sopra il commercio” [1763], in Opere del conte Algarotti (Livorno: Coltellini), vol. III, 347–358 Adam Anderson, An Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce, from the Earliest Accounts to the present Time. Containing, an History of the great Commercial Interests of the British Empire […], 2 vols. (London: A. Millar, J. and R. Tonson, et al.)

1758

Translations

Original works

Year

1 HISTORIES OF TRADE: CIVILISATION AND POLITICAL …

49

Giovanni Francesco Pagnini, Della decima e di varie altre gravezze imposte dal comune di Firenze. Della moneta e della mercatura de’ Fiorentini fino al Secolo XVI , 4 vols. (Lisbon andLucca [but: Florence, Bouchard]) Nicolas Baudeau, “Du Monde politique,” Ephémérides du citoyen, ou Bibliothèque raisonnée des Sciences morales et politiques (Paris: Lacombe), vol. II, 17–32; vol. III, 33–48; vol. VI, 65–128 Nicolas Baudeau, “De l’origine et de la nécessité des hérédités foncières,” in Ephémérides du citoyen, ou Bibliothèque raisonnée des sciences morales et politiques (Paris: Lacombe), vol. II, 67–112 Pierre-Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, “Histoire abrégée des finances de l’Angleterre,” in Ephémérides du citoyen, ou Bibliothèque raisonnée des sciences morales et politiques (Paris: Lacombe), vol. IV, 135–173; vol. V, 135–168; vol. VII, 63–104 Pierre-Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, “De la liberté du commerce des grains, ou histoire abrégée du commerce des blés en France,” in Ephémérides du citoyen, ou Bibliothèque raisonnée des sciences morales et politiques (Paris: Lacombe), vol. I, 37–82 Victor Riqueti de Mirabeau, Lettres sur la dépravation et la restauration de l’ordre légal, 2 vols. (London: Wilcox) Guillaume-Thomas François Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, 6 vols. (Amsterdam)

1765–1766

1770

1769

1767

1766

Original works

(continued)

Year

Table 1.1 Translations

50 A. ALIMENTO AND A. DELLA FONTANA

Gabriel Marcello, Species Facti Istorico del Commercio della Repubblica dal principio sin’oggi. Per dimostrar in massima necessario stanti le cose successe di devenire ad un Trattato di Commercio con l’Imperatrice Regina [manuscript, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Venice, Miscellanea Cicogna 3038] Nicolas Baudeau, Première Introduction à la philosophie économique, ou Analyse des États policés, par un disciple de l’Ami des hommes (Paris: Didot l’aîné) Pierre-Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, “Analyse de l’Histoire philosophique et politique de l’établissement du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes,” in Ephémérides du citoyen, ou Bibliothèque raisonnée des sciences morales et politiques (Paris: Lacombe), vol. II, 173–185 Guillaume-Thomas François Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, 7 vols. (The Hague: Gosse) Johann Gottfried G. Eichhorn, Geschicte des ostindischen Handels vor Mohammed (Gotha: C.-W. Ettinger)

1771

1776

1775–1783

1775

1774

1772

Original works

Year

HISTORIES OF TRADE: CIVILISATION AND POLITICAL …

(continued)

[Anonymous] [trans.], Pierre-Daniel Huet, Geschichte der Handlung und Schiffahrt der Alten (Wien: Kurzböck) Anonymous [trans.], Guillaume-Thomas François Raynal, Wysgeerige en staatkundige geschiedenis van de bezittingen en den koophandel der Europeaanen, in de beide Indiën, 10 vols. (Amsterdam: M. Schalekamp) John Obadiah Justamond [trans.], Guillaume-Thomas François Raynal, A philosophical and political history of the settlements and trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies , 4 vols. (London: T. Cadell)

Translations

1

51

1782

1781

1780

1778–1783

1778

1776–1777

Year

Table 1.1

Angelo Pavesi, Memorie per servire alla storia del commercio dello Stato di Milano, e di quello della Città, e Provincia di Como in particolare (Como: Staurenghi) Michele De Jorio, Storia del commercio e della navigazione dal principio del Mondo fino a’ giorni nostri, 4 vols. (Naples: Stamperia Simoniana) Guillaume-Thomas François Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, 5 vols. (Geneva: J.-L. Pellet) Antonio De Torres, Saggio di riflessioni sulle arti, e il commercio europeo dei nostri tempi, e degli antichi. Per illustrare alcuni passi dell’Istoria filosofica, e politica, 2 vols. (Pesaro: Gavelli) Giambattista Gherardo D’Arco, Dell’influenza del commercio sopra i talenti e sui costumi (Cremona: L. Marini) Christoph Meiners, Geschichte des Luxus der Athenienser von den ältesten Zeiten an bis auf den Tod Philipps von Makedonien (Cassel: Ph. O. Hampe)

Original works

(continued)

[Giuseppe Ramirez], [Domenico Stratico] [trans.], Guillaume-Thomas François Raynal, Storia filosofica e politica degli stabilimenti e del commercio degli europei nelle due Indie, 18 vols. ([Siena]: [Bindi])

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52 A. ALIMENTO AND A. DELLA FONTANA

1788–1791

1788–1789

1787

1785–1792

1784–1790

Friedrich Christoph Jonathan Fischers, Geschichte des teutschen Handels: der Schiffarth, Fischerei, Erfindungen, Künste, Gewerbe, Manufakturen, der Landwirthschaft, Polizey, Leibeigenschaft, des Zoll-Münz-und Bergwesens, des Wechselrechts, der Stadtwirthschaft, und des Luxus, 4 Vols. (Hannover: In der Helwingschen Hofbuchhandlung) Francesco Mengotti, Del Commercio de’ Romani dalla prima guerra punica a Costantino […] (Padua: Stamperia del Seminario) Vincenzo Antonio Formaleoni, Storia filosofica, e politica della navigazione, del commercio e delle colonie degli antichi nel Mar Nero, 2 vols. (Venice: nella tipografia dell’Autore) Antonio de Torres, Memoria apologetica del commercio e coltura dei Romani da Romolo a Costantino […], 2 vols. (Venice: Costantini)

Nicolas Baudeau, “Nouveaux élémens du commerce […],” in Encyclopédie méthodique (Paris: Panckoucke), vol. I, vii–xxx

1783

1783–1788

Original works

Year

(continued)

[Johann Martin Abele] [trans.], Guillaume-Thomas François Raynal, Philosophische und politische Geschichte der Besitzungen und Handlung der Europäer in beyden Indien, 10 vols. (Kempten: Verlag der Typographische Gesellschaft) Pedro de Góngora y Luján [trans.], Guillaume-Thomas François Raynal, Historia politica de los establicimientos ultramarinos de las naciones europeas, 5 vols. (Madrid: A. de Sancha)

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1793–1796

1793

1792

1791

1790

1789

Year

Table 1.1

Arnold-Herman-Ludwig Heeren, Ideen zur Politik, den Verkehr und der Handel der vornehmsten Völker der Alten Welt, 2 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht)

Simon Clicquot de Blervache, Mémoire sur l’état du Commerce intérieur et extérieur de la France, depuis la première croisade jusqu’au règne de Louis XII (Paris: Prault) William Robertson, An Historical Disquisition concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India; and the Progress of Trade with that Country prior to the Discovery of the Passage to it by the Cape of Good Hope […] (London: Strahan and Cadell) Johann Isaac Berghaus, Geschichte des Schiffahrtskunde bey den vornehmsten Völker des Alterthums, 2 vols. (Leipzig: in der Gräffeschen Buchhandlung)

Original works

(continued)

[Anonymous] [trans.], William Robertson, Recherches historiques sur la connaissance que les Anciens avaient de l’Inde et sur le progrès du commerce avec cette partie du monde avant la découverte du passage par le Cap de Bonne Espérance, 2 vols. (Paris: Buisson) George Forster [trans.], William Robertson, Historische Untersuchung über die Kenntnisse der Alten von Indien und die Fortschritte des Handels mit diesem Lande vor der Entdeckung des Weges dahin um das Vorgebirge der Guten Hoffnung (Berlin: Voss) Fr. Plácido Regidor [trans.], Pierre-Daniel Huet, Historia del comercio y de la navegacion de los antiguos (Madrid: Ruiz)

Étienne-Félix d’Hénin de Cuvillers [trans.], Vincenzo Formaleoni, Histoire philosophique & politique du commerce, de la navigation, et des colonies des anciens dans la Mer-noire […] (Venice: C. Palese)

Translations

54 A. ALIMENTO AND A. DELLA FONTANA

Georg Friedrich Sartorius, Geschichte des Hanseatischen Bundes, 3 vols. (Göttingen: H. Dietrich)

Original works Antonio Zacarias de Malcorra [trans.], Francesco Mengotti, Del comercio de los Romanos, desde la primera guerra de Cartágo, hasta Constantino el magno (Valencia: B. Monfort) Jacques Gassier [trans.], Francesco Mengotti, Commerce des Romains, Depuis la fondation de Rome jusques à Constantin (Marseille: Mossy)

Translations

Note The list indicates the histories of trade and the works that contain a history of trade within them (of which the page range is provided) cited in this book Source Authors

1802–1808

1800

1798

Year

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55

CHAPTER 2

Figurism, Temporal Goods and the Manifestation of the Divine: The History of Trade Among Eighteenth-Century Jansenist Pedagogues Arnaud Orain

Introduction The contribution made by Jansenist writers of the years 1660–1710 to the formulation of what would go down in history as the “invisible hand”— in other words, the idea that human societies function harmoniously by giving free rein to individual interests—is now well known.1 What is less familiar is what happened to this legacy among the Jansenists of the following generations. The canonical history of economic ideas, focused 1 Jean-Claude Perrot, “La main invisible et le Dieu caché,” in Une histoire intellectuelle de l’économie politique (XVII e –XVIII e siècle) (Paris: EHESS, 1992 [1984]), 333–354; Gilbert Faccarello, The Foundations of Laissez-Faire: The Economics of Pierre de Boisguilbert (London: Routledge, 1999 [1986]).

A. Orain (B) University of Paris 8, Saint-Denis, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Alimento and A. Della Fontana (eds.), Histories of Trade as Histories of Civilisation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80087-1_2

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on tracing the influence and archaeology of the discipline’s concepts, has not found any “great texts” from that tradition later than the work of Pierre Nicole (1625–1695), Jean Domat (1625–1696) and Pierre de Boisguilbert (1646–1714). Anyone interested in the history of cultural ideas, however, is struck by the eminent contribution of the second Jansenism not only to the “nurturing environment” of what later became political economy, but also to the development of an economic theology following the “crisis of the European mind.”2 To highlight one aspect of this process, the present study examines how the Jansenists, who in the eighteenth century shifted from religious controversy to political dissent, developed a veritable science of government which had a close relationship with history.3 I focus mostly on the “figurist” theory and its ramifications: by seeking to show that the present and the future are contained and described—“figured”—in sacred texts, the movement’s main theologians deployed a theory of history that gave an important role to commerce in general. In their approach, it becomes possible to seek in the Old and New Testaments, and more generally in the history of ancient peoples, how God goes about indicating his preferences and the choice of his elect. The ways in which civilisations acquire, maintain and consume material wealth bear witness to the different forms that the figure of Christ has taken throughout history. God sometimes seeks to punish people by giving them wealth and then taking it from them, but he also shows them the path to true prosperity and invites them to learn how best to fulfil his promise. If the Lord has placed a virtuous prince on the throne, if the latter and his subjects use the right means to enrich themselves—employing unrelenting toil to increase the material goods of their own country while distrusting conquest and easy

2 Perrot, Une histoire intellectuelle, 9; Perrot, “Portrait des agents économiques dans

l’œuvre de Boisguilbert,” in Boisguilbert parmi nous (Paris: INED, 1989), 141–156; Antonella Alimento, “Entre rang et mérite: La réflexion économique de l’abbé Duguet,” in Il pensiero gerarchico in Europa XVIII–XIX secolo, ed. Antonella Alimento and Cristina Cassina (Florence: Olschki, 2002), 11–30; Arnaud Orain, “The Second Jansenism and the rise of French Eighteenth-Century Political Economy,” History of Political Economy 46, no. 3 (2014): 463–490; Arnaud Orain and Maxime Menuet, “The Jansenist Movement and Interest-Bearing Loans in France During the Eighteenth Century: A Reappraisal,” The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 24, no. 4 (2017): 708–741. Concerning the crisis of the European mind, see Paul Hazard, The Crisis of the European Mind: 1680–1715 (New York: NYRB Classics, 2013 [1935]). 3 Alimento, “Entre rang et mérite”; A. Orain, “The Second Jansenism.”

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riches—then it will be a sign that they belong to the righteous, and that they will be provided with real benefits, namely immaterial ones. This idea, quite close to Calvinist ethics, is deployed by establishing a correspondence between sacred history and ancient history on the one hand, and modern times on the other. In what follows, we will be drawing on the Histoire ancienne (1730– 1738)4 by Charles Rollin (1661–1741), a work that met with considerable success5 ; on his Histoire romaine (1738–1748), a work that was continued by his disciple and colleague, the rhetorician Jean-BaptisteLouis Crevier (1693–1765)6 ; and on several works by Rollin’s close friends,7 the two great theologians of second Jansenism: the Abbé Jacques Vincent d’Asfeld (1664–1745) and the Abbé Jacques-Joseph Duguet (1649–1733). Rollin was a professor at the University of Paris, twice rector, a former principal of the prestigious college of Dormans-Beauvais and a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. He was above all an overt Jansenist, opposing from the very beginning the papal bull Unigenitus , and in the first half of the century his college became the movement’s headquarters. It was Duguet who asked Rollin to take over as director of Dormans-Beauvais, an establishment where both men worked together at the beginning of the eighteenth century. At almost the same time, Asfeld and Duguet laid the foundations for the figurist theory of Jansenism, the general principles of which were published in 1716.8 It was also about this time that Duguet wrote the bulk of his Institution

4 Charles Rollin, Histoire ancienne, des égyptiens, des carthaginois, des assyriens, des babyloniens, des mèdes et des perses, des macédoniens, des grecs, 13 vols. (Paris: Veuve Estienne, 1730–1738). 5 The book was reissued many times and translated into several languages. It was a classic in France until the mid-nineteenth century. See Pascal Payen, “En guise de présentation (suite),” Anabases 2 (2005): 221–230 and Chantal Grell, Le dix-huitième siècle et l’Antiquité en France (1680–1789), 2 vols. (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1995). Fréron mentions Rollin’s book to his readers: “The Histoire ancienne of the celebrated Rollin, that you have read & reread” (L’année littéraire, 1771, V, 254). 6 Charles Rollin and Jean-Baptiste-Louis Crevier, Histoire romaine, depuis la fondation de Rome jusqu’à la bataille d’Actium, 16 vols. (Paris: Veuve Estienne, 1738–1748). 7 Opuscules de feu M. Rollin, Ancien recteur de l’Université de Paris, 2 vols. (Paris: Estienne, 1771), vol. I, 30–31; Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. V, vij. 8 [Jacques-Vincent d’Asfeld and Jacques-Joseph Duguet], Règles pour l’intelligence des Saintes écritures (Paris: Jacques Estienne, 1716).

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d’un Prince,9 published posthumously in 1739.10 This article will show how d’Asfeld, Duguet and Rollin moved from a theological figurism to a historical figurism by constructing a science of history; it will then discuss how the Jansenist pedagogues envisaged divine election, and conclude by exploring the economic theology deployed in their history of trade.

From Theological Figurism to Historical Figurism: History as a Science of Causes In the Règles pour l’intelligence des saintes écritures (1716), Duguet and d’Asfeld begin by asserting that the Old Testament announces and unveils the actions of Christ described in the New Testament. The saviour is “predicted & figured” there since “the prophets had him alone in view.” While this Augustinian exegetical reading is not fundamentally Jansenist, Duguet and d’Asfeld then make a first sideways move, giving this notion of “figure” a more broadly predictive character. The scriptures—and not just the Book of Revelation—have the characteristic “of recalling events that have already happened in order to predict the future.” They contain “many future things, which seem merely to be the story of the past.” The prophet Isaiah, for example, not only announces the sovereignty of Christ, he also unveils what the church will do through the centuries to protect herself from her enemies, right up until the final battle.11 The Jansenists then make a second significant manoeuvre by freeing the scriptures from an ahistorical context. According to the Règles, the Old Testament is not only metaphorical, but concerns the Israel of history, the Jewish nation of antiquity as it is known from the Bible and other sources. From this point of view, Duguet and d’Asfeld think that “Christians are depicted in the

9 Jacques-Joseph Duguet, Institution d’un prince ou traité des qualitez, des vertus et des devoirs d’un souverain, 4 vols (Leiden: Verbeek, 1739); Marie-Dominique Chapotin, Le collège de Dormans-Beauvais et la chapelle saint-jean l’évangéliste (Paris: Laurie, 1870), 347–357; Caroline Chopelin-Le Blanc, “L’Institution d’un prince de Duguet, un traité d’éducation à la charnière des xviie et xviiie siècles,” Chrétiens et sociétés 18 (2012): 19–38. 10 See Antonella Alimento, “L’Institution d’un prince de l’abbé Duguet,” in L’Institution du prince au XVIII e siècle, ed. Gérard Luciani and Catherine Volpilhac-Auger (Ferney-Voltaire: Centre international d’étude du XVIIIe siècle, 2003), 105–114 and Alimento, “Entre rang et mérite”. 11 [D’Asfeld and Duguet], Règles pour l’intelligence, 1, 189 and 191–193.

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history of the Jews.”12 The “figure” of Christian history is inscribed in that of the Hebrew people as a series of historical facts. And the authors go even further: History, which is filled with figures of [Christ], needs natural connections to support everything that figures & promises him. Chronology, the successions of princes, battles, victories, purely temporal events, are necessary to unite in a single whole & to set forth the different parts which announce & predict Jesus Christ. But what is silent by its nature, becomes resounding by its union with what is not [silent]. One should not expect sound from each part, but there is nothing that does not contribute to it.13

Even if only indirectly, all parts of human history play a role in figuring Christ, and more broadly in figuring the future of Christians. Profane history combines with sacred history to structure a narrative that announces future times. History itself is therefore a source in which we can read not only what has happened, but also what will happen. Duguet is very clear on this point: for a young prince, he says, “[t]he knowledge of History” will provide “abundant material for reflection on all that has been done before him, & for conjectures on what is hidden in the future.”14 In De la manière d’enseigner et d’étudier les Belles-lettres (1732), his famous pedagogical work, Rollin explains that in order to teach sacred history correctly, it is necessary both to “relate its facts simply as historical fact” while trying, beyond that, “to discover its spirit & its true meaning […]. We read very often in the Gospel that the actions reported there were the fulfilment of Old Testament figures & prophecies.” Sacred history allows us to know the true history of the peoples of antiquity; but also, everything that this history contains—accounts of battles, sieges and prophecies—is a “figure” which announces Christ and all the events of the Church. “[W]hatever happened to the Jews,” he says, “happened to them as a figure. Saint Augustine […], speaking of the saints of the

12 Catherine Maire, De la cause de Dieu à la cause de la Nation. Le jansénisme au XVIII e siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1998), 173; [D’Asfeld and Duguet], Règles pour l’intelligence, 14. 13 [D’Asfeld and Duguet], Règles pour l’intelligence, 14, 25–26. 14 Duguet, Institution d’un prince, vol. I, 349.

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Old Testament, tells us that not only their words, but their lives, their marriages, their children, their actions, were a figure & a prediction of what was to happen a long time later, in the Christian Church.”15 The misfortunes that befell King Sennacherib of Ethiopia when he attacked Jerusalem should, for example, make it possible to edify “all those who doubt the promises made to the Church, of which Jerusalem is certainly the figure, or who think that on certain dangerous & difficult occasions, they need human strength and wisdom.”16 From this point of view, it is very clear to Rollin that sacred history is necessary but not sufficient. It must be coupled with the study of profane history. This history too, for those who can read and interpret events correctly, shows us “how God makes the empires of the earth serve the establishment of his Son,” for. although profane history speaks to us only of peoples given over to all the follies of a superstitious worship, & prone to all the disorders of which human nature, ever since the fall of the first man, has become capable: it announces everywhere the greatness of God, his power, his justice, & above all the admirable wisdom with which his providence directs the whole universe.17

As with Duguet, all of history—sacred and profane—thus heralds future events. To lift the veil and discover the figure of Christ, we must study the past with the help of revelation, and revelation with the support of historical facts. But it is necessary to take it as an “incontestable principle”. that it is divine Providence which, from all eternity, has regulated and ordered the establishment, the duration, the destruction of kingdoms and empires. […] It pleased God to lay open for us in his Scriptures some of the connections that several peoples of the earth had with his people, and the little that he has laid open to us sheds great light on the history of these peoples, of which only the surface and the outer covering are known, if one does not penetrate further by the help of revelation. It is the latter which brings to light the secret thoughts of the Princes, their foolish projects, their mad pride, their impious & cruel ambition; which manifests the real

15 Charles Rollin, De la manière d’enseigner et d’étudier les Belles lettres, par rapport à l’esprit & au cœur (Amsterdam: Aux dépens de la Compagnie, 1732), vol. III, 119–120. 16 Ibid., vol. III, 175. 17 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. I, xxviij, iiij.

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causes, & the hidden springs of the victories and defeats of armies, of the growth and decay of peoples, of the rise & ruin of Empires.18

How then are we to discover the hand of Providence in profane history or in certain passages of sacred history which are not prophecies? Paradoxically, for Duguet as for Rollin, it is by resorting to a form of history that could be described as “philosophical,” a science of causes, beyond the unfolding of simple events. Duguet explains that “by ‘knowing History,’ I do not mean an unfruitful study of the successions of empires, & of those who ruled them. You can load your memory with many facts, dates, battles, and revolutions, without becoming any more capable of ruling.” In place of “temporal events,” which link together but also conceal the fragments of the figure of Christ, for the deep meaning of history to appear in broad daylight, we must seek the “causes, either visible or secret, of the events: what contributed to the expansion of Empires, or to their fall.”19 In other words, we must seek to understand what paved the way for the successes and failures of peoples and sovereigns, what allowed them to stay in power or to succumb to their enemies. Now these causes, which Duguet wishes to teach to princes, are of course closely connected with the science of commerce, as we will see in a moment. In spite of the severe judgement of Voltaire, who in his “Nouvelles considérations sur l’histoire” (1744) uses some passages from Rollin as what are in his view examples of those erudite and anecdotal compilations filled with a “host of famous stupidities,”20 Rollin also sees history as a science of causes. When studying sacred history, he explains, “we must not neglect the uses and customs peculiar to the people of God: what concerns its laws, its government, its way of life.”21 And while it is true 18 Ibid., vol. I, x. 19 Duguet, Institution d’un prince, vol. I, 349–352. 20 Voltaire, “Nouvelles considérations sur l’Histoire,” in La Mérope française, avec

quelques petites pièces de littérature (Paris: Prault, 1744), 109–115. Voltaire’s historical work, such as for instance his Siècle de Louis XIV (1751), is far from being free of these stories and fictions; see Gianni Iotti, “Le Siècle de Louis XIV : de l’histoire à la fiction,” in Voltaire et le Grand Siècle, ed. Jean Dagen and Anne-Sophie Barrovecchio (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2006), 81–96; John Campbell, “Entre le ‘siècle de Louis XIV’ et le siècle des Lumières: la rhétorique voltairienne à l’œuvre,” Littératures classiques 76, no. 3 (2011): 85–97. 21 Rollin, De la manière d’enseigner et d’étudier les Belles lettres, vol. III, 125.

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that his Histoire ancienne often gives pride of place to compilations of facts without analysis, and that he sometimes even reports barely credible rumours, he was already stating in 1730 that there would be no point in studying ancient times if one “limited oneself to a sterile knowledge of the facts of antiquity, & to the dismal search for the dates and years when each event took place.” He adds that it “is of great importance to know how these empires came to be, by what degrees & by what means they came to the point of greatness that we admire. […] It is no less important to study with care the way of life of different peoples, their genius, their laws, their uses, their customs; […] we there learn how the sciences & the arts were invented, cultivated, perfected.”22 And whether in his Histoire ancienne or his Histoire romaine, this is what Rollin often does. He seeks, under the events, the structures which explain great historical upheavals.23 With Rollin as with Duguet, events are therefore the visible edifices of time. They teach us little or nothing about the designs of Providence. However, if we are able to read what constitutes the underlying foundation of historical facts—“causes” such as legislation, customs, the arts, agriculture, and inventions—then the divine presence manifests itself, and it gives us the keys to the past, present and future. In this reading, the question of temporal goods is far from secondary. Commerce in general is one of the elements, if not the central one, of the presence of the divine on earth. It reveals in whom and in what God has placed his mercy.

Temporal Goods and Divine Election If we are to believe the great historian of Jansenism, René Taveneaux, the Protestant Puritan “glorifies God through work” and “strives to acquire the certainty of his salvation by flawless labour” but this does not seem to be the case with the Jansenist, a man of prayer and a contemplative who is suspicious of action. In Augustinian theology, grace is granted 22 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. I, x, iij. 23 The importance of Rollin in the advent of a history of institutions and manners is

now well-known, see Grell, Le dix-huitième siècle et l’Antiquité en France, vol. I, 352–353, 449–453; vol. II, 877–881, 981; Chantal Grell and Christian Michel, L’école des princes ou Alexandre disgracié. Essai sur la mythologie monarchique de la France absolutiste (Paris: Les Belles lettres, 1988), 82–86; Pascal Payen, “Thucydide et Rollin: émergence du paradigme athénien au XVIIIe siècle,” in Ombres de Thucydide: La réception de l’historien depuis l’Antiquité, ed. Valérie Fromentin, Sophie Gotteland and Pascal Payen (Paris: Ausonius, 2010), 613–633.

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by predestination and not obtained by personal effort; man is therefore powerless to achieve his own salvation.24 This interpretation of Augustinism is doubtless not entirely wrong, but it is restricted to the doctrine of the solitaires of Port-Royal. We must indeed remember, as Jean-Claude Perrot insists, that “Jansenism is not fatalism.”25 If work has been seen as a general penance since the fall of Adam, no one can escape it, and later Jansenist authors, such as Jean Domat or Pasquier Quesnel, even make it a duty, and a useful duty. The first explains that there “is no condition, even the highest, which does not have for its essential character, and for its main and indispensable duty, the commitment to work for which that condition is established; and those who claim they can dispense with work ignore their own nature, overthrow the foundations of order, and violate natural and divine law.” Quesnel adds that “God created man for work, of whatever kind this work may be; the violation of this order of God is a very great sin, & it even means closing oneself to the mercy of God if one seeks to exempt oneself from work.”26 This last idea is important: God has granted work to men so that they can live after sin has come into the world, so they must surrender entirely to the favour he has done them by granting them the possibility of working. Duguet and Rollin follow an even clearer path: they exalt work. Thus, says Duguet, princes are naturally “born for work,” but more generally it is necessary that. everyone should live off their work, that begging should be shameful & banned, & that there should be no one in the state who has his health and does not make use of it. If laziness in certain places is invincible […], it is necessary to summon to that place […] expert and assiduous workers who will take the place of the natives of the country & teach them to work, and who will make them ashamed of their laziness.

24 René Taveneaux, Jansénisme et prêt à intérêt (Paris: Vrin, 1977), 89–90. 25 Jean-Claude Perrot, “La main invisible et le Dieu caché,” in Une histoire intellectuelle de l’économie politique (XVII e –XVIII e siècle) (Paris, EHESS, 1992 [1984]), 333–354;

Gilbert Faccarello, The Foundations of Laissez-Faire: The Economics of Pierre de Boisguilbert (London: Routledge, 1999 [1986]). 26 Jean Domat, “Le droit public, suite des lois civiles dans leur ordre naturel,” in Œuvres complètes, ed. Joseph Rémy (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1829 [1695]), vol. III, 236– 237; Pasquier Quesnel, La discipline de l’Église tirée du Nouveau Testament et des anciens Conciles (Lyon: Jean Certe, 1689), I, 189–190.

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He continues: since Judea is inhabited by “avaricious men, enemies of work […] it is nothing more than a desert full of moors and rocks. Everywhere we must encourage the most hardworking, make them examples for the people, and invite others to imitate their industry and their work.”27 For Rollin, following Quesnel, the difficult task of agriculture after original sin, “having initially been a punishment, has become, by a singular blessing from God, as it were the mother and nurturer of mankind.”28 Thus it is necessary to use “all the means which can arouse among young people emulation and a love of work,” because whatever the profession which they embrace, “it is by work and the application that one succeeds in one’s affairs.” Rollin often notes that the ancient Romans, before their disastrous wars, succeeded in creating their affluence only through “the love of work.”29 Thus, by a gradual shift, work, which had been obligatory since the fall of Adam, becomes creative and beneficent, a vector of positivity and prosperity. If, unlike the Calvinist Puritans, Jansenist theologians, historians and pedagogues do not make work and success a sign of divine election in the strict sense, they do make a point of valuing and celebrating productive labour. This is particularly the case with Quesnel and Rollin, who come close to asserting that diligent work—and, why not, success in one’s affairs—is a way of conforming to divine mercy.30 For, following

27 Duguet, Institution d’un prince, vol. II, 247, 285–286, 267, 261. 28 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. X, 294. 29 Rollin, De la manière d’enseigner et d’étudier les Belles lettres, vol. II, 23; vol. I, 176; vol. III, 537. 30 For a very different perspective, concerning eighteenth-century Parisian merchants on the one hand and Jansen, Saint-Cyran and Puritans on the other, see Nicolas Lyon-Caen, La boîte à Perrette. Le jansénisme parisien au XVIII e siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 2010), 258–265 and Maxime Menuet and Christophe Lavialle, “La vision du travail chez les premiers jansénistes: entre spiritualité et politique au cœur du grand siècle,” LEO Working paper 2014–9. Following Jean-Perrot and Dale Van Kley, my interpretation considers parallels between the Puritan ethic and Jansenism (the “Augustinian cousin” of Calvinism, in the words of Van Kley). On these parallels, especially concerning the issue of “trust” (confiance), see Dale Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution (1560–1791) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 100–108 and Dale Van Kley, “Pierre Nicole, Jansenism, and the Morality of Enlightened Self-Interest,” in Anticipations of the Enlightenment in England, France and Germany, ed. Alan Charles Kors and Paul J. Korshin (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 69–85.

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Domat, Nicole, and Boisguilbert,31 Duguet and Rollin make work and the individual desire to improve one’s lot the main driving forces of Christian societies. The links, here, between the Jansenism of the seventeenth century and that of the eighteenth century are obvious. In Domat and Nicole, while it is embarrassing and even reprehensible from a moral point of view that Christians should privilege their “self-love” (amour-propre)—in other words, their individual interest— over charity, this attitude is nevertheless useful: it is a powerful factor of social cohesion. The Creator has increased the number of human needs so as to force us to live in society, since, by seeking to enrich themselves through their work, their production, and their services, individuals provide all that is necessary for social man.32 This proto-version of the “invisible hand” derives, as Dale Van Kley points out, from the radical interpretation of divine grace by the Jansenists: since God distributes this grace so sparingly, how are we to explain the order and civility of European societies? By concupiscence, “enlightened” self-love. In his Essais de morale (1671), Nicole offers a view of man in the natural state that is not very different from Hobbes’s. But unlike the latter, who calls for the emergence of an all-powerful state to enforce pacification and forestall the war of all against all, Nicole thinks that the original violence is thwarted by the fear of death, the desire to be loved, and greed and material selfinterest, all of which temper brute force and prevent recourse to war. Self-love continually “imitates” charity, and produces beneficial effects. Never, however, does Nicole claim that engaging in one’s self-love is morally good.33 But in the eighteenth century, his Jansenist successors were not far from thinking this.

31 Perrot, “La main invisible et le Dieu caché”; Facarello, The Foundations of LaissezFaire. 32 Frédérick Vanhoorne, “Primitivisme agrarien ou capitalisme?” in Jansénisme et puritanisme, ed. Bernard Cottret, Monique Cottret and Marie-José Michel (Paris: Nolin, 2002), 51–62. 33 Dale Van Kley, “Pierre Nicole, Jansenism, and the Morality of Enlightened SelfInterest,” 69–85. See also Dale Van Kley, “Civic Humanism in Clerical Garb: Gallican Memories of the Early Church and the Project of Primitivist Reform 1719–1791,” Past and Present 200 (2008): 77–120. Mikko Tolonen has recently mitigated Van Kley’s argument about Nicole, see “Pierre Nicole and amour-propre,” in Passions, Politics and the Limits of Society, ed. Heikki Haara, Koen Stapelbroek and Mikko Immanen (Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2020), 195–218.

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Duguet explains that in order to guide them towards “the public good,” “one must know how to lead people where they are sensitive,” in other words “be attentive to discern their interests in order to lead them, because it is interest that drives them.” Rollin explains, for his part, that it is “greed & self-interest that set [men] in motion” and “what is in the interest of individuals is also good for the state in general.” By satisfying our individual interest, we improve the condition of all and it is thus that “God, to whom alone it belongs to put even wickedness to good use, avails himself of the greed of some men to do good to others.”34 Duguet and Rollin almost take a step further and conclude that the quest for earthly goods through work is a good thing and that, even better, the material prosperity of civilisations is a sign of divine election. To understand this, we must go back to the Règles pour l’intelligence des Saintes écritures and the figurist conception of history. Duguet and d’Asfeld are careful to mention that it is impossible for all righteous and virtuous people to enjoy an abundance of earthly goods. Both sacred texts and profane history sometimes depict them as suffering hunger and misery. However, Scripture itself leads us to spiritual interpretations, purposefully blending promises of righteousness & perfect health with those promises which appear to favour only the senses. For it is visible that justice & grace can be figured by temporal goods: but they can never be the figures of goods which are inferior to them.35

In other words, justice and grace do not mean and do not guarantee that temporal—inferior—goods will rain down on a person who is endowed with them. But those material goods which please the senses can sometimes mean the anointing of grace and virtue. For as Rollin says, “all temporal goods come from God, as from their only source, & they should be expected from him alone, although he reserves for his servants in eternity goods that are more worthy of his magnificence.”36 Material prosperity can be the figure of real, spiritual goods. The whole question lies in knowing in which cases. The equation is as follows. Only God 34 Duguet, Institution d’un prince, vol. I, 179; Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. X, 361– 362, 306. 35 [D’Asfeld and Duguet], Règles pour l’intelligence, 81–82. 36 Rollin, De la manière d’enseigner et d’étudier les Belles lettres, vol. III, 156.

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grants the goods of this world: some receive them, others do not. Many people whom the Lord has elected do not receive them, and among those who do there are both ungodly and righteous people. It is only for the latter that these temporal goods are the “figure” of justice and grace. But how do you distinguish them from the wicked? Duguet and Rollin give us the answer: if God suddenly and by violent means grants temporal goods to a sovereign, to the powerful and to the merchants of a kingdom, in general to the detriment of their people or of the neighbouring peoples, then they will all rapidly squander them in pride, debauchery and luxury, and end in ruin. Those goods granted were in no way a sign of election, but on the contrary an instrument of divine punishment against unfaithful people and an evil sovereign. On the contrary, if God grants temporal goods slowly and gradually, through application and hard work, both to the sovereign and to his people (and sometimes also to his neighbours), if he allows them to keep these goods and these Christians use them moderately, then it is a sign of election. As Rollin points out, taking examples from the Egyptians or Babylonians, God made use of bad princes by raising them very rapidly to prosperity, but then he always destroyed them and swallowed up their civilisations when their mission was accomplished. “Their most powerful kings […] were in the hands of God as so many instruments which he used to punish the prevarications of his people.” Having become rich and strong in an instant, they suspected nothing. Now “[t]he rapidity of their conquests,” adds Rollin, “should have given them a glimpse of the invisible hand which guided them.” But they were blinded by their mad ambition, their pride and their boundless greed. When the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, laid siege to Tyre, reasons of policy alone seemed to sway this conqueror […]. But the siege of this place was ordered by a higher will. God wanted on the one hand to humiliate the pride of Ithobal his king […] On the other hand he also wanted to punish the luxury, the pleasures, and the arrogance of those proud merchants, who regarded themselves as the princes of the sea, & the masters of kings themselves; & above all that inhuman joy of Tyre, which drove it to find its own growth in the ruins of its rival Jerusalem. It was for these reasons that God himself led Nebuchadnezzar to Tyre, causing him to carry out the divine orders without his knowing them.37

37 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. I, x–xv.

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Sacred history, explain Duguet and d’Asfeld, “is always the enemy of greed, ambition, vengeance, indulgence & luxury.”38 And this is illustrated by the example of Rollin: Tyre was rapidly enriched by conquest and by a violent trade usurped from its neighbours (Jerusalem), and by a desire for undivided domination, resulting in the unruly behaviour of its merchants. It is clear that these temporal goods were given by God only to set an example, to mark the impiety and vice of the sovereign and the inhabitants of this port. They were bound to be punished for it. For if history teems with examples of wicked princes being showered with material benefits, Duguet and Rollin constantly explain that this is to the detriment either of their own people, on whom they have imposed impossible tributes, or to the detriment of the peoples whom they have conquered and made miserable. Sooner or later they will be punished for their crimes by dispossession and ruin. To give a “fair & instructive idea of royalty,” Rollin says that this does not consist in the magnificence, the pomp, or the deference of the subjects, still less in the conquests, the accumulation of gold or the tribute paid, but in “the real services & the effective advantages which it procures for its peoples.”39 Duguet, meanwhile, explains that one must study the life “of good Princes, not certain dazzling feats that history praises too much, but their wise economy and their intelligence that makes everything bear fruit.” To know if a sovereign has been set in place by God to punish the nations for their sins or on the contrary to thank them for their just conduct, Duguet says, one need only consider his people, & what good he has done them. If they were rich, and he made them miserable, he is a foolish prince: if they were miserable, and he made them rich & happy, he is a wise prince, whom God gave to the earth, so that this prince could be useful to him by his application & efforts.

We here find the idea of Augustinian predestination: God gives good princes to the peoples who have deserved them, but all—kings and subjects—must in return make the Lord’s gift and his trust bear fruit by their efforts and their application. The rulers and kingdoms who have received the anointing of divine justice and grace are those who prosper 38 [D’Asfeld and Duguet], Règles pour l’intelligence, 80. 39 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. I, xxj.

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materially by work, without having usurped their wealth, without having impoverished any people, any land, or any merchant. The righteous kings chosen by God lead their subjects to “public happiness” by seeking to make themselves worthy of the mission entrusted to them. They are thus concerned only with the means of improving the material wellbeing of their peoples, and certainly not their territory or their own wealth. From this point of view, the history of trade becomes a pious work: if God has, by the predispositions that he has given them, willed that a people or a king should be saved, that they should “represent” the Christ, these same people and this same king must seek the ways to conform as best as possible to the views of the Lord and to bring this divine enterprise to perfection. What are these paths to prosperity and how can you do your best to respond to God’s grace? History shows us how.

The Spirit of Conquest, the Spirit of Commerce and Economic Theology Deeply damaged by the destruction of that centre of Jansenism, the Abbaye de Port-Royal-des-Champs in 1711, and by the promulgation of the papal bull Unigenitus against Quesnel’s theses in 1713, Abbé Jean-Baptiste d’Étemare (1682–1770), a pupil of Duguet, used scriptures and history to depict the Jansenists as martyrs. His frenzied figurism was restricted to an ever more violent denunciation of the persecution they suffered, a denunciation of the temporal power in general and Louis XIV in particular. The historical figurism of Duguet and Rollin does not involve such pessimism and above all does not focus on the quarrels between the Church and the royal power. The concern of these pedagogues is to show, by means of ancient history, that Louis XIV was one of those wicked princes sent by God, but that nothing is inevitable. If the Lord wills it, and if we do the right thing to comply with his views, it is quite possible that France and Europe will find prosperity again. To develop this argument, Jansenist pedagogues used the history of trade in antiquity; this is akin to a veritable economic theology. “It is a very great misfortune for a state,” affirms Duguet, “to be governed by a prince who seeks to increase by all kinds of means, who observes little loyalty in his treaties, who remains at peace only as long as he is forced to, who views with jealous eyes the happiness of others.” Too often this unseemly prince, to the disaster of his peoples, “undertakes unfortunate wars, which exhaust his kingdom of men & money;

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which destroy commerce; which extinguish the arts and sciences.” This is the reason why we must use, from “the old histories,” examples of a wise behaviour which we can, for the benefit of modern youth, contrast with “the depravity of the century.”40 For our Jansenist pedagogues, the prime mover of decline does indeed lie in conquest. Rollin constantly denounces—this, indeed, is one of the main guiding threads of his Histoire ancienne (1730–1738)—“those heroes of antiquity, so much vaunted, who instead of aiming only for the public good, followed nothing but the particular views of their interest and ambition.” Their disastrous policies of conquest “have simply had the usual effect of devastating land, destroying cities, and slaughtering men.” However, it is these “scourges of the human race” that we too often give as a model to children, whereas we should rather show them “the inventors of the arts and sciences,” who “worked for all centuries” and “provided for all of our needs.”41 For, once it has been aroused, the desire for conquests indeed leads to a disorderly love of easy riches, luxury, bad faith and robbery.42 This is precisely what happened to the Carthaginians, Romans and Greeks, who declined on account of the very vices that ensued from conquest. Carthage is the first example which Rollin discusses at length. Everything had started well for this hard-working city, as all the people assiduously devoted themselves to a productive occupation. The nobles and the wealthy “applied themselves to it with the same care as did the lesser citizens.” They “never lost their taste for diligence, patience, and hard work.” This is what made their Republic flourish, says Rollin, until the Carthaginians established themselves on the shores of Spain. From then on, “the conveniences and facilities” which they discovered “made them think of conquering these vast regions, and subsequently New Carthage, or Cartagena, gave the Carthaginians an empire in that country.” They began to work the gold and silver mines, which “cost the lives of an infinite number of slaves, who were treated with the utmost harshness” and which, above all, made the city warlike and bellicose through the ease with which it could pay for troops and fleets. When

40 Duguet, Institution d’un prince, vol. II, 523–527, 346. 41 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. X, 449–450, 284–286. See Duguet, Insitution d’un

prince, vol. II, 253–260. 42 Ibid., vol. II, 558; Rollin and Crevier, Histoire romaine, vol. I, 22–23.

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a state needs to defend itself, with its own citizens, their love of their homeland, and their zeal for the public good as its primary resources, war is acceptable in Rollin’s view. This is what Carthage did in its beginnings, when it freed itself from the tributes and harassment of its African neighbours.43 It was no longer the same when, with its “mercenary soldiers” from Numidia, the Balearics or Gaul, with this “venal blood,” Carthage set out to conquer, destroy and enslave its neighbours. The seeds of the collapse of this Republic were already germinating in its armies themselves, those. fortuitously matched parts which did not hold together by any natural, intimate, or necessary bond. No common and reciprocal interest united them to form a solid and unalterable body. No part showed any sincere affection for the success of its affairs and the prosperity of the state. They did not act with the same zeal, and they did not expose themselves to dangers with the same courage for a Republic that they regarded as foreign, and therefore as indifferent, as they would have done for their own homeland, whose happiness comprises the happiness of the citizens who compose it.

In addition to this discord and opportunism in the army, which could at any time turn against the city by passing over to the enemy, Carthage began to kindle jealousy among its neighbours and resentment and hatred among its conquered peoples, “disgusted by the weight and the shame of the yoke which they bore.” From then on, the city saw itself “shaken to its foundations” and if its trade declined due to the loss of a battle, it was close to “touching ruin, and gave way to discouragement and despair.” This disorder and decline associated with conquest were aggravated by “the scarcity of learned men” and “a marked indifference to all works of the mind,” which made the education of the young “very imperfect and very crude.”44 Hence a people full of vices, deceit and cruel passions, good at pillaging, but less good at creating. Gifted for trade, the Carthaginians amassed wealth “without knowing its true destination, and without knowing how to make a noble and worthy use of it.” They had an “excessive desire for hoarding and a disorderly love of gain,” a constant source of “injustice and bad practices.” But the vicefuelled triumphs of Carthage were to show that “whoever rises insolently 43 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. I, 216 and 241. 44 Ibid., 222–228.

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by pride is sooner or later brought down by a superior force.”45 And Rollin goes on to depict, over dozens of pages, the internal wars of the Carthaginians, the epidemic plagues they had to face, and the devastation they caused during the Punic Wars. He concludes that the destruction of the city by the Romans—presented as simply needing to defend themselves against an enemy thirsty for conquest and power—was the manifest work of divine justice. “[W]hat scripture teaches us,” he says, is. That a kingdom is transferred from one people to another because of the injustices, the violence, the outrages committed there, and the bad faith which reigns in different ways. Carthage is destroyed, because avarice, perfidy, and cruelty had there risen to their height. Rome will have the same fate, once its luxury, its ambition, its pride, its unjust usurpations, disguised under the false exterior of virtue and justice, will have forced the sovereign master and distributor of empires to give, by its fall, a great lesson to the universe.46

The stories of Carthage and Rome are perfectly similar to Rollin’s mind. Initially hardworking and wise, led by diligent, simple and virtuous men, these cities soon became corrupted by conquest and easy wealth that they then expended on debauchery and crime. Greece provides Rollin with other figures. He devotes a few passages to the laws of the legendary Lycurgus: the equal division of land, the ban on luxury and gold coins, the exaltation of bodily hygiene and frugality. He both praises and blames a policy that is perhaps admirable in certain aspects, but places excessive demands on human nature and thus does not foster the happiness of people. In particular, the pursuit of equal conditions and the promotion of an ascetic life seem to Rollin unattainable goals that can make citizens unhappy. He does not, however, fail to underline and praise the main goal of “Lycurgus” in establishing his laws, which was, “as Polybius & Plutarch have judiciously observed, to suppress & restrain the ambitions of his citizens, to prevent them from making conquests, and to force them in a way to shut themselves up within the walls of their country, without taking their aims or their pretensions any further.” This is the lesson to be learned from Lycurgus, if Rollin is to be believed. His laws were harsh, too harsh no doubt, but his aim—that 45 Ibid., 230–231 and 270. 46 Ibid., 566.

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of not forming conquerors—was pure: “He had made of them a people of soldiers and warriors, so that in the shadow of arms they might live in freedom, in moderation, in justice, in union, in peace, being content with their own land without usurping that of others.” This is “the true notion of what constitutes the solid glory of a truly happy state,” one which shows up the illusory nature of “the vain greatness of those Empires which have swallowed up kingdoms, & of those famous conquerors who owe all that they are to violence & usurpation.”47 Athens, of course, is a more ambiguous case, but the city offers Rollin a more worthy example than that of Rome. While the city did enjoy great victories, it long kept “the same distance from pomp and pleasure, the same zeal and the same ardour to defend its freedom and to preserve its ancient customs.” And Rollin gives us an explanation for this virtuous prosperity that the Greeks preserved for so long: they defeated peoples, but “it is true that they did not conquer them.” All this came to an end once and for all when the evil prince par excellence—Alexander—ended, as God willed, his disastrous enterprises in chaos and vice.48 For “false needs” and “superfluity,” all the debauchery of usurped wealth, “never fail to bring about the ruin of the most flourishing states; & the experience of all centuries & all nations shows only too well the truth of this maxim.”49 Only Cyrus, the King of Persia who was often also a conqueror, finds favour in Rollin’s eyes, but for very specific reasons. The historian traces the history of this great prince from the Cyropaedia (c. 370 BCE) of Xenophon and the Travels of Cyrus (1727) by Andrew Michael Ramsay,50 the disciple of Fénelon. All profane histories, says Rollin, praise “the extent and rapidity of his conquests, the intrepidity of his courage, the wisdom of his views and his designs […] but we do not see the secret principle of all these great qualities, nor the hidden spring that set them

47 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. II, 558–560. 48 Ibid., vol. VI, 722; Duguet, Institution d’un prince, vol. II, 516–517. Rollin sees

Alexander as “one of the least honourable men” of antiquity. According to Duguet, he was simply a thief driven by a ruthless and devastating ambition. It is worth noting that Louis XIV enjoyed being compared to Alexander: see Grell, Le dix-huitième siècle et l’Antiquité en France, vol. I, 452. See also Pierre Briant, Alexandre des Lumières. Fragments d’histoire européenne (Paris: Gallimard, 2012). 49 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. IX, 283–284 and 474–475. 50 Doohwan Ahn, “From Greece to Babylon: The Political Thought of Andrew Michael

Ramsay (1686–1743),” History of European Ideas 37 (2011): 421–437, 429.

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in motion.” For in Rollin’s eyes Cyrus is no ordinary conqueror. He does not like war, for it “often brings the ruin & desolation of peoples,” nor does he like riches or glory. As if to justify himself in the eyes of his readers, Rollin explains that Cyrus “should not be ranked among these famous brigands of the universe, these public enemies of mankind,” the conquerors, who sacrificed millions of men to their ambition and their greed. He was certainly not above reproach, but his wars were either retaliation against fierce aggressors or, above all, commandments from God to re-establish his empire on earth.51 As the prophet Isaiah explains, while he is a “blind and ungrateful prince” who does not know his master and his plans, it is “the almighty God of hosts who takes Cyrus by the hand, who walks in front of him, who leads him from town to town and from province to province, who subjugates the nations to him, who humbles the great of the earth in his presence, who breaks for him the brazen gates, who brings down the walls & ramparts of cities.” The reason behind these wonders could not be clearer: they are so that God, through Cyrus, can punish Babylon, free Judah, and rebuild the holy city of Jerusalem.52 For it was “God himself who had formed him to be the instrument and the executor of the designs of mercy which he had for his people.” Cyrus never fights for himself, but for the earthly and heavenly Jerusalems. God had given him a “happy nature,” but he took care that it would be cultivated by “an excellent education” by accustoming him to listen to the advice of his advisers, to cherish sobriety, moderation, the arts and knowledge. So as soon as Babylon was taken, the king assembled his officers to tell them “that the only way to preserve what they had acquired was to persevere in their ancient virtue: the fruit of victory was not to abandon themselves to pleasures and idleness” and that for this it was imperative, as in Persia, to give the greatest care to the education of children.53 If Duguet and Rollin are to be believed, conquering civilisations— except in cases where God is thereby leading princes to establish his kingdom—are thus inevitably destroyed by their vices. Now, on the one hand, the poor education of the nobles, who are trained only for war and idleness, and, on the other, the lack of a culture of arts and sciences throughout society, play a great part in this detestable and deleterious

51 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. II, 269–270 and 309–317. 52 Ibid., vol. I, xviii–xx. 53 Ibid., vol. IX, 305.

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spirit of conquest. According to Duguet and Rollin, agriculture and commerce, literature, mathematics, and physics, first revered and practised by the kings, captains and nobles of Carthage, Rome, and all of Greece, gradually become obsolete due to the conquests and easy riches that flow from them. It is at this point that empires become impoverished and then disappear. Whereas, in its infancy, Rome raised its children in the love of labour, and the citizens all lived in like manner, as soon as they became conquerors, “it was necessary that their lands should be maintained as before, & bring in as much income.”54 Now this “drawback is still today only too common among the nobility, & is a natural consequence of the bad education which is given to it. Except in wartime, most of our gentlemen spend their lives being complete useless. They also view agriculture, the arts, and commerce as beneath them, & they would think themselves dishonoured by it.” For our Jansenist pedagogues, the cultivation of land has fallen into “contempt.” It has become “the most vile & lowest exercise in the judgment of pride; & the useless arts which serve only luxury & pleasure are protected, all those who work for the abundance & happiness of others are left in a state of wretchedness.”55 Here we find the pedagogical projects of the group that formed around Fénelon, the abbot Claude Fleury and Ramsay. The first two, highly critical of the reign of Louis XIV, view the conqueror prince as the enemy of mankind. They want to see rulers cultivate their lands from within rather than expanding the frontiers outwards, and feel that the ambition of the princes who lead them to war drags them into a destructive luxury that corrupts their manners.56 But it is above all in Duguet and in the Rollin of the Histoire ancienne that the contrast between, on the one hand, conquest as the mother of all vices and, on the other, education for work and the encouragement of agriculture, the arts and sciences, is most clearly expressed. Rollin’s history of trade is essentially an illustration of this centuries-old conflict, which he summarised in 1736 by

54 Ibid., vol. IX, 305. 55 Ibid., vol. II, 569–610; Duguet, Institution d’un prince, vol. II, 347; Rollin, Histoire

ancienne, vol. X, 295 and 356–357; Duguet, Institution d’un prince, vol. II, 258. 56 François-Xavier Cuche, Une pensée sociale catholique. Fleury, La Buyère et Fénelon (Paris: Cerf, 1991), 312; Doohwan Ahn, “The politics of royal education: Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus in early eighteenth-century Europe,” The Leadership Quarterly 19 (2008): 439–452, 442. See also François-Xavier Cuche, “L’économie du Télémaque, l’économie dans le Télémaque,” Littératures classiques 70, no. 3 (2009): 103–118.

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reusing the formula of the Essai politique sur le commerce (1734) by Melon: “the spirit of conquest & the spirit of commerce are mutually exclusive in the same nation.” Rollin adds: “The former necessarily leads to tumult, disorder, desolation, & spreads trouble everywhere: the latter, on the contrary, breathes only peace & tranquillity.”57 The intertextuality is interesting, because if Melon is probably the originator of the formula, there is little doubt that Rollin’s demonstrations of the constant opposition between conquest and trade in that bestseller the Histoire ancienne, the first volumes of which date from 1730, marked the minds of a whole generation. Immediately following his famous formula, furthermore, Melon sets out the history of Carthage and Rome, so as to deplore how the spirit of conservation and trade had not at that time made enough progress to subjugate the spirit of conquest of those cities.58 Stripped of any providential character, Melon’s history of trade nonetheless remains a part of a larger movement in the 1730s in which Jansenist pedagogues played a decisive role. If we focus on the question of the arts in general, the historical figurism of Duguet and Rollin sees it as a worrying sign of declining civilisations when these turn to conquest and begin to abandon what had once brought them to the highest level of prosperity: agriculture. According to these pedagogues, this was the “source of true goods,” and the early Romans, senators and generals did not disdain not only to write about the cultivation of the land, but also to set their hands to the plough.59 Yet nothing was more apt to encourage discovery and emulation than when the first citizens devoted their works and days to farming. Rollin illustrates this idea with many examples of ancient sages whose plans, productions,

57 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. X, 449–450. See Melon, Essai politique sur le commerce, 97. 58 Concerning Melon’s critique of conquest, see Jesús Astigarraga, “La dérangeante découverte de l’autre: traductions et adaptations espagnoles de l’Essai politique sur le commerce (1734) de Jean-François Melon,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 57, no. 1 (2010): 91–118. See also Arnaud Orain, “Melon the Modern: Eastern Tales and Rococo Economics,” in Commerce Versus Conquest. The Political Economy of Jean-François Melon, ed. John Shovlin and Koen Stapelbroak, forthcoming. 59 Ancient history “tells us Consuls & Dictators set their hands to the plough. How lowly a task in appearance! But those hands, calloused by rustic labours, sustained the tottering state and saved the Republic,” Rollin, De la manière d’enseigner et d’étudier les Belles lettres, vol. I, xxiv. See also Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. V, 280–284 and Duguet, Institution d’un prince, vol. II, 256–257 and 263–264.

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expenditures and revenues he details.60 Guided by their views of selfinterest, Rollin and Duguet believe that another important dimension of thriving agriculture is the encouragement of private land ownership for farmers. Hostile to sharecropping and renting, they want “every father of a family […], to have some portion of land which belongs to him as his own, so that this field, dearer to him than any other, may be cultivated with care.”61 The livestock issue is also close to their hearts. Rollin specifies in abundant detail the species involved, the kind of labour, and the fattening of the land by oxen in Antiquity; and Duguet, referring to the ancient Romans, says how it is necessary to stop tax collectors seizing animals and farmers killing young animals.62 Here again, the similarity with the works of Fénelon and Fleury is undeniable. Both make agriculture the great historical caesura which brings prosperity and civilisation. In their models, everyone works on the land, including kings and nobles. They also champion the idea that land should belong to those who cultivate it, with agriculture being the model for a wise, healthy and prosperous life. But unlike Duguet and Rollin, Fénelon and Fleury stick to the idea of producing only the goods necessary for life. There is a threshold of prosperity that they do not wish to see crossed. Their landed economy is partly self-sufficient, and they often praise poverty and frugality,63 which does not quite fit the model of prosperity of the Jansenist pedagogues. For trade is, according to Rollin, “the most solid foundation of civil society” and a prince is nothing if trade comes to an end.64 After having described the trade routes, the ports, and the goods which circulated between the great civilisations of Antiquity, he investigates the mines and metallurgical techniques, then the manufacturies and dyes. Duguet draws on Xenophon and the example of Emperor Severus to show how necessary it is to encourage trade and mechanical inventions.65 Regarding 60 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. X, 294–319; see also Rollin and Crevier, Histoire romaine, vol. XII, 162 and 265–266. 61 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. X, 306; Duguet, Institution d’un prince, vol. II, 261–

262. 62 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. X, 341–342; Duguet, Institution d’un prince, vol. II, 267–270. 63 Cuche, Une pensée sociale catholique, 306–335. 64 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. X, 358–362. 65 Ibid., vol. X, 365–447; Duguet, Institution d’un prince, vol. II, 272–285.

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legislation, the two pedagogues defend the principle of “freedom and protection.” “It has often been said, and it is a generally accepted maxim, that Commerce asks only for freedom, & protection: freedom, kept within wise limits, by not hampering those who exercise it by subjugation to rules that are inconvenient, onerous, & often unnecessary; protection, by giving them all the help they need.” Thus the good princes must make the merchants aware of the regulations which concern them, and meddle in trade “only to severely ban fraud and bad faith from it,” and finally leave “all the profit to his subjects who have laboured for it.” While the protection of foreign merchants is one of the sovereign’s duties, there is no question of freely allowing manufactured foreign goods into the kingdom.66 Regarding manufacturies, while Rollin and Duguet agree that some of them maintain “pernicious arts,” it is nevertheless important to support them when they employ a large amount of labour.67 This distrust of manufacturies is much more pronounced in Claude Fleury, who is even worried about there being too many craftsmen. Fénelon, in his model of the Republic of Salento, is also ambivalent: while he seems to accept the development of the arts and industry, he defends the idea of sumptuary laws and castigates the production and trade of luxury goods. However, he praises a free-trade maritime universe, in which the prince is not involved, or not very much.68 But rather than Fénelon and his Télémaque, Rollin’s formula on “freedom and protection” recalls almost word for word that of Melon in 1734 (“The greatest of maxims & the best known, is that trade requires only freedom and protection”). Even if they are far from sharing Melon’s views on the benefits of luxury,69 the Jansenist pedagogues are—by their method and by the conclusions they draw from it—undoubtedly closer to him than to Fénelon and Fleury. This point, which brings us back to the figurist conception of history and the benefits of individual interest among the Jansenist pedagogues, will provide an appropriate conclusion to this study.

66 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. X, 450–451; Duguet, Institution d’un prince, vol. II,

279. 67 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. X, 451; Duguet, Institution d’un prince, vol. II, 283–

289. 68 Cuche, Une pensée sociale catholique, 291–303. 69 Melon, Essai politique sur le commerce, 97, 100, 230 and 129–157.

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Conclusion Unlike Fénelon, and especially Fleury, Duguet and Rollin did not seek the advent of a frugal and agrarian civilisation, because the problem for them was not so much that of enrichment, as that of the means to achieve it. They did not reject the search for happiness and earthly pleasure, including material pleasure.70 Wealth, manufacturing, large-scale commerce and the agricultural productivity of large estates were not in their opinion to be condemned. The thalassocracies—powers based on maritime trade—such as Athens or Carthage in their early days, had “the empire of the sea, which made their Republic flourish.” Duguet and Rollin had nothing against this, because the underlying idea is always the same: as long as the nobles, the rulers, the princes and the merchants thought only of improving their agricultural estates or their trade, as long as they stuck to peaceful trade, as long as they cultivated the arts, letters and sciences, their civilisations flourished, and rightly and justly so.71 But as soon as they turned away from it, in Carthage and Rome especially, in favour of the conquest of territories and of an idle and ostentatious life, the decline became inevitable. The princes, the nobles, the merchants, who passed from a life of labour to a life of easy riches obtained by violence and predation, were swallowed up, as God intended. Of course, ostentation, luxury and unbridled consumption are tokens of reprehensible lifestyles in the eyes of these Jansenist pedagogues. But— and here they are close to Melon—they are on the verge of taking a decisive step by approving of agricultural and technical improvements, progress in trade and manufacturing, as well as the growth of material wealth. The prosperity of the people, a certain comfort among the greatest number and the fortune of a few individuals, if they are the result of a productive activity, of hard creative work, of a properly understood individual interest, are not only commendable, they are indeed “the figures” of higher goods, the representations of a divine anointing. Duguet’s history of trade, and even more Rollin’s, is predictive: it explains what will be on the basis of what has been. Better yet, this story shows how Christians can help God in all of his earthly endeavours.

70 Alimento has clearly stated this point; see Alimento, “Entre rang et mérite,” 26–29. 71 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. I, 215; vol. IX, 284; vol. X, 369–379 and 449–450;

Rollin and Crevier, Histoire romaine, vol. IV, 28–30.

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The good prince who has been able to establish the wealth of his kingdom by the means indicated will be able to claim even more in the other kingdom, that of heaven. However, the king who raises tribute and wealth from his people and those whom he has conquered by force, who maintains idleness, luxury and debauchery, and disdains productive activities, is an impious man who will be punished, and his subjects, who have earned it, will be punished with him. So indeed, grace is given by God and not acquired—but in Duguet and Rollin this does not mean that we should not help the Lord: quite the contrary. One cannot, perhaps, buy one’s salvation, say the Jansenist pedagogues; and becoming prosperous through diligent and non-violent work will not replace divine election if one has not been chosen. But this is exactly the point: perhaps we have received salvation, perhaps we are a good prince sent by God, or a good subject whom he has elected, and in this case we must show ourselves worthy of his trust by conforming to what the history of trade teaches: we must use the means of gaining a righteous enrichment. This form of economic theology, one which passes through the figurist conception of history is another way of arriving at the Jansenist ethics of capitalism that Jean-Claude Perrot had sketched out.

CHAPTER 3

The Physiocratic Counter-History of Trade Arnault Skornicki

Introduction There are two ways in which it may seem incongruous to view Physiocracy as part of the history of trade. Not only were the économistes —as the Physiocrats were known—deemed to have been insensitive to history, but they also opposed the other great economic school of the time, the science of commerce of Vincent de Gournay’s circle. Yet, in the mid-eighteenth century Gournay’s circle—especially figures such as François Véron de Forbonnais and Georges-Marie Butel-Dumont1 —promoted (though it did not invent) the history of trade in France. The history of trade was 1 See also another member of the Gournay’s circle, André Morellet, especially his Prospectus d’un nouveau Dictionnaire de commerce (Paris: Estienne frères, 1769), 48– 50. On this circle, see Loïc Charles, Frédéric Lefebvre and Christine Théré, eds., Le cercle de Vincent de Gournay: savoirs économiques et pratiques administratives en France au milieu du XVIII e siècle (Paris: Institut national d’études démographiques, 2011). On the way that Gournay’s circle wrote about the history of trade, see Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce: Globalization and the French Monarchy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 103–110 and 124–128. On the epistemological and political contrast between Physiocracy and the science of commerce, see Simone Meyssonnier,

A. Skornicki (B) University of Paris Nanterre, Nanterre, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Alimento and A. Della Fontana (eds.), Histories of Trade as Histories of Civilisation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80087-1_3

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not a mere sub-genre of the historical discipline, rather it was an attempt to rethink the way the history of civilisations was written by focusing on their economic dynamics, without excluding institutional and moral factors. Some commentators have, however, criticised Physiocracy and relegated it to being an abstract and deductive, or even scientistic and static, economic analysis. Turgot, in the view of such critics, at least had the merit of integrating history into political economy,2 just as Marx founded historical materialism.3 However, other commentators have noted the presence of a form of historical reflection in Quesnay and his followers. In a pioneering analysis, Weulersse saw them as the precursors of historical materialism,4 and Meek concurs with this view.5 In my previous work, I too established the existence of a philosophy of history in Quesnay and Mirabeau, based on the contrast between landed and movable property.6 In addition, Paul Cheney has shown that the économistes by no means neglected history: between 1765 and 1772, twenty per cent of the 1,550 articles in their main periodical, the copious Éphémérides du Citoyen, were devoted to the history and colonial trade.7 This proportion is comparable to the number of articles on history published in two major generalist reviews, the Journal des Savants and the Mémoires de Trévoux.8 Indeed, history very soon became a crucially important factor at the core of Quesnay and Mirabeau’s approach, from the first economic

La balance et l’horloge: la genèse de la pensée libérale en France au XVIII e siècle (Montreuil: Editions de la Passion, 1989), 279–292. See also Arnault Skornicki, L’économiste, la cour et la patrie: l’économie politique dans la France des Lumières (Paris: CNRS, 2011), 203–210. 2 Catherine Larrère, “Histoire et nature chez Turgot,” in Sens du devenir et pensée de l’histoire au temps des Lumières, ed. Bertrand Binoche and Franck Tinland (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2000), 178–208. 3 Jean Cartelier, Surproduit et reproduction: la formation de l’économie politique classique (Grenoble: Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 1976), 48–49. 4 Georges Weulersse, Le mouvement Physiocratique en France de 1756 à 1770 (Paris: F. Alcan, 1910), vol. 2, 129–141. 5 Ronald L. Meek, “Smith, Turgot, and the ‘Four Stages’ Theory,” History of Political Economy 3, no. 1 (1 March 1971): 11 and 16. 6 Skornicki, L’économiste, la cour et la patrie, 188–202. 7 Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce, 150–151. 8 On average, between a quarter (for the first) and a third (for the latter) of their output in terms of characters (not articles) over the period 1715–1789, according to the calculations of Jean Ehrard and Jacques Roger, in Le Journal des Savants et les Mémoires de Trévoux. Livre et société dans la France du XVIII e siècle I (1965): 35–39 (quoted in

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articles of the former to the Lettres sur la dépravation et la restauration de l’ordre légal (1769), preceded by the Philosophie rurale (1763), of the latter. This interest in history accorded with the enthusiasm of the Parisian literati in the eighteenth century.9 The inventory of Quesnay’s library mentions more than eighty titles relating to history, that is, twenty per cent of the total (excluding medicine and surgery),10 and a quarter of the references (thirteen out of fifty-one) cited in his writings.11 This keen interest was even more marked in the case of the Marquis de Mirabeau: more than half of his works fall under the “History” rubric in the sales catalogue of his library.12 He was perhaps the Physiocrat (along with Roubaud) who contributed the most to historical discussion. Furthermore, history preoccupied many of their disciples, and was a theme of the “Tuesdays,” the Physiocratic meetings that the Marquis organised in his Parisian home after 1767. Thus, during the years 1773– 1774, Baudeau discussed “the history of Solon” and Thales, while the future Comte de Mirabeau talked about Athens and Sparta, Rome, and the English constitution.13 But in spite of that, Paul Cheney sees Physiocratic history less as a scientific project than a concession to public opinion: the Physiocrats, in

Chantal Grell, L’histoire entre érudition et philosophie: étude sur la connaissance historique à l’âge des Lumières [Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1993], 7). 9 Grell, L’histoire entre érudition et philosophie, 6–10. 10 Archives Départementales des Yvelines, Étude Huber Versailles, Minutes Thibault,

29 December 1774. Gino Longhitano has reconstituted Quesnay’s library on the basis of this inventory, see Jean Cartelier and Gino Longhitano, eds., Quesnay and Physiocracy: Studies and Materials (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012), 93–240. 11 In the bibliography of works and articles quoted by Quesnay drawn up by the editors of François Quesnay, see Christine Théré, Loïc Charles and Jean-Claude Perrot, eds., Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes (Paris: Institut national d’études démographiques, 2005), vol. II, 1147–1454. 12 Catalogue de la Bibliothèque de feu M. le Marquis de Mirabeau (Paris: Chez Nyon, 1791). 13 Pierre-Samuel Du Pont, “Discours prononcé à la clôture de la huitième année des assemblées économiques tenues cette année chez Mr. Le Marquis de Mirabeau,” in Victor Riqueti Mirabeau and Pierre-Samuel Dupont de Nemours, Carl Friedrichs von Baden brieflicher Verkehr mit Mirabeau und du Pont. Herausgegeben von der badischen historischen Commission (Heidelberg, C. Winter, in-8°, 1892), vol. 2, 112–113; ibid., “Discours de Du Pont pour la clôture de la huitième année des Assemblées Économiques chez Mr. Le Marquis de Mirabeau le 13 mai 1774,” 201.

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his view, consented to the narrative genre in order to broaden their audience beyond the circle of specialists in political economy.14 The present article offers a revision of this point of view. The économistes did not limit history to the role of popularising economic theory, but did indeed plan a science of history. This science was at the same time a counter-history of trade, as Cheney has highlighted in connection with the colonial question and a neglected Physiocrat, the Abbé Roubaud and his Histoire générale de l’Asie, de l’Afrique et de l’Amérique (first volume published in 1770). But, apart from those two issues, the économistes proposed a global history of the process of civilisation, in which land ownership and the agricultural sector were the main guidelines. I have not found any clear, synthetic statement of the Physiocrats’ philosophy of history, for which reason it has been necessary to reconstruct it, something that is a delicate matter due to the dispersed nature of their analyses. I have mostly relied on the abundant print output of the économistes, including their main periodical, the Éphémérides du Citoyen, but have also made use of their letters and manuscripts. My analysis focuses on the Physiocratic clique (“clique” in the sense found in the sociology of networks), namely the acquaintances mobilised for a considerable time around Quesnay and Mirabeau, who formed a group publicly organised for the development and promotion of “rural philosophy”: in particular—as regards the subject that interests us here—PierreSamuel Du Pont, Pierre-Paul Lemercier de La Rivière, Nicolas Baudeau, Guillaume-François Le Trosne, Pierre-Joseph-André Roubaud,15 as well as Jean-François Vauvilliers, whose participation in Physiocracy was shortlived but significant. The period under review spans about thirty years (from the end of the 1750s to the 1780s), during which the group gradually came together (and perhaps fell apart) while a series of political upheavals brought about a crisis in the French Empire.16

14 Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce, 154–156. 15 Roubaud will not be considered here: see the above-mentioned work by Cheney,

Revolutionary Commerce, as well as Ann Thomson, “Diderot, Roubaud et l’esclavage,” Recherches sur Diderot et sur l’Encyclopédie 35 (October 2003): 69–94. 16 On the functioning and division of labour within the Physiocrat group, see Skornicki, L’économiste, la cour et la patrie, ch. V and VI, and, more recently, Loïc Charles and Christine Théré, “The Physiocratic Movement: A Revision,” in The Economic Turn: Recasting Political Economy in Enlightenment Europe, ed. Sophus Reinert and Steven Kaplan (London, New York: Anthem Press, 2019), 35–70.

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Without disregarding certain variations between the authors and over time, it is still possible to identify, if not a theoretical coherence, at least a common grammar in a corpus shaped by close cooperation between the members of the group. This grammar does not imply, as we will see, a unity of views on all subjects. But it does underlie a set of common rules for establishing right and wrong: the primacy of economic analysis in the writing of history; the possibility of a conjectural history of humanity; and the refocusing of the history of nations on territorial heritage rather than on international trade. On all these points, it systematically reverses the history of trade, at least as practised by the science of commerce.17

The Epistemological Status of Historical Knowledge and “The Key to the History of Nations” During the eighteenth century, new ways of writing history appeared to have been linked to the social reconfiguration of the Republic of Letters in the age of Enlightenment, particularly in France: the decline of jurists and theologians in intellectual production18 was accompanied by the development of a secular culture, distanced from the university and from courtly society. What Voltaire called the “philosophy of history” unfolded in several directions, most of which represented a break from narrative entertainment, an apology for power, providentialism, and factual scholarship, in order to introduce a distanced reflection capable of ordering the series of established facts of the past.19 By their contribution, the Physiocrats also intended, said Mirabeau, to make the “historians Philosophers.”20

17 This article has benefited from valuable comments from the editors of this volume as well as from Thérence Carvalho, though I alone am responsible for its final shape. My most sincere thanks to them. 18 William F. Church, “The Decline of the French Jurists as Political Theorists, 1660– 1789,” French historical studies 5, no. 1 (1967): 1–40. 19 On the way history was written in the eighteenth century, see Binoche and Tinland, Sens du devenir et pensée de l’histoire au temps des Lumières; Dieter Gembicki, Clio au XVIII e siècle: Voltaire, Montesquieu et autres disciples (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008). Bertrand Binoche, Ecrasez l’infâme! Philosopher à l’âge des Lumières (Paris: La Fabrique, 2018). 20 Victor Riqueti Mirabeau, Philosophie rurale, ou Économie générale et politique de l’agriculture… (Amsterdam [i.e. Paris]: Libraires associés, 1763), 172.

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If Quesnay criticises the discipline of history, it is insofar as the rambling and disorderly form of knowledge it imparts is subject to factual inaccuracy and blindness to causes.21 However, he first targets a certain short-sighted, pleasant but useless way of writing history: A historian transmits the military exploits of his nation to posterity; he dazzles readers with the marvellous nature of the operations of war. But if he ignores the resources of economic and political government, he writes a book more entertaining than instructive.22

Mirabeau puts forward a materialist and even sociological explanation for the blindness of this dominant historiography. History, the daughter of an urban civilisation which cultivates the liberal arts, was written by townspeople and for townspeople, polarised by battles and courtly intrigues: “to build cities, to adorn cities, to capture cities, to conquer cities, to destroy cities: this is how they view History.”23 The problem does not lie so much in the narrative character of their history, but rather in its superficiality: living far from the countryside, far from the realities of production, “historians have no other object than the narration of the marvellous events of a game of chance.”24 So can one envisage a history written not from the city, but from the countryside? One of the seminal works of Physiocracy, Philosophie rurale places history in sixth position in its classification of the sciences (after mathematics, physics, natural law, metaphysics and grammar): as a “science commemorating past events,” it “instructs us by the experience of the actions of men.” Quesnay specifies in a note in the manuscript that it is an “art” rather than a real science, like grammar or logic, because rather than providing much new knowledge it helps to skilfully or pleasantly give it narrative shape.25 He therefore seems to relegate history to the rank of

21 Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce, 144–145. 22 Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, “Hommes,” vol. I, 266. This

precocious thesis is repeated several times: Quesnay, “Extrait des économies royales de M. de Sully,” 437n3; Mirabeau, Philosophie rurale, 172.; Victor Riqueti Mirabeau, Lettres sur la dépravation et la restauration de l’ordre légal (London: Wilcox, 1769), vol. 1, 10. 23 Victor Riqueti de Mirabeau, Entretiens d’un jeune Prince avec son Gouverneur (London: Moutard, 1785), 227. 24 Mirabeau, Philosophie rurale, 402. 25 Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. I, 764.

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a narrative illustration of science.26 Despite its modest rank, history does indeed occupy an important strategic role for the Physiocrats. Unsurprisingly, Mirabeau is the most emphatic in his defence of its didactic necessity: “Do not think, Monsieur, that I disdain history; I believe, on the contrary, that the worst ignorance for a Nation is the ignorance of the deeds and achievements, the virtues and labours, and even the vices and disorders of one’s fathers.”27 This conception seems to conform to the classical definition of history as “life’s teacher” (Historia magistra vitae), to use Cicero’s expression in De Oratore. This presupposes a cyclical conception of the past that written history must recapture, as a series of lessons and predictable examples to follow or avoid. Reinhart Koselleck argued that the Enlightenment moved away from this conception in favour of an idea of history open to the future and the unpredictable.28 However, the Physiocrats defended an original position. According to them, history—defined as the reality of the past—is more chaotic than cyclical, and in itself does not provide any principles for the government of human beings. On the other hand, history—considered this time as writing of the past—can enlighten people on the condition that it starts out from the laws of natural order revealed by economics. It is only on this proviso that history can become life’s teacher or, at least, be instructive for citizens and legislators. If the historical discipline appears secondary in relation to economic analysis, its educational function remains essential: and that is why Mirabeau gave it pride of place in his books on the education of princes.29 History—as empirical knowledge—has no lessons for either theory or rulers: only economics is capable of giving the right principles to the legislator.

26 Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce, 144–150. For example, see F. Quesnay, Despotisme de la Chine in Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. II, 1071, 1145. 27 Mirabeau, Lettres sur la dépravation et la restauration de l’ordre légal, vol. I, 75. 28 Reinhart Koselleck, “Historia magistra vitae: The Dissolution of the Topos into the

Perspective of a Modernized Historical Process,” in Futures Past: on the Semantics of Historical Time (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 26–42. 29 See especially Mirabeau, Entretiens d’un Jeune Prince Avec Son Gouverneur (London: Moutard, 1785), vol. I, 221–242, and also seven (out of eighteen) articles in Victor de Riqueti Mirabeau, Education civile d’un prince, ed. Charles de Butré (Dourlac: Chez Muller, 1788). Many thanks to Gabriel Sabbagh for pointing out the existence of this work to me.

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On the other hand, its educational virtue is of great value, not only for princes but also for all citizens. Starting from sensualistic premises, Quesnay concludes that “the historical enumerations of the former population of the kingdom […] are speaking proofs of the calculation of production”: “Proof necessary for those who respond only to facts.”30 Indeed, the imaginative faculty provides support for the capacity of reasoning, notes Du Pont: “The historical facts in this regard are clearly confirmed by the philosophical truths. […] We are not surprised that a thing is, when we know that it was bound to be. And we can more clearly see the reasons why it was bound to be, when we see that it did indeed happen.”31 The “historical facts” in no way prove the truths of economic science: on the contrary, it is these latter truths which give them a coherence which they do not themselves provide, and this enables them to be arranged in a series even if they occur haphazardly to our senses. Reason and science are therefore the guides which make possible the establishment of facts and their correct interconnection; and this in turn makes it possible to alert public opinion to the “evidence” of the order of causes and effects.32 In a similar fashion, Lemercier de La Rivière calls on history in his L’Intérêt général de l’Etat (1770), the third part of which is devoted to illustrating the thesis of the absolute and unlimited freedom of the wheat trade. Against Galiani’s relativism, Lemercier de la Rivière set out to establish the veracity of the theory by an illustrative use of history. Vauvilliers, in his review of the work, sums it up as follows: whether in England, France or other nations, “in all times and in all places, freedom has always achieved this astonishing phenomenon, the possibility of which had been proved by calculation in the second part.”33

30 Note by Quesnay in Georges Weulersse, Les Manuscrits économiques de François Quesnay et du Marquis de Mirabeau aux Archives nationales (M. 778 à M. 785) (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1910), 82. 31 Pierre-Samuel Du Pont, preamble to the article by Bigot de la Touanne annotated by Quesnay, “Comparaison des revenus des terres à la fin du XVIe siècle…” (1769) in Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. II, 1146. 32 Ibid. 33 Pierre-Paul Lemercier de la Rivière, La Liberté du commerce: œuvres économiques,

1765 et 1770, ed. Bernard Herencia (Geneva: Slatkine, 2013), 262. The analysis was published in instalments in the Éphémérides (1770, vols. II, III, V).

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However, history is not only educational and illustrative. It is one thing to deny the contribution of history to theory, but to deny the possibility of a scientific writing of history is quite another. If the mark of historical temporality is indeed the instability, the economic fluctuation and the precariousness of those states which seemed the most solid, it is due to a breach of the laws of the natural order: but this breach itself has its reasons, and disorder also has its logic. “Is the history of a nation then nothing other than the sad tale of its woes?” To this question, Le Trosne replies that another way of writing history is possible, that of the “interesting picture of the wealth of a nation.”34 Political economy, by renouncing the pleasant literary genre, appears to be the only way of elevating historical art to that of philosophical knowledge. The storytellers of battles and court intrigues do not deserve the title of historians: “They were ignorant of the principles of the revolutions they recount; they misunderstood the state of the basis of nations,” namely “the study of the essential objects of Economic Government (…) This is the key to the history of nations.”35 Taking up a remark by Quesnay, Mirabeau deplored the “Inattention of Historians” who fail to identify the deep roots of socio-political transformations: “The Writers who have transmitted to us the history of the revolutions of States, speak to us solely of revolutions of thrones, & disdain the revolutions in the riches of Nations, upon which, however, all thrones whatsoever are founded. No doubt these important remarks did not seem to them worthy of their attention, nor suitable for the amusement of the readers.”36

34 Guillaume-François Le Trosne, De l’Ordre social, ouvrage suivi d’un traité élémentaire sur la valeur, l’argent, la circulation, l’industrie et le commerce intérieur et extérieur (Paris: chez les frères De Bure, 1777), 183. 35 Note by Quesnay in Mirabeau and Quesnay, Traité de la monarchie (1757–1759), 199, my italics; ibid., 175n392. This theme appears almost everywhere, sometimes word for word: Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. II, “Hommes,” 266. Note by Quesnay in Weulersse, Les Manuscrits économiques de François Quesnay et du Marquis de Mirabeau aux Archives nationales (M. 778 à M. 785), 37. Reprinted in Victor de Riqueti Mirabeau, Mémoire sur l’agriculture envoyé à la trés-louable Société d’agriculture de Berne (L’Ami des Hommes, 5e partie) (Avignon: Hérissant, 1760), 104; Riqueti Mirabeau, Théorie de l’impôt (La Haye: Chez Benjamin Gibert, 1761), ii. 36 Mirabeau, Philosophie rurale, ou Économie générale et politique de l’agriculture, 172. Compare with Quesnay’s manuscript, published in Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. II, 765.

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In accordance with the teaching of his masters, Du Pont wondered how “to cast a philosophical gaze upon history.” His answer seems simple (even reductive): “the prosperity of Empires” and “their deterioration” can be directly derived “from the income drawn from land in the different eras that can be compared.”37 It is therefore the volume of advances (of capital invested in the agricultural sector) and the resulting level of net income that condition the sustainability of states. In other words, the movements of history depend on fluctuations in the net product of agriculture, which must lead the historian to abandon the short timescale of events to focus on the long-term evolution of land income. In the same line of argument, the model of historical work that Du Pont proposes is the careful study by Dupré de Saint-Maur in his Essai sur les monnoies (1746): a long economic series, covering nearly eight centuries, of the relationships between wages and food prices.38 The historian must abandon heroic tales and the escapist literature, and follow the arid but fertile path opened by Dupré by going on to use the only archival sources capable of informing him about the fundamental shifts in the economy: in this case, seigniorial and monastic registers, those “old parchments eaten away by rats,”39 undoubtedly incomplete but always more instructive than the memoirs of marquises and marshals. Thus, following Dupré, Bigot de la Touanne (a collaborator of the Éphémérides ) compared the income from land between the end of the sixteenth century and that of his own time, through the study of a few cases. Careful study of this numerical comparison illustrates perfectly, according to Quesnay, his fiscal theses: land income depends on the degree of tax levied on productive capital (that of the ploughmen), a levy that varied according to the military activity of the kingdom. The peaceful reign of Henri IV, combined with the economic policy of Sully, coincided with the historical peak of the kingdom’s prosperity, which the bellicose policy of Richelieu and his successors later destroyed. A tax system that preserves agriculture and a purely defensive military policy are therefore

37 Éphémérides du citoyen (Paris: N. A Delalain, 1769), vol. XI, 79; in Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. II, 1145. 38 Nicolas-François Dupré de Saint-Maur, Essai sur les monnaies, ou réflexions sur le rapport entre l’argent et les denrée (Paris: J.-B. Coignard, 1746). 39 Du Pont, in Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes, vol. II, 1145.

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the two nourishing teats of good economic government.40 We can thus conclude from the patiently reconstructed historical “facts” that “France once enjoyed a degree of prosperity from which it is now far removed.”41 Let us recapitulate: the prevalence of economics, “the basis of nations,” in historical development, and the significance granted to the longue durée over the short timescale of events. At first glance, the Physiocratic position is hard to distinguish from that of Voltaire, who saw history in terms of the demographic and economic forces of peoples; as early as 1742 he contrasted “the history of men” with “the history of kings and courts.”42 Likewise, the history of trade by Forbonnais also criticises the narrative history of treaties, battles and coronations, proposing to re-establish the science of the past on the basis of overall economic movements: the point was to include “the motives & the springs which drove the policy of Nations,” namely commerce and the arts, because the “history of trade has fortunately become an essential part of the history of Empires.”43 However, the science of commerce differs from “rural philosophy” when it comes to the epistemological status of history. First, Forbonnais’s experimental and inductive approach draws on historical experience to derive general lessons about major economic mechanisms. Thus, by sketching the history of Franco-British relations in the light of their balance of trade, he picks up three lessons: there is an interdependence between the agricultural and manufacturing sectors; a nation must trade in everything it has; and the population is proportionate to the extent of 40 Observations of Quesnay on Bigot de la Touanne, “Comparaison des revenus des terres à la fin du XVIe siècle…” (1769) Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. II, 1151–1152. 41 Pierre-Samuel Du Pont, preamble by Bigot de la Touanne in Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. II, 1146. 42 See Voltaire, “Remarques sur l’histoire” (1742) and “Nouvelles considérations sur

l’histoire” (1744) in Voltaire, Œuvres de 1742–1745 (II), ed. Christopher Todd et al., The complete works of Voltaire, 28B (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2008), 155–164, 177–185. 43 François Véron Duverger de Forbonnais and Charles King, Le négotiant anglois ou traduction libre du livre intitulé: The British merchant, contenant divers mémoires sur le commerce de l’Angleterre avec la France, le Portugal et l’Espagne (Paris: Les Frères Estienne, 1753), i–ii. See also Gerónimo de Uztáriz and François Véron Duverger de Forbonnais, Théorie et pratique du commerce et de la marine. Traduction libre sur l’espagnol de don Geronymo de Ustariz, sur la seconde édition de ce livre à Madrid en 1742 (Paris: Vve Estienne et fils, 1753), 129. See Antonella Alimento, “Beyond the Treaty of Utrecht: Véron de Forbonnais’s French Translation of the British Merchant (1753),” History of European Ideas 40, no. 8 (17 November 2014): 1044–1066.

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trade.44 Secondly, the march of civilisation goes hand in hand with the progress of commerce, even if there is nothing triumphant or mechanical about this march. Thus, compared to the Middle Ages, the modern period is distinguished by its prosperity and civilisation: “Europe has more men than then, and the men are better than they were,” explains Voltaire, thanks to the expansion of its trade which can be measured by the “register of exports.”45 Forbonnais also justifies the crucial role of trade in driving the process of civilisation: international competition stimulates domestic production while limiting the use of arms. The history of trade thus allows us to grasp the balance of power and the dynamics of states. Finally, for Voltaire as for Forbonnais, universal history must connect the singular histories of nations with each other. On the other hand, both writers are more circumspect—or discreet—when it comes to narratives of the origins of human societies before the time when written records began: Voltaire was wary of the risk of indulging in fables, and limited himself to proposing conjectures tinged with scepticism (and prejudices) in the preliminary speech of the Essai sur les moeurs 46 ; Forbonnais took from the Jansenist historians a biblical treatment of the early ages of commerce,47 but devoted most of his discussion to empirical history. The Physiocrats opposed all of these theses. As we have seen, when explaining historical change they did not seek to start from the facts but from the principles of the natural order. It is no coincidence that the Éphémérides trained their criticism on the Histoire du commerce des deux Indes, as this was strongly influenced by Forbonnais48 : Raynal, in this view, had the usual defects of those historians who remain on the surface 44 François Véron Duverger de Forbonnais, Élémens du commerce… (Leiden and Paris: chez Briasson, 1754), vol. I, 43–45. 45 Voltaire, “Nouvelles considérations sur l’histoire,” in Writings of 1742–1745 (II), 182–183. 46 Jacques Solé, “Voltaire et les mythes des origines dans la Philosophie de l’histoire,” in Primitivisme et mythes des origines dans la France des Lumières: 1680–1820, ed. Chantal Grell and Christian Michel (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1989), 129– 134. 47 Arnaud Orain, “The Second Jansenism and the Rise of French Eighteenth-Century Political Economy,” History of Political Economy 46, no. 3 (2014): 473–475. 48 Antonella Alimento, “Entre rivalité d’émulation et liberté commerciale: la présence de l’école de Gournay dans l’Histoire des deux Indes,” in Raynal’s ‘Histoire Des Deux Indes’: Colonialism, Networks and Global Exchange, ed. C. P. Courtney and Jenny Mander (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2015), 59–71.

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of things, dispersing their effort in pleasant storytelling and edifying testimonies, all the while getting tangled up in contradictions.49 Also, the économistes refused to make the march of civilisation coincide with the progress of “commerce,” or, rather, of international trade. Finally, they were among the main inventors of the hypothetical history of mankind.

A Counter-History of Civilisation: The Physiocratic Theory of Stages It is well known that the Scottish School developed a model for the development of human societies that worked in stages, as Andrew Skinner pointed out in a classic article.50 This “conjectural history,” to use Dugald Stewart’s expression, is an inferred reconstruction of what we know about human nature. It is remarkable to note that the Marquis de Mirabeau, long before Stewart (who was very familiar with Physiocracy), spoke of a history taken from “our assumptions based on the nature of things”51 : namely, of a hypothetical history of the early ages of mankind, formulated in the almost total absence of sources. The Physiocrats thus proposed their own version of the natural history of mankind, to use Bertrand Binoche’s expression.52 This latter takes its distance from both the biblical account (even if Mirabeau considered them compatible)53 and the inductive approach. Let me remind the reader of the Scottish framework developed by Adam Smith, John Millar and Dugald Stewart (with variations). Each stage of the process is related to a determined mode of subsistence and a system of property: hunting (primitive society), breeding (pastoral age), agriculture (feudal age), trade (developed and urbanised society based

49 Éphémérides du citoyen (Paris: N. A. Delalain, 1772), vol. III, 182. The article may be by Du Pont. Turgot makes similar remarks: see his Letter to Condorcet, 14 July 1772, in Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Correspondance inédite de Condorcet et de Turgot: 1770–1779, ed. Charles Henry (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970), 93. 50 Andrew Skinner, “Economics and History—The Scottish Enlightenment,” Scottish Journal of Political Economy 12, no. 1 (February 1965): 1–22. 51 Mirabeau, Philosophie rurale, 160. 52 Bertrand Binoche, Les trois sources des philosophies de l’histoire: 1764–1798 (Paris:

Hermann, 2013), Part II. 53 Mirabeau, Entretiens d’un Jeune Prince Avec Son Gouverneur, vol. I, 223–224.

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on trade). The passage from one stage to the next can be considered progress, but it is neither automatic nor free from drawbacks: there was no unlimited enthusiasm among the Scots for a modernity based on trade.54 In a late manuscript, Mirabeau retrospectively attributed the invention of theory of stages to Physiocracy: his list of the “four kinds of human societies”55 bears a resemblance to the Scottish typology. Meek, without knowing this text, already counted the Physiocrats among the precursors of the four stages theory.56 However, the Physiocratic version of the theory of stages does not conform completely to the standard one. Quesnay shares the same presupposition with the theory of stages: “Men have come together in different forms of societies, depending on the necessary conditions of subsistence that have placed them there.”57 While he here enumerates six types of conditions (“hunting, fishing, grazing, agriculture, trade, brigandage”), it is the three stages that emerge in his seminal text of 1765, “Observations sur le Droit naturel des hommes réunis en société,” that his disciples would adopt with certain variations (which I will not go into).58 This contribution owes nothing, it seems, to Turgot’s Tableau philosophique des progrès de l’esprit humain (1751). On the other hand, fifteen years later, the latter reformulated his theory of stages in terms close to Physiocracy in his Réflexions sur la distribution et la formation des richesses (1766). Without going into details here, the Physiocrats’ theory of stages sets out the three great regimes of property as defined by Lemercier de la Rivière: personal property (of 54 Norbert Waszek, L’Ecosse des Lumières: Hume, Smith, Ferguson (Paris: PUF, 2003), 68–76. See also Paul Cheney, “Lumières écossaises,” in Dictionnaire Montesquieu [online], general ed. Catherine Volpilhac-Auger, ENS de Lyon, September 2013. URL: http://dic tionnaire-montesquieu.ens-lyon.fr/fr/article/1376427088/fr. 55 Victor de Mirabeau, “Observations sur la déclaration des droits du bon peuple de

Virginie”; Victor de Riquetti Mirabeau and Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, Dialogues Physiocratiques sur l’Amérique (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015), 84. 56 Ronald L. Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), ch. 3. See also Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2005), 368–372. 57 Quesnay, Despotisme de la Chine, 1019. 58 For a good starting point, see Philippe Steiner, La ‘science nouvelle’ de l’économie poli-

tique (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1998), 97–101. See also Gabriel Sabbagh, “Quesnay’s Thought and Influence Through Two Related Texts, Droit Naturel and Despotisme de La Chine, and Their Editions,” History of European Ideas 46, no. 2 (17 February 2020): 131–156.

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one’s body and of its actions), movable property (which is the fruit of labour), and real estate (land).59 These arise from the extension of the natural rights of human beings. These systems of appropriation of nature through work are successive and cumulative. They express a gradation in the territorialisation and stabilisation of the social order. The first stage corresponds to the state of nature, that is, to selfownership in the absence of political authority. Reduced to nomadism, these “peoples of Savages” cannot engage in sustainable agriculture: their only alternative is to live either from the spontaneous productions of nature (hunting, fishing and gathering), or from brigandage.60 However, this is still a precarious state of misery and scarce resources. The second stage corresponds to the birth of movable property, in other words animal domestication and the introduction of sheepfolds. This is a step towards settled living due to the regular nature of transhumance: this reduction in nomadism encouraged the discovery of agriculture. This pastoral and patriarchal society remains precarious, however, for it risks deteriorating into a state of predatory warfare (that is, barbarism).61 Finally, the third stage corresponds to plant domestication and the birth of agriculture, which corresponds with scarcity and precariousness: this sedentarisation is “a very important step towards the most perfect civilisation.”62 Demographic pressure put men under the obligation to raise the level of agricultural production by focusing on working the land. Two successive consequences followed: private property with the sharing of land; and the institution of a higher level of protection of property and persons, namely the state. Only sovereignty is capable of guaranteeing the security of landholdings and the undisturbed conditions essential to agricultural work.63 This stage marks the beginning of civilised nations. The Physiocrats differ from the Scottish School in two ways. On the one hand, they reject the thesis that the agricultural stage corresponds 59 Paul-Pierre Lemercier de la Rivière, L’ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques (London and Paris: J. Nourse Desaint, 1767), vol. I, ch. 2 and 3. 60 A society without property is made up only of “brigands who have neither territory nor fatherland, or else savage Nations who still live in a state of wretchedness,” Mirabeau, Philosophie rurale, 9. 61 Mirabeau and Du Pont de Nemours, Dialogues physiocratiques sur l’Amérique, 85. 62 N. Baudeau, “Des hérédités foncières,” in Éphémérides du citoyen, 1767, vol. II, 82. 63 Lemercier de la Rivière, L’ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques, vol. I, 13.

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to feudalism, in which Hume saw the tyranny of the “Gothic Barons,”64 marked by the servitude and harsh way of life of the peasants. On the contrary, the “universal history of the beginning of empires,” explains Du Pont, shows that the emerging agricultural nations, closer to nature than we are, intuitively established a government in conformity with the nature of things and of human beings. The most obviously advantageous natural order appears both eternal in principle, always realised with the advent of the third stage, but seldom perpetuated in the long term: “All agricultural Nations have in their origins passed through this happy epoch. The Chinese alone have been able to extend its duration.”65 Outside of China (and the Incas), therefore, the history of agricultural nations is essentially precarious. But how is it that human beings usually leave such a favourable state behind? The answer lies in the very dynamics of the agricultural stage: the conjunction of the development of wealth, demographic growth and the inevitable increase in inequalities tend not only to weaken social ties, but also to increase the number of temptations to attack the property of others. In the absence of public education, the most predatory greed is stimulated by the very benefits provided by the agricultural stage.66 Feudalism, in this sense, is just a degenerate form of the agricultural stage, born after the fall of the Carolingian Empire. As often when it comes to this period, Mirabeau proposes mitigating circumstances: despite its bellicose nature, it was less chaotic than the previous period, it ensured that the various peoples showed a certain degree of obedience, and appears as a phase of transition towards the reconstituted sovereignty of the kingdom of France.67 Quesnay is less indulgent: the “feudal policy” subjected land ownership to the military needs of the lords, who took into consideration only the ownership of the land and not that of the movable

64 David Hume, “Of Luxury,” in Political Discourses. The Second Edition (Edinburgh: R. Fleming, 1752), 35. 65 Pierre-Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, “Discours de l’éditeur,” in François Quesnay,

Physiocratie, ou Constitution naturelle du gouvernement le plus avantageux au genre humain, ed. Pierre-Samuel Dupont de Nemours (Paris: Chez Merlin, 1768), vol. I, xlv. 66 Ibid., xlvii–lii. 67 Mirabeau, Lettres sur la dépravation et la restauration de l’ordre légal, 29–30. See

also Weulersse, Les Manuscrits économiques de François Quesnay et du Marquis de Mirabeau aux Archives nationales (M. 778 à M. 785) (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1910), 137n2.

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wealth needed to work it.68 Worse, “feudal government” is identified with serfdom by Quesnay,69 as the principle of the fief constituted a major violation of the natural right to freely dispose of one’s body. Drawing on his legal expertise, Le Trosne identifies its heritage even in the law of absolute monarchy. While the latter abolished personal servitude, it maintained “land servitude” with the division between useful domain and direct domain, which preserved certain exorbitant rights on the part of the lord over those who worked the land.70 By contrast, the commercial society is judged quite differently. Hume believed that the development of trade brought with it advances in sociability, urbanisation and the softening of manners and customs, thus opening a period of civil and political emancipation. However, in Physiocratic history, the commercial society does not denote a real stage, but either a type of society which comes with the rise of agricultural nations, or a degraded form of agricultural society. In the first case, a commercial society’s main mode of subsistence is not agriculture but international trade, because of its modest territory and its openness to the sea. These mercantile republics occupy a legitimate and even indispensable place: that of “carriers” for agricultural nations, of which Holland is the typical example.71 The commercial republics are “polite” states, as Baudeau says, that is to say civilised. But they appear to be secondary in relation to agricultural nations: less assured on their bases, they live off the resale trade and are placed under the “dependence” of “agricultural societies.”72 This subordinate position corresponds to an intermediary function in the international division of labour, as a natural branch of the development of agricultural societies: “Next to agricultural societies, therefore, it was possible, it was indeed necessary, to form mercantile societies, just as

68 Quesnay, Physiocratie, ou Constitution naturelle du gouvernement le plus avantageux au genre humain, vol. I, 73. 69 Quesnay, “Hommes” (1757–1758), in F. Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. I, 313–314. 70 Guillaume-François Le Trosne, Dissertation sur la féodalité, dans laquelle on discute son origine, son état actuel, ses inconvéniens, & les moyens de la supprimer, in GuillaumeFrançois Le Trosne De l’administration provinciale et de la réforme de l’impôt (Basel: n. p., 1779), 625. 71 For example, Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. I, 302. 72 Mirabeau, Philosophie rurale, 163.

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granaries are formed next to harvests.”73 Stage 4 therefore appears to be more of a “Stage 3(b)”: “trafficking companies or associations, which are entrepreneurs or agents of exchange between opulent and separated nations.”74 The choice of the word “traffickers” is not incidental and refers to the distinction between commerce and trafficking: commerce is an exchange of value for equal value which brings goods to the consumer, while trafficking signifies buying for resale.75 In the second case, stage 4 corresponds to the decadence of an agricultural nation that has come under the control of the interests of traders and manufacturers, who try to unduly transform it into a trading nation focused on the luxury industry and export. We could thus speak of “mercantile decivilisation” when the principles of merchant republics are applied to large agricultural kingdoms such as Spain or France. In L’Ami des hommes, before his conversion to Physiocracy, Mirabeau defined civilisation as a softening of manners and customs that could take two directions: “sociability,” driven by religion, which is virtuous; and “greed,” which is potentially dangerous. The latter often led societies into a “natural circle from barbarism to decadence, passing through civilisation.”76 Once converted, Mirabeau replaced this moral contrast between love of others and self-interest with an economic contrast between two types of interests: greed, defined as the thirst for gold and the lure of uncontrolled gain, which characterises “false civilisation”77 or “city civilisation”78 ; and the enlightened self-interest that governs “true civilisation,”79 of which the cultural entrepreneur (the farmer) is the economic and ethical model. This is not a simple attachment to the ancestral values of agriculture, though Mirabeau never abandoned this (unlike

73 Ibid., 161. 74 Mirabeau, “Observations sur la déclaration des droits du bon peuple de Virginie

portée le 1er juin 1776,” in Mirabeau and Du Pont de Nemours, Dialogues Physiocratiques sur l’Amérique, 84–85. 75 Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. II, 962. 76 Victor Riqueti de Mirabeau, L’ami des hommes, ou Traité de la population (Avignon:

n.p., 1756), vol. II, 176. 77 Mirabeau, Mémoire sur l’agriculture, 76. 78 Mirabeau, Philosophie rurale, 343. 79 Mirabeau, Lettres sur la dépravation et la restauration de l’ordre légal, vol. II, 229.

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most of the Economists).80 It means proposing an alternative way to the “mercantile system,” which favoured the particular interests of the merchants by granting privileges to the big trading companies and by precipitating the plundering of the New World. While, ever since L’Ami des hommes, Mirabeau never ceased to denounce the complacent colonial “good conscience” which disguised violence by giving it the sweet name of commerce, he did not condemn the principle of colonisation as such. Similarly, Quesnay inserted in the Restauration de l’ordre légal a passage contrasting the “American Conquest” (destructive) to the “American Colonies” (civilising): the former are “emigrations of adventurers who, under the appearance of commerce, devastated the rich countries of the New World,” while the latter “have fertilised deserts & gradually shaped opulent Nations.”81 Behind the apparent civilisation of great merchant empires endowed with opulent and refined courts, we therefore see the reality of robbery and plunder. The fourth stage cannot be offered as a universally desirable model or outcome. Not only are not all societies destined to become traffickers, but the agricultural nations that take this path, one which goes against their true nature, are fatally drawn towards violence and decadence.

A Comparative History of Ancient and Modern Nations This natural history of mankind sketched out by the Economists is mainly useful as a model for the study of particular nations. The general framework now needs to be applied in a suitable way to “civilised” societies. Far from neglecting comparative history, the Physiocrats dealt with a wide range of cases from both ancient and modern history: Sparta, Athens, Rome, Peru, China, France, England, Spain, Poland, etc. But this comparative approach only makes sense with regard to a more general

80 Catherine Larrère, “Mirabeau et les Physiocrates. L’origine agrarienne de la civilisation,” in Les équivoques de la civilisation, ed. Bertrand Binoche (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2005), 83–105. 81 Mirabeau, Lettres sur la dépravation et la restauration de l’ordre légal, vol. II, 16. See Archives Nationales, M 781, No. 1–4b, “7e Lettre – La Propriété,” p. 11. And Mirabeau, L’ami des hommes, ou Traité de la population, vol. III, 122–123. See Cheney, Revolutionary commerce, 157–158.

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explanatory framework. Du Pont’s approach—the causal link between the level of net product and the level of state stability—falls rather short, since it applies principally to agricultural societies. The contrast between the “agricultural kingdom” and “commercial republic” appears more relevant, but names only two poles of a great arc of combinations and gradations: between a large territorial nation dominated by landowners and farmers (France) and a small nation dominated by the merchant navy (Holland) there are many intermediate cases. The history of nations does not unfold in a single, linear scenario, for the position of nations in the general scheme of social evolution depends both on the way their different types of property (movable and land) are combined, and on the relationship between their economic nature and their political constitution. From this perspective, this division between ancients and moderns loses much of its relevance: frequently understood as an antagonism of manners and customs (virtue on one side, honour or interest on the other), it must be rejected in the face of the permanence of human nature and the laws of the natural order. The most characteristic case remains China, a thousand-year-old empire that seems to partially escape historicity because of its proximity to the natural order. True, in the wake of Voltaire who disdained ancient and medieval history as a long spectacle of superstition and infamy, Baudeau sees all the ancient republics as prey to the same ignorance of “laws of order.”82 But this uncompromising judgement is not unanimously shared by the whole group. However, much as the Physiocratic approach demystified the patriotic heroism of the ancient republics, there is no outright rejection of the ancient model among the Physiocrats.83 If the Physiocrats seem to show a certain distrust of ancient Greece, it has less to do with its antiquity as the way it was structured into small, precarious and rival republics at war with one another. Du Pont thus agrees with the trenchant judgement passed by the Chevalier de

82 Nicolas Baudeau, Première Introduction à la philosophie économique, ou Analyse des États policés, par un disciple de l’Ami des hommes (Paris: Didot l’aîné, 1771), 432. 83 I take issue with the rather hasty conclusion of Chantal Grell, Le dix-huitième siècle et l’antiquité en France (1680–1789) (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1995), 508.

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Chastellux on Athens, that unstable democracy with a turbulent “populace,” as well as on Sparta, a military republic which despised agriculture.84 More generally, the “economist [Physiocratic] writers,” argues Du Pont, explain the “city spirit” which prevailed over “the agricultural interest which is the true national interest” by reference to the urban origins of the Greek (and Roman) republics.85 However, on closer inspection, not all Greek cities were equal, and nuances need to be made. Thus, Sparta and Athens cannot simply be rejected for the same reason; the Physiocrats defended—in the person of Jean-François Vauvilliers (1737–1801)—an original position in the debate which contrasted the two models: was the former a gloomy “egalitarian and warlike monastery,”86 while the latter was prosperous and full of life, and distinguished itself in the fine arts and philosophy? Or did Sparta offer an ideal of mixed government and virtue, being egalitarian, frugal, patriotic, and not focused on profit, while Athens was corrupted by mercantile interests and demagogues? The Abbé de Mably had contributed to this stereotypical contrast, and it was during his controversy with the économistes that Vauvilliers intervened in this debate—a debate that provided them with a rare resource: ancient Greek, which the French literati of the eighteenth century knew much less well than they did Latin. Vauvilliers therefore proved to be a valuable recruit, for he had been a young professor of Greek at the Collège Royal since 1766. He was particularly useful in the fight against Mably, a notorious adversary. Little is known about the time and conditions of his entry into the “sect,” but he took part in its activities between 1768 and 1770, at the height of the Physiocratic movement.87 He contributed, for example, to its main review, Les Éphémérides du Citoyen (under the rubric “Y”), and his involvement concerned more than his competence as a Hellenist, since he repeatedly defended the free 84 See his comments on De la Félicité publique, in “Lettre au Margrave de Bade” (1773), in Mirabeau and Dupont de Nemours, Carl Friedrichs von Baden brieflicher Verkehr mit Mirabeau und du Pont, 2: II, 60–69. 85 Letter to the Margrave de Bade, 15 July 1773, Paris, in Mirabeau and Dupont de Nemours, vol. 2, 117. See also Du Pont de Nemours, “Discours de l’éditeur,” in Quesnay, Physiocratie, vol. 1, lviii–lix. 86 Pierre Vidal-Naquet, La démocratie grecque vue d’ailleurs: essais d’historiographie ancienne et moderne (Paris: Flammarion, 1990), 201. 87 Quesnay refers to Vauvilliers as a common acquaintance in a letter to Mirabeau from around the end of 1768 to the beginning of 1769: he trusts him well enough to have letters sent via him (in Quesnay, Œuvres économiques completes, 2005, vol. 2, 1223).

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export of wheat.88 Indeed, his little book against Mably was, by implication, merely a variation of his defence of the liberalisation of the grain trade which the government decided on in 1763–1764. Mably praised the Spartan model, weighing it against the sacralisation of private property: “the Spartans did not have landed property; the Republic gave each Citizen a certain amount of land of which he was only the usufructuary.”89 This community of goods did not prevent Lacedaemon from experiencing a glorious and lasting destiny.90 Faced with what he felt were Mably’s rash claims, Vauvilliers vaunted his ambition with the title of his work: Examen du Gouvernement de Sparte (1769), which first appeared in the form of articles in the Éphémérides. The Examen or examination is of a properly scholarly kind, that of an “Exact, careful investigation, exact discussion. To write an examination [examen – i.e. a detailed review (Tr.)] of a book. Examination of [one’s own] conscience,” as the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française (1762 edition) puts it. In other words, he criticised Mably’s instrumental conception of history (where history was in the service of his philosophy), whereas Vauvilliers’ demonstration claimed to be erudite and scientific: the sources in it are thus presented rigorously and systematically set against Mably.91 If Sparta is of major importance for the Physiocrats, it is because it represents par excellence a military constitution which mobilises all of 88 Vauvilliers played an active part in the argument, in a series of contributions in the Éphémérides; he also edited and annotated a pamphlet with the title Réplique à la réponse du magistrat du Parlement de Rouen, sur le commerce des bleds, des farines et du pain, 1769. 89 Gabriel de Mably, Doutes proposés aux philosophes économistes sur l’ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques. Par monsieur l’abbé de Mably (La Haye: Nyon Vve Durand, 1768), 8. 90 Stéphanie Roza, Comment l’utopie est devenue un programme politique: du roman à la Révolution (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015), 151–174. 91 On the controversy between Mably and Vauvilliers, see Nicole Dockès-Lallement, “La réponse de Vauvilliers à l’enthousiasme laconophile de Mably,” in L’influence de l’Antiquité sur la pensée politique européenne (XVI e –XX e siècles ) (Aix-en-Provence: Presses Universitaires d’Aix-Marseille, 1996), 259–268. Maxime Rosso, La renaissance des institutions de Sparte dans la pensée française: XVI ème –XVIII ème siècle (Aix-en-Provence: Presses universitaires d’Aix-Marseille, 2005), 390–400. Michael Winston, “Spartans and Savages: Mirage and Myth in Eighteenth-Century France,” in Sparta in Modern Thought: Politics, History and Culture, ed. Stephen Hodkinson and Ian Macgregor Morris (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2012), 133–140.

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the city’s resources for war (and not for the prosperity and happiness of its citizens). Vauvilliers thus agrees with Montesquieu: “The Lacedaemonians were an army maintained by peasants.”92 But he seeks to extend his demystification by lifting the veil of the so-called virtue, frugality and patriotism of the Laconians to display the “spirit of conquest” behind virtue, the bloodlust behind the love of the city, the poverty behind the equal sharing of land, and the slavery of the Helots behind the equality of citizens. This spirit of conquest comes into direct collision with the three great Physiocratic rights. It is hostile to freedom, because the discipline of Spartan life turns out to be contrary to the natural aspirations of man: “Life in Sparta was hard, the authorities severe, and discipline harsh.”93 It is hostile to property, not because of the community of land that Mably wrongly claimed existed, but because of a fragmentation of land which, combined with slavery and contempt for wealth, forcefully discouraged culture. And finally, it is hostile to safety, since the bellicose tendency of Sparta endangers the citizens and subordinates property to the purposes of war. The condemnation of the Spartan model does not prompt Vauvilliers to endorse Athens completely, but, interestingly, he does not reject them both, unlike Chastellux or Du Pont. He discreetly distances himself from the current representation of Athens as a commercial republic, as Montesquieu had endorsed it.94 On the economic level, the foundations of its prosperity did not lie in conquest, since the Athenians were “the first who gave up the bearing of arms”95 in favour of agricultural activity, whereas Sparta had forbidden its citizen-soldiers the latter and had fragmented land ownership. On the political level, we can deduce from his condemnation of mixed government—an inexhaustible source

92 Charles-Louis de Second at Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, trans. Thomas Nugent (Kitchener: Batoche Books, 2001), 446. 93 Jean-François de Vauvilliers, Examen historique et politique du gouvernement de Sparte, ou Lettre à un ami sur la législation de Lycurgue, en réponse aux doutes proposés par M. l’abbé de Mably, contre l’ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques (Paris: chez Desaint, 1769), 69. 94 “In Greece there were two sorts of republics: the one military, like Sparta; the other commercial, as Athens. In the former, the citizens were obliged to be idle; in the latter, endeavours were used to inspire them with the love of industry and labour,” Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, 64–65. 95 Vauvilliers, Examen historique et politique du gouvernement de Sparte, 78–79.

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of conflict96 —that the Athenian constitution at least had the merit of not relying on it, since it brought the legislative and executive powers together in the body of the people. This finds an echo in an astonishing remark made by Lemercier de la Rivière, addressing the Poles: “The Example of the Athenians is the one you must follow: in a republican state, citizens are free men united under the same tutelary authority, governed by the same laws, bound together by a common interest.”97 This does not make Vauvilliers or Lemercier apologists for Athenian democracy, although this still appears preferable to mixed government. However, apart from Vauvilliers, the Physiocrats had much more to say when it came to Roman history: like most men and women of the Enlightenment, they were more familiar with it. They thus re-examined the old topos on its grandeur and decadence. Their first original idea was to reject the thesis, which was common from Machiavelli to Abbé Raynal via Montesquieu and Rousseau, that Rome was by nature a conquering and not a trading nation. Rome was neither, originally: it was an agricultural nation. The second original idea they propounded stemmed from their (essentially materialist) explanation for the decadence of Rome. In “Hommes” (1757–1758), Quesnay explains the decadence of states not by the immoral effects of luxury, but by the abuse of a power that has become arbitrary. Then, in a note on a text by Quesnay, Du Pont more precisely determines the causes of the greatness and destruction of this great empire. Among the factors of Rome’s greatness, no account is taken here of its military and patriotic dispositions. Thus, the history of the origins of Rome turns out to be a good illustration of the natural history of mankind: it confirms the passage from nomadism and a predatory economy to a sedentary, agricultural and productive economy. Having been a conquering people, made up of “brigands and criminals, a class worse than sterile” (that is to say, destructive), the Romans were forced to settle down and concentrate on agricultural work, which became the basis of their power and prosperity throughout the world for five centuries: “This is what Rome did as long as it was composed only of farmers,

96 Ibid., 145. 97 Pierre-Paul Lemercier de la Rivière, “L’intérêt commun des Polonois, ou Memoire

sur les moyens de pacifier pour toujours les troubles actuels de la Pologne, en perfectionnant son gouvernement, et conciliant ses véritables intérêts avec les véritables intérêts des autres peoples,” 1772, Archives Nationales, K 1317, no. 15, ff. 98–99.

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as long as this amazing republic created, as it were, solely a productive class.”98 This formulation is surprising, and raises two questions. First, how could a republic be agricultural, in flagrant contradiction with the Physiocratic typology of governments? Mirabeau seems more consistent in praising the royalty of the earliest ages. Several years before Rousseau, who made Numa the true founder of Rome (Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne, 1772), he argued that the reign of this “beneficent philosopher King” made of this small city a great social and political success: by turning the citizens towards agriculture, he polished the manners and customs of “a ferocious People by piety and peace,” the complete opposite of the great commercial republic of the time, Carthage.99 However, it can be assumed that this legacy of royalty has survived it, as the republic has long preserved the “rural constitution” of Rome, honouring agriculture and giving “Cultivators the first rank, a preponderance in public decisions, & above all attributing to them exclusively the honour of defending the Fatherland.”100 As the right of citizenship and the right to bear arms are reserved for those who work the land, the “agricultural constitution” long predominated over the “military constitution.”101 Also, how could an agricultural society have only one class, when the Economic Tableau had established three distinct and interdependent classes? If Rome had only one productive class, it was not literally but “as it were.” The thesis of the social simplicity of the Roman republic cannot mean the existence of a single class of farmers: this is an absurd idea because even an agricultural nation cannot do without trade and industry. Rather, it marks the economic, social and political preeminence of the producer class, which here does not seem to be clearly distinguished from the class of proprietors. The sterile classes were not dominant in Rome, and their activities were subordinated to agricultural priorities: the wheat trade, the production of agricultural instruments such 98 Note by Du Pont on “Du Commerce” (1766) in Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. II, 889n10. 99 Mirabeau, Lettres sur la dépravation et la restauration de l’ordre légal, vol. I, 18. Georges Weulersse, Le Mouvement Physiocratique en France de 1756 à 1770, vol. I, 133– 134. There is the same praise for Numa in Vauvilliers, Examen historique et politique du gouvernement de Sparte, 151–152. 100 Mirabeau, Lettres sur la dépravation et la restauration de l’ordre légal, vol. I, 18. 101 Mirabeau, vol. II, 159–160.

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as iron tools (hoes, sickles, etc.), ploughs, water mills, yokes for the draft animals and so on. It is no wonder, then, that austere Rome won out over opulent Carthage. Luxury and monetary abundance are never sufficient conditions for military superiority: it is less money that favours the sinews of war, not perpetually renewable agricultural wealth. On the other hand, Carthage neglected its land to the point of being “reduced to an opulent city, to a trading post for Merchants more attached to their treasures than to the interests of the State.”102 If Rome subsequently followed the path to decadence, this was under Carthaginian influence, and went against the foundations of its own power. Here, the responsibility lay less with luxury and moral corruption—which, according to Rousseau, weakened civic devotion—than with the way Rome neglected the natural order. By leaving agricultural work to slaves, a poorly productive workforce, the Romans hastened the decline of their agriculture. Reduced to importing wheat from Egypt to “feed the capital,” Rome reversed the natural order in favour of “luxury in the way of ornamentation.” To calm the anger of the plebs, the patricians set up a prohibitive policing system for grain and bread distribution, which discouraged activity and caused more trouble than it established peace. This institution was then transmitted to the moderns by the clerics of the Middle Ages: “We descend from these barbarians,” continues Du Pont. “All [our cities] have adopted the Roman policy on subsistence.”103 The tyranny of the emperors, and the excessive and arbitrary measures imposed, accelerated the inexorable decline of Rome decadence by undermining its productive forces and encouraging rash militarist adventures. The slow destruction of the liberty and security of both people and goods finally dissolved the social bond, for men cannot attach themselves “either to the sovereign, or to the fatherland, in a country where they have 102 Mirabeau, Philosophie rurale, 373. Quesnay uses almost exactly the same words. See Quesnay, Physiocratie, vol. II, 289; see also his analysis in Mirabeau and Quesnay, Traité de la monarchie (1757–1759), 54. 103 Pierre-Samuel Du Pont, “Discours pour la clôture des assemblées économiques tenues cette année chez Mr. Le Marquis de Mirabeau,” in Carl Friedrich Von Baden brieflicher verkehr mit Mirabeau und Dupont, ed. Karl Knies (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1892), vol. 2, 132. Turgot uses the same argument in his “Remarques sur les notes qui accompagnent la traduction de Child” (1754) in Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Œuvres de Turgot et documents le concernant, ed. Gustave Schelle (Paris: F. Alcan, 1913), vol. I, 374.

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neither protection, nor rights, nor property.”104 Again taking the opposite view of Montesquieu, for whom the military virtues of the Romans distanced them from the spirit of commerce, Quesnay associated their unbridled militarism with their shift towards an urban and commercial economy. The republic undermined the foundations of its own power by plundering the wealth of the land in the conquered countries instead of developing it.105 This “spirit of conquest,” “the basis of what we call the grandeur of the Romans,” was also “the germ of its destruction,” adds Mirabeau.106 It thus reconnected with its early predatory origins, as if decadence could hardly be distinguished, in the cycle of history, from barbarism. These analyses of the Roman model had an immediate political element by being used as interventions in the political and international issues of the period. Thus, drawing a comparison between the Franco-British rivalry and the Punic Wars was simply a variation on a theme that had been around since the end of the seventeenth century. It became commonplace especially with Montesquieu,107 before spreading during the Seven Years’ War,108 and up until the eve of the Revolution and, indeed, afterwards.109 Perfidious Albion was simply a new, basely mercantile Carthage, which sought to seize by force the trade of other nations; it was contrasted with a virtuous, patriotic, peaceful and benevolent France that resembled its king, Louis XV, nicknamed “Le Bien-Aimé”. By making anew this analogy, the Physiocrats were playing their part in the war effort.

104 Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. I, 284. 105 Quesnay, “Analyse du Tableau économique,” in Physiocratie, vol. I, 74. 106 The Abbé Baudeau makes the same remarks in the Éphémérides du citoyen, 1767,

vol. I, 15–17. 107 Charles-Louis de Second at Montesquieu, Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des romains et de leur décadence, ed. Jean Ehrard (Paris: Flammarion, 1992), 42–50. 108 Abbé Séran de La Tour, Parallèle de la conduite des Carthaginois à l’égard des Romains dans la seconde guerre punique avec la conduite de l’Angleterre à l’égard de la France, dans la guerre déclarée par ces deux puissances en 1756… (N.p.: n.p., 1757). 109 Jean-François Dunyach, “Carthage entre Seine et Tamise, petite histoire d’un modèle explicatif de la rivalité franco-anglaise au XVIIIe siècle,” in Les idées passentelles la Manche?, ed. Jean-Philippe Genet and François-Joseph Ruggiu (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2006), 99–128. See also Cheney, Revolutionary commerce, 27.

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After the unfortunate outcome, for France, of the Seven Years’ War, the comparison no longer worked: not only had the new Carthage inflicted a serious defeat on the new Rome, but the obvious territorial and demographic disproportion between the two nations made the phenomenon even less easy to understand. In 1767, Choiseul, the French foreign minister, showed his failure to grasp the extent of the imperial domination of “this very tiny part of Europe.”110 The économistes ’ response to this paradox was quite simple: if the French monarchy had failed when faced with a nation that had only a third of France’s population, this was because it had reached a state of decadence that the Roman republic had still not reached at the time of the Punic Wars. France in the eighteenth century was more reminiscent of later periods in Roman history: the deliquescent Republic of the Roman generals or the tyrannical excesses of the Empire. The uncontrolled growth of the Roman capital had depopulated and emptied the provinces and concentrated the landowners in the cities. The subsistence pact was invented to appease popular outcries and to secure supplies to the capital, just like the Paris of the Economists’ own day: “But what will become of Paris itself when the Kingdom is ruined? We know the fate which befell Rome when Rome had ruined the Empire.”111 But it was the whole history of France since the Renaissance that was now being reassessed—the history of the progressive dominance of public power by mercantile interests, to the detriment of the productive class and agriculture. The “mercantile system” in the sixteenth century had relied on the townspeople to triumph over the lords, and gave rise to a bourgeois and urban regime, enshrining the autonomy of the communes and the system of privileges.112 It was consolidated by Colbert, who favoured manufactures so as to meet the demands of the companies of merchants; he was supported by Louis XIV, “a prince eager for every kind of glory,”113 and by the whole of the court nobility. This alliance between unproductive social groups distorted the agricultural constitution of France and gave birth to Versailles: a courtly society that was

110 Quoted in Edmond Dziembowski, La guerre de Sept ans: 1756–1763 (Paris: Perrin, 2015), 687. 111 Mirabeau, Philosophie rurale, 353. 112 Weulersse, Le Mouvement physiocratique en France de 1756 à 1770, vol. I, 129–142. 113 Mirabeau, Lettres sur la dépravation et la restauration de l’ordre légal, vol. I, 166.

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admittedly refined, but of hardly more worth than the barbarian peoples that lived from predation.114 Still Great Britain, this “nation that may be justly called a republic, disguised under the form of monarchy,”115 was a tricky case from the Physiocratic point of view: how could one explain the prosperity and the military superiority of this mixed government, simultaneously monarchical, commercial and parliamentary?116 Despite not being able to read English, Quesnay acquired his knowledge of the British political system from several sources.117 The struggle between the “party of the court”and the “party of the country” was then frequently explained in 1750s France as a conflict of economic interests. Thus, the Abbé Le Blanc observed that England was the mother of two nations in one, the Whigs and the Tories, credit and land118 ; and Turgot noted that their conflict, initially religious and political, became over time a pure “discussion of money.”119 Quesnay, meanwhile, first noted the qualities of English economic government, which honoured ploughmen and practised a certain freedom in its export policies.120 However, quite different and more mercantile tendencies were also at work in British imperialism. To understand these contradictions, Quesnay took the analysis further: the conflict between owners (landed interest, the party of the country) 114 Mirabeau, vol. II, 2. 115 Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, 84. 116 The relatively few studies of the Physiocratic analyses of British political life include:

Gianluigi Goggi, “Diderot, les physiocrates et l’Angleterre,” in Ici et ailleurs: le dixhuitième siècle au présent. Mélanges offerts à Jacques Proust (Tokyo: le Comité coordinateur des Mélanges Jacques Proust, 1996), 47–65; Weulersse, Le mouvement Physiocratique en France de 1756 à 1770, vol. 2, 281–282; Skornicki, L’économiste, la cour et la patrie, 365–367, 376–377; Manuela Albertone, “Physiocracy,” in Encyclopedia of Enlightenment, ed. Alan Charles Kors (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003), 286. 117 In particular Montesquieu, the French translation of the Political discourses by the Abbé Le Blanc: David Hume, Discours politiques, trans. Jean-Bernard Le Blanc, 2 vols. (Amsterdam and Paris: M. Lambert, 1754). See also Le Blanc’s Lettres d’un François sur les Anglois, in Lettres de M. l’abbé Le Blanc,… Nouvelle édition de celles qui ont paru sous le titre de «Lettres d’un François», 3 vols. (Amsterdam: n.p., 1751). 118 Le Blanc, Lettres de M. l’abbé Le Blanc, 266. 119 Anne Robert Jacques, in Questions importantes sur le commerce à l’occasion des oppo-

sitions au dernier Bill de naturalisation des Protestants étrangers, ed. J. Tucker (London: E. Gyles, 1755), 55n7. 120 Quesnay, “Fermiers” (1756), in Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. I, 141; and “Grains,” (1757), ibid., 173n17.

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and merchants (financial interest, the party of the court) was the effect of a structural ambivalence in Great Britain’s socio-economic relations. Its mixed government was less the product of an ingenious balance of power than the institutional expression of competing economic foundations which constituted a permanent source of instability. To determine the true nature of the British constitution behind the appearance of mixed government, one must be able to determine what kind of interest dominates it: that of the traders or the landowners? This balance of social power itself depends on the proportion of the size of the territory to the extent of the country’s maritime domains. In the case of Britain, the answer is clear: it is “the government of the commercial republic which dominates in this kingdom. […] From this point of view, it is easy for you to distinguish between the territorial heritage of the English nation and that of its commercial republic.”121 The “Remarques sur l’opinion de l’auteur de l’Esprit des Loix concernant les colonies” thus describe England as a “Carthaginian constitution,” that is to say a nation in which “the interests of the soil and the state are subordinate to the interests of the traders.”122 It explains, in any case, the imperialist orientation of British policy: its thalassocratic ambitions led it to try and liquidate by force the trade of rival nations. Du Pont was even more trenchant. He turned the accusation of establishing a universal monarchy back against the Great Britain, and he explained this headlong rush by the tyranny of the City, and the constant threat that bankruptcy raised for government decisions.123 All that was needed for the natural order of things to be re-established was for France to fully revive its vocation as an agricultural nation, while its rival bent under the weight of its own contradictions.

Conclusion: A Counter-History of Trafficking and Empires Two factors give Physiocratic historiography its originality. On the one hand, it attempts to connect a conjectural history of humanity with an empirical history of nations. On the other hand, it does not see the global 121 “Du commerce,” in, ibid., vol. II, 915. 122 Quesnay, vol. II, 873. 123 Pierre-Samuel Du Pont, “Histoire abrégée des finances de l’Angleterre,” in Éphémérides, vols. IV, V and VII (1769). See Richard Whatmore, “Dupont de Nemours et la politique révolutionnaire,” Revue Française d’Histoire des Idées Politiques 20 (1 January 2011): 111–127.

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expansion of mercantile relations as the engine of civilisation. The history of the latter is mainly that of the conquest of grain. The true founder of the state is the “conqueror of the first ear of corn.”124 Thus, civilisation is not measured by the progress of international trade or by the refinement of the sciences and the arts, but by the maximisation of the net product of agriculture, the only stable physical basis of agricultural nations. The development of the sciences and the arts must be subordinate to it. With Rousseau in mind, Mirabeau defends himself from wanting to extend “the perfectibility of the human mind; far from it: we seek merely to bring it back to simplicity, to the earliest notions of nature and instinct.”125 Of course, the Physiocrats actively promoted commercial society, so long as it was relieved of one of its main obstacles: the pre-eminence of large traders in agricultural nations. Only freedom of trade makes it possible to develop and circulate the wealth of the earth. Only free trade can put international “traffickers” in their rightful place by reestablishing the proper hierarchy in forms of commerce: first-hand (direct sale of agricultural producers), rural (“from neighbour to neighbour”), interior (“from province to province”), exterior (trade between nations to establish the right price). Within the latter, distant (that is, colonial) trade constitutes a special and dangerous case, one that is “almost always ruinous,” because it promotes “companies of wealthy and powerful people, who profit from their credit with the government.”126 The counter-history of trade proposed by the Physiocrats is also a history of trafficking: the history, that is, of the stranglehold of a particular interest group over the administration of the kingdom, dragging it into militarism and economic decline. In a late text, the Abbé Baudeau hijacked the title of Forbonnais’s most famous work: his “Nouveaux élémens du commerce” noted that commerce included the entire system of trade, a system “which constitutes the movement & the life of civilised societies,”

124 Mirabeau, Entretiens D’Un Jeune Prince Avec Son Gouverneur, vol. I, 223. 125 Letter from Mirabeau to Rousseau, 30 July 1767, in Rousseau, Correspondance

complète de Jean Jacques Rousseau. T. 33: Avril - juillet 1767 (Geneva: Inst. et Musée Voltaire, 1979), 256. 126 Victor Riqueti Mirabeau, Élémens de la philosophie rurale (The Hague [Paris]: Chez les libraires associés, 1767), LV–LVI.

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and is distinguished from trafficking —that is, exchanges between traders only.127 The Physiocratic writing of history therefore espouses a project to restore French power after the Seven Years’ War, on the basis of a new international division of labour between trading republics and agricultural kingdoms.128 The économistes were critics of the “mercantile system” and the colonialism of their time and of the history of trade associated with them, and they envisioned an alternative model of development in order to rebuild the French empire on new bases. The abolition of the exclusively colonial domain and equality between the metropolis and the colonies129 must relegate commercial interests to the background by refocusing activity on agriculture. The brutality of colonial traffic is contrasted with the gentleness of a truly free trade, but also by the peaceful expansion of agrarian civilisation. The question that still needs to be answered is how this peaceful expansion is to be effected. Again, history is instructive. Apart from the Chinese empire which “does not spread itself into other countries,”130 it is a South American empire that can serve as a model, explains Quesnay in a text that has been rarely commented on and was perhaps inspired by Mirabeau.131 Unlike the Roman Empire, the Inca kings conquered Peru by winning hearts rather than by force of arms. Their armies launched campaigns of information and not of terror; their administrations undertook vast public works to develop the land,

127 “Nouveaux élémens du commerce, par M. l’Abbé Baudeau, servant de Discours

Préliminaire à la nouvelle rédaction du Dictionnaire de Savari, pour l’Encyclopédie Méthodique,” in Encyclopédie méthodique, vol. I (1783), vii. 128 This point is clearly made in Steiner, La ‘science nouvelle’ de l’économie politique,

86–90. See also Cheney, Revolutionary commerce, 181–183. 129 François Quesnay, “Remarques sur l’opinion de l’auteur de l’Esprit des Loix concernant les colonies” (1766), in Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. 2, 869–882. See the comments of Paul Cheney, “The Political Economy of Colonization: From Composite Monarchy to Nation,” in The Economic Turn: Recasting Political Economy in Enlightenment Europe, ed. Sophus Reinert and Steven Kaplan (London: Anthem Press, 2019), 80–83. On the Physiocratic views of empire, see Pernille Røge, Economistes and the Reinvention of Empire: France in the Americas and Africa, c. 1750–1802 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). 130 François Quesnay, “Hommes,” in Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. I, 316. 131 Mirabeau, L’ami des hommes, vol. I, 3; vol. II, 23.

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while enabling the subject populations to feel part of economic government. These populations were soon convinced of the benefits of this new sovereignty.132 This success was brutally interrupted by the ravages of Spanish colonisation. The conquest of grain was as different from the Roman conquests as it was from the figure of the Conquistador: if the Incas civilised Amerindian societies, it was by peacefully introducing them to agriculture. The opposition between the two imperial styles could not be clearer. And the counter-history of trade managed to highlight this brilliantly. “(Translated from French by Andrew Brown)”

132 Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. II, 1003. See also Mirabeau, Lettres sur la dépravation et la restauration de l’ordre légal, vol. II, 42.

CHAPTER 4

The History of Trade and the Legitimacy of the Dutch Republic Koen Stapelbroek

Introduction: Histories of Trade as a Genre As the introduction to this volume suggests, histories of trade, “by recording change and putting the relationship between the creation of wealth and the birth and decline of civilisation at the core of their reflection,” show how from the late seventeenth century, the history of humankind and the development of European colonial imperialism were integrated into a single genre.1 While the equation of European civilisation and colonialism is nowadays highly problematic, it was not something that was taken for granted in the eighteenth century, when

1 See the first chapter of this volume.

K. Stapelbroek (B) Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Alimento and A. Della Fontana (eds.), Histories of Trade as Histories of Civilisation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80087-1_4

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the genre of the history of trade flourished the most.2 Going back to Renaissance humanist and Christian moral philosophical outlooks, the creation of wealth from trade was traditionally considered uncertain, with the latter often being treated as an intangible and elusive source of income or else as an unproductive and artificial economic activity, while its impact on European economies and social configurations was equally unknown. Would trade and the rise of commercial sociability not overwhelm and corrupt moral and political bonds between humans and create extreme inequality, greed and political corruption? In contrast with these concerns, built on conceptions of morality, justice and social cohesion that spanned the history of humankind, newer types of histories emerged that had a different view of trade. Such accounts sought to remove the logic of empire from the disjointed historical record of commercial enterprise by private actors, and to channel it into new political proposals and programmes for action. In other words, these newer histories of trade could be, and increasingly were, written for political purposes, to instigate and promote new commercial policies and initiatives: they warned against missing crucial political opportunities to join the modern move towards global commercial competition. The general and central premise adopted by the genre of the history of trade was thus that trade created new forms of wealth and that European states that failed to engage in it and to vie for markets on a global scale would be left behind by more adaptive states, and would risk losing their independence.3 In order to shape such a vision of the urgency of political adaptation and the need to launch commercial initiatives, the history of trade pointed to examples drawn from the ancient and modern world, and generally imposed structures onto history to create leverage for policy proposals in the present.

2 Contributions to the history of capitalism, the history of political thought and critical international legal history in the last decades have criticised the connections between global commerce and civilisation that prevailed in nineteenth-century liberal discourse and traced their influence on the development of the twentieth-century global order. See, for example the recent contribution by Nina Tzouvala, Capitalism as Civilisation: A History of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). 3 Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), in particular 1–156.

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This is not to say that histories of trade and analyses of the morality and justice of the new form of politics by commercial states were mutually exclusive. Moralising historical perspectives on trade could be directed at the decadence and corruption of manners and Christian or republican virtues, while historical perspectives that saw trade as imperative to modern politics also retained an understanding of the impact of commerce on social interactions. Most eighteenth-century treatises of political economy included or at least referred to a historical conception of trade while engaging with theories of economic development and the moral consequences that new modes of production and consumption had for society. To mention one famous example, Book III of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (the backbone of the work) narrated how, following a first glimmer in Renaissance republican Italy, the post-Roman and post-feudal history of northern Europe gave rise to an unprecedented type of wealth accumulation and became the ideal seedbed for global commercial competition between the proud rulers of the European states that comprised it, whose urbanising populations increasingly clamoured for luxury goods.4 Smith’s historical account provided an explanation of modern economic reality and built the foundations for what would later become classical political-economic theory. In a similar way, David Hume sketched how trade had moved “in its progress through TYRE, ATHENS, SYRACUSE, CARTHAGE, VENICE, FLORENCE, GENOA, ANTWERP, HOLLAND, ENGLAND” to argue that it always “fixed its seat in free governments” and that the predicament of modern politics, domestically as well as internationally, was fundamentally changed by the imperative of attracting trade to one’s own country.5 The topos of the history of trade helped Hume channel a complex general and philosophical argument about commercial sociability and the logic of modern politics into a broad attempt to convince his British audience to abandon the idea that France was a rival enemy state and instead recognise it as a commercial partner and rival on economic terms. 4 Istvan Hont, “Adam Smith and the Political Economy of the “Unnatural and Retrograde” Order,” in Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 354–388; Paul Sagar, Adam Smith Reconsidered: History, Liberty and the Foundations of Modern Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming). 5 David Hume, “Of Civil Liberty,” in Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), 87–96: 92.

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Most histories of trade were not quite as analytically refined as Smith’s or Hume’s, but nevertheless contained inventories of places that had led the way in deriving wealth from trade. In hindsight Tyre, Carthage, Venice, Florence and Antwerp appeared to be staging points on an uncertain path that led to the more recent and globalised unleashing of trade.6 While the earlier parts of the ancient and Renaissance worlds where trade had flourished merely conducted a hidden force, the recent history of trade laid bare the full potential of commerce to shape human interaction between nations and states. Among the characteristics that differentiated commercial politics from the politics of dynastic power was that it required a pacifist mindset: building a state on wealth creation was inconsistent with seeking territorial expansion and military conquest. In addition, commerce was reciprocal, meaning that states could not afford enemies but instead had to approach their political opponents as competitors, and thus to develop new political tools capable of dealing with this conceptual transformation.7 In order to be sustainable, commercial states had to acquire a new type of political realism in international affairs, but they also had to remodel the internal mechanisms of their national economies, including their colonial settlements and trading companies. In so far as a new way of understanding the relations between wealth creation and population, between prices and the provision of subsistence, and between trade interests, inequality and monetary and fiscal policy reshaped the role of politics in society, it could arguably be seen as supporting a new conceptualisation of civilisation. Such a reshaping sustained and expanded the capacity for competitive global exploitation by European states. If this meant civilisation for European societies, the flip side was that it sustained colonialism for the rest of the world. The key question at stake in histories of trade was how to tap into the mechanisms that attracted trade, wealth and ultimately state power. Beyond the suggestion of political urgency, in the sense that history showed trade to be an essential factor in modern politics, the question 6 Writers like Hume and Forbonnais used these lists of places rhetorically, to suggest that the centres of trade shifted from small city-states to larger states. See also the introduction to this volume. 7 See Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 27–37, for the idea that the political economy of Montesquieu, Hume, Melon and Justi was fundamentally informed by and converged on this insight.

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was which specific policies, institutional conditions and areas of investment most favoured the interests of the nation. The different debates held in the various European states about a variety of policy options yielded different answers, and histories with different orientations served to legitimise different policy proposals. In this chapter, however, I do not intend to focus so much on the policy-oriented histories of trade written mostly from the early eighteenth century onwards, and the foregoing discussion of the characteristics of the history of trade genre serves as a counterpoint to the earlier Dutch histories featuring discussions on commerce. Instead, I am principally concerned with the Dutch Republic’s position within such accounts, and specifically with the early establishment of the idea that the Dutch had helped to bring about a new phase in the development of trade, if not of humankind, that in itself made the creation of historical reflections on such exchange a subject worth engaging in. As such, the history of Dutch trade can be understood both as a central element in the later genre of the history of trade and as a core theme in earlier Dutch writings that, while not histories of trade, nevertheless reflected in various ways on the new realities and experiences of global exchange before the genre emerged. Is there a relation between how the Dutch looked at trade and history in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century and the way that later accounts attribute them a key role? My argument is that if such a relationship exists, it has to involve the legitimation of the Dutch Republic as an independent state, since this was the context in which commerce was discussed in early Dutch accounts of justice and wealth. In contrast to later histories of trade, earlier Dutch reflections on the historicity of wealth from global exchange were not used instrumentally to promote particular trade policies and institutional reforms, but rather to reinforce efforts to situate the republic on the same level as Europe’s dynastic monarchies and to influence the development of the newly emerged Dutch state. This chapter addresses the different functions that ideas about history and trade fulfilled in relation to the legitimation of the Dutch state in the moment when it was acquiring an identity and political role in Europe. In other words, it sets out to provide an outline of the pre-history of histories of trade.

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The Dutch “Discovery” of Trade as a “Commercial Revolution” A first step in reconstructing the different ways that ideas about history and trade were used to legitimise the Dutch Republic is to recognise that the Dutch did not consciously invent or discover trade, and that traders, investors, sailors and regents from Dutch cities did not deliberately bring about a paradigmatic shift in the development of global trade and commercial society. Regardless of any particular intentions, the highly influential French writer Jean-François Melon pinpointed the establishment of the Dutch Republic as a moment that marked a profound change in modern politics: Those who have studied the political interests of European states since they became commercial, that is to say since the discovery of the New World, or rather since the establishment of the Dutch Republic, are not unaware that the Navigation Act was made partly to stop the dangerously rapid progress of the commerce of the Dutch, who by the great quantity of their vessels had become the universal carriers of Europe.8

Melon asserted that the discovery of overseas territories and the development of global trade in the moment—during the course of the Revolt—when the Dutch sought new opportunities to trade outside of Europe, were intimately connected and constituted a turning point in history. However, the consequence that he laid out, namely the paradigmatic shift from the politics of conquest to that of commerce, was not part of any plan and certainly not of a Dutch scheme to reconfigure the principles of modern politics, in which trade was a key determinant of power. In other words, there was no deliberate vision to do anything that would cause the aspiring global power, Britain, to feel the need to defeat Dutch trade by, for instance, passing a Navigation Act.9

8 Jean-François Melon, Essai Politique sur le commerce, nouvelle edition (Paris: n.p., 1736), 134–135, in the chapter “De l’Exportation et de l’Importation.” 9 On Melon’s political economy, see Istvan Hont, “Luxury and Commerce,” in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, ed. Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 379–418; and Koen Stapelbroek and John Shovlin, eds., Commerce Versus Conquest: The Political Economy of Jean-François Melon (London: Routledge, 2021).

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In his unpublished “Tribut patriotique” to Stadholder William IV, written in the late 1740s, Isaac de Pinto gave a similar account of how the expansion of American and Asian trade by European states and their East India companies had given rise to a system of global economic development.10 Appraising the general effects of modern wealth on the world and especially on the wellbeing of European nations, Pinto argued that there had been something of a revolution, in the classical sense of the word. The philosophers and politicians who argued that the gold and silver that had entered Europe from the mines of Peru and Mexico had not enriched Europe but merely made subsistence goods and manual labour more expensive had failed to see the bigger picture. The discovery of America had set in motion a series of mechanisms that generated intercontinental flows of capital and goods. Pinto asserted that whatever criticisms could be made of global trade it was still the case that Amsterdam’s population had grown dramatically from 20,000 inhabitants to 220,000.11 The “discovery” of global trade and the creation of new forms of wealth meant that the world was never going to be the same again. This gradual revolution had taken place in the course of the past centuries, and it was crucial to understand the key role that the Dutch state had played in it, especially from the vantage point of the eighteenth century. The East India Company had enabled Dutch traders to discover inadvertently the secret of how a country with few natural resources could survive and flourish in the modern world. Earlier, during the sixteenth century, the Spanish monarchy had changed the face of modern politics by globalising it in a more straightforward territorial sense, but the primitive steps of this imperial expansion, which involved the transport of gold and silver to Europe, had set off a chain of new developments that gave shape to the modern commercial state: The world seemed to enlarge under the power of the Spanish monarchy, and in many respects altered its form. A general opulence introduced by 10 Isaac de Pinto, “Tribut patriotique présenté avec le plus profond respect à Son Altesse Sérénissime Monseigneur le Prince d’Orange et de Nassau,” particularly the “Essai sur le credit” and the “Essai sur les finances en general,” Nationaal Archief Den Haag (hereafter NADH), 2.21.005.39 (Gogel Collection), inv. 165. See also “Reflexions politiques, au sujet d’une augmentation de taxe qu’on propose de mettre sur chaque action de la Compagnie des indes orientales sous le titre d’amptgeld,” NADH, 1.10.29 (Fagel Collection), inv. 2204. 11 Pinto, “Tribut patriotique,” n.p.

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the gold and silver of the new world, the multitude of hands employed to supply the new wants and luxury of America, have created new means of subsistence. When the political machines, like the elements of commerce, grew more extensive, vast and complicated, they required springs stronger and more numerous. It became necessary to multiply the circulation of paper, by which the numerary wealth was increased. This was done as it were by instinct, but with fear and trembling. We scarce knew what we were doing, or for what reason. Gold and silver having lost three fourths of their value, a great quantity was required to represent so many things, and to keep the same machines going which money had set in motion. Means of all sorts were to be trebled. Without an augmentation of the signs of value, which form an artificial wealth, neither commerce nor luxury could have subsisted. It is the discovery of America, which, by an extraordinary increase in the mass of gold and silver, has extended commerce, luxury, navigation, and manufactures. There required a greater rapidity of circulation; and by a singular paradox, as money multiplied and grew common, it required so many more signs to represent it. Public funds, paper and stocks, became necessary, sometimes to absorb an excess of specie, and sometimes, like a sponge, to be pressed and give it back again.12

The discovery of America was not an immediate historical turning point but proved to be crucial in its long-term impact on global trade, the circulation of new goods, and the awakening of the imagination, in the desire to acquire these goods, as well as because of its knock-on effect of creating new forms of production and exchange, new interactions between humans in commercial contexts, and new social attitudes and configurations to the formation of markets. The consequences could be seen in the growing wealth of Europe and in the concomitant disastrous effects for indigenous populations affected by the escalation of imperial exploitation and colonialism. Just as Melon explained, the emergence of Anglo-Dutch rivalry and commercial competition between states as a consequence of the manner in which the Dutch had tapped into new forms of wealth, so Pinto’s real focus was not only on the new economic realities created by Spanish and Dutch adventurers acting in isolation, but also on their interaction 12 Isaac de Pinto, An Essay on Circulation and Credit: in Four Parts; and a Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce (London: J. Ridley, 1774), 29–30. Originally published as Isaac de Pinto, Trait´e de la circulation et du crédit: […] & suivi d’une lettre sur la jalousie du commerce, ou` l’on prouve que l’interêt des puissances commerçantes ne se croise point (Amsterdam: M.M. Rey, 1771).

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with politics, and especially on how the new commercial reality helped to shape new ways to configure states and their institutions. Indeed, Pinto and Melon’s accounts of the Dutch role in the history of global trade accorded with eighteenth-century histories of trade in the sense that their real aim was to encourage changes in policy and institutional reform. But the idea of a profound change in social and political conditions following the Dutch “discovery” of trade underpinned this goal, and it raises the question of how the Dutch made sense of their role in this change at the time, particularly if what they brought about was bigger and more consequential than the aims and range of their own actions and intentions. A different way of putting this is that the key characteristic of the histories of trade included in the writings by Melon and Pinto (and also Smith’s Wealth of Nations ) was that they were discontinuous. The history of trade was not a static inventory where the same object (the “ownership” of doing trade) was passed on over time, from antiquity to the next commercially dominant nation. Instead, the seventeenth century had witnessed a revolution, an “industrious Revolution,” as Jan de Vries has called it with reference to the key place accorded to the Industrial Revolution by economic historians, though in keeping more with historical discourses it might also be called a “commercial revolution.”13 The Spaniards had laid the groundwork, and the Dutch had created, without being aware of it, a global economic revolution. At this point, the cognitive distance between an explanation benefiting from hindsight and one born out of real-time experience needs to be kept in mind. There is a significant difference between late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century rationalisations of the experience of unexpectedly sudden and novel wealth creation and the deliberate construction of eighteenth-century policy interventions based on historical interpretation. And that distance or intellectual discrepancy can help explain why in the period in which the republic became a global trading state, Dutch writers did not write histories of trade but focused on other narrative accounts of the relation between their state and trade.

13 Jan De Vries, “The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution,” The Journal of Economic History 54 (1994): 249–270, and more at length De Vries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

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The Fluidity of Trade and the Justification of Constitutional Sovereignty One element that histories of trade and eighteenth-century political economists incorporated into their writings without too much difficulty was the notion of the fluidity of trade, the idea that trade could not be owned and that markets could not be conquered or subjected to the power of sovereign authority but had to be controlled or managed in other ways.14 As discussed above, in the introduction, accounting for trade as a factor in eighteenth-century politics now required a different approach. The fluidity of trade was also an issue in seventeenth-century writings. Playing with humanist tropes relating to ideas of human purpose and self-knowledge was in fact a fundamental aspect of earlier European political thought, and was also a way of considering politics, in particular nation-building, in relation to the specific characteristics and moral and economic ambiguities of trade. Engaging in trade might increase the general or shared wealth of the community or might tempt human beings away from their true nature, break down relations between individuals and threaten the existing political order. Elements of this thinking and the idea of modern trade and finance as a man-made monstrosity that needed to be tamed were prevalent in neo-Machiavellian and early modern humanist-inspired thinking.15 The later, and more theoretical as well as institutionally anchored, eighteenth-century version of this kind of argument was expressed by writers like Pinto and became an idea shared by contemporary political writers internationally. They believed that if global trade and the circulation of goods created nouvelles valeurs, new objects of valuation, exchange and production, these had to be made sustainable by being embedded in political infrastructures within and between states that would allow people to enjoy and further cultivate

14 See Hont, “Luxury and Commerce” for an idea of modern trade and the central role of luxury as different from the politics of conquest and territorial control. 15 The standard reference is John Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), which led to an outpouring of literature in the decades following its publication.

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them. In other words, making trade peaceful and controlling it as a benevolent agency in the reality of global competition necessitated political institutions and regulations.16 The seventeenth-century Dutch engagement with the notion of the fluidity of trade might be said to lie somewhere between classical humanism’s anxieties about commerce and political economy’s obsession with attracting and securing trade through institutions and policies. The well-known Dutch sixteenth- and seventeenth-century humanist-inspired expression of the idea was, of course, that on a social and moral level trade was as uncertain as fortuna and as attractive as it was dangerous, as alluring as it was deceptive. But it was also necessary if the United Provinces were to escape tyrannical oppression and achieve independence. According to Dutch writers of the early seventeenth century, trade required a non-monarchical, non-territorial approach if it was ever to tie itself to a place. It was this aspect that bridged a number of narratives about Dutch independence, about original Batavian freedom and virtue, and could also be aligned (or at least temporarily allied) with religious notions like abstinence and divine mission or vocation. Giving trade a role in Dutch nation-building and in the development of a Dutch national identity became a constant feature of political writings that went far beyond the notion of the decline of the republic. Over the course of Dutch history it would play out in two significant ways. Firstly, it would be emphasised that constitutional formation and nation-building had to take place in the context of a profoundly historical understanding of social change. Some three centuries after the emergence of the republic as a tacitly recognised power to be reckoned with, and roughly a century after its transformation into a new European monarchy, the liberal historian Robert Fruin approached Dutch history from the perspective of the development of social and political interactions. As one historian described this mindset:

16 Koen Stapelbroek, “From jealousy of trade to the neutrality of finance: Isaac de Pinto’s ‘system’ of luxury and Perpetual Peace,” in Commerce and Peace in the Enlightenment, ed. Bela Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky and Richard Whatmore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 78–109 and Koen Stapelbroek, “Commercial Sociability and the Management of Self-Interest in Isaac de Pinto’s Essay on Card-Playing,” in Historicizing Self-Interest in the Modern Atlantic World: A Plea for Ego? ed. Christine Zabel (London: Routledge, 2020), 73–94.

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Fruin remained committed to the ideal of a sociological history in which everything is related and forms an interconnected whole, and which, in its essential character, constantly changes shape. According to the fundamental principle of the doctrine of evolution “the genesis of contemporary situations and concepts in the constitutional and social field, from the earliest times onwards, to research and describe these […] without guessing as to their underlying laws, which determine their emergence and development,” this efficacy was the object of Fruin’s searching and reflection.17

As Fruin noted, the unfolding of “constitutional and social” events and understandings was part of the scope of historical inquiry, and it was at that level rather than that of underlying causes, that knowledge developed. It was within this wider framework of the evolution of societies, a much broader metaphysical idea of political history than was common, that Fruin also famously inserted his account of the “three stages of Dutch history.”18 In it, he followed in the footsteps of a much older alternative constitutional discourse that first emerged in the middle of the eighteenth century when the idea of intrinsic power was located in a fluid understanding of the state as an entity with a role to play in a wider commercial and political environment. This idea of the Dutch state became prominent later in the century, when it was used to consider the revolutionary fervour and revindication of rights by the Patriots and Batavians.19 Fruin’s liberal constitutional outlook and method of historical inquiry were also 17 Z. W. Sneller, “Opzoomer en Fruin,” in Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Nederland-

sche Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, nieuwe reeks 12 (1949): 511–531, 529, my translation. Famously, Robert Fruin, “De drie tijdvakken der Nederlandsche geschiedenis,” De Gids 29 (1865): 245–271, defended his Dutch Sonderweg theory of state formation—as distinct from social and economic change, and while arguing that the Dutch constitutional monarchy was the best accommodation for the progress of Dutch social economic life—by asserting that “Onze geschiedenis verdeelt zich in drie perioden, die door diepe kloven van elkander zijn gescheiden, en ieder een geheel op zich zelf vormen” (248). On Fruin, see, for example, Joris van Eijnatten, “De lof der overtuiging. Fruin over religie en beschaving in heden en verleden,” Het vaderlandse verleden. Robert Fruin en de Nederlandse geschiedenis, ed. Henk te velde and Herman Paul (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2010), 153–173. 18 Fruin, “De drie tijdvakken.” 19 Koen Stapelbroek, “Le constitutionnalisme hollandais reconsidéré: le “pouvoir intrin-

sèque” de la république commerciale vs l’Assemblée représentative batave,” in Les défis de la représentation. Langages et pratiques politiques à l’époque modern, ed. Manuela Albertone, Dario Castiglione and Thomas Maissen (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2018), 165–194. My more extensive monograph project, Carthage must be preserved: The neutrality of trade

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in line with Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp’s empirical study of Dutch constitutional discourses and decision to locate the sovereignty of the Dutch Kingdom of 1813–1815 not in the people or the monarch but in the constitution itself. The Dutch constitutions drafted by van Hogendorp in these years were therefore to be understood not as some sort of sacred original document, but as a reflection of the functioning and identity of the Dutch state that had emerged at a specific point in time.20 In other words, the sovereignty of the Dutch state did not reside in the possession of a dynastic title and was not something claimed by its citizen members but existed as an evolved entity and product of history. The constitutional nature of the Dutch state did not refer to a self-evident entitlement to self-government, but to an external, objective justification of political sovereignty. Such an approach, of justifying the Dutch state in its functional relation with trade and the rest of the world, went back to the early seventeenth century. On the other hand, this emphasis on constitutional formation, notably in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, put a degree of responsibility on the proliferation of earlier commercial patriotic discourse. Historical accounts of Dutch trade came to fulfil a real, weight-bearing function in explaining historical change and justifying the sovereignty of the Dutch state. These aspirations to introduce constitutions on the basis of trade meant that ideas about the volatility of trade and the Dutch ability to tame commercial fortuna could no longer remain on the level of a simple national mythology but had to include some form of analytical reasoning and explanatory content. It is important at this point to recognise the economic foundation of this process of justification. It was not just that a more serious or formal Dutch constitutional discourse had gradually emerged out of an earlier popular culture of make-belief, ideological nation-building and blends of religious and patriotic fanaticism, but that there was also a real change in material circumstances (discussed in the previous section), which was revolutionary, unforeseen and associated with the emergence of the Dutch Republic, and which required political accommodation. The and the Dutch state, considers the relationship between thinking about constitutional state building and commerce. 20 Edwin van Meerkerk, “Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp: de man van 1813,” in Een nieuwe staat. Het begin van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, ed. Ido de Haan, Paul den Hoed and Henk te Velde (Amsterdam: Prometheus/Bert Bakker, 2013), 35–41: 40.

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explanations put forward had a domestic and an international dimension. On a domestic level, since trade was fluid and hard to tie down, it was imperative, given the increase in wealth and new goods that had brought population growth and subsistence security to Dutch cities, to try to sustain it in the new state: the nation only existed thanks to trade. Likewise, internationally, trade was increasingly considered to give the Dutch a role and therefore legitimacy in international politics. The idea of the Dutch Republic as the shipper of the world’s trade both sustained political sovereignty in such justificatory terms and was also deemed to be effective in terms of real power, lending protection to its territorial integrity. As the author of the famous 1751 “Proposal […] for the reform and improvement of the trade of the Republic” put it: Most of the neighbouring Nations will be more or less concerned, in the Conservation of our Trade, as their commerce chiefly consists in the Vending of their own Products; and will therefore rather protect than obstruct ours, which has such a Connection with their own, that it may not improperly be called a Part.21

Both the domestic and international arguments could also be rejected. What really caused the new forms of wealth derived from trade to attach themselves to the territory of the newly independent Dutch state? There were, in fact, rational explanations for the growth of trade in the cities close to the republic that had nothing to do with any distinctly Dutch propensity to trade or with the freedom from imperial domination. Factors such as the weakness of feudal structures under Burgundian-Habsburg rule and the already relatively urbanised society in the Habsburg provinces had a major impact on the possibility of developing commercial society in the later republic. Likewise, the argument about international trade and the pacification of commercial rivalry emerged, especially in the eighteenth century, and claimed that the rise of the Dutch Republic as a commercial power in fact upset the possibility of establishing peace and political equilibrium. In Tory pamphlets of the early eighteenth century, French writings from the 1730s and German treatises from the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War, the commercial primacy of the Dutch Republic was seen as 21 [Thomas Hope], Proposals made up by His late Highness the Prince of Orange […] for redressing and amending the Trade of the Republick (London: Kent, 1751), 59.

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an intermezzo on the way towards proper change, and as a pointer for international political reform. It derived no legitimacy from its status as a commercial pioneer (quite the opposite), and did not serve as a model or state to be followed. From the 1730s, the widespread aim across Europe was to make the Dutch Republic a harmless small state with limited colonial power and some remnant of its carrying trade, finance and North Sea fishing, while the new European order would be created by integrating Europe’s “real” states using the building blocks of overseas trade, modern finance and luxury consumption. The result was that native accounts of Dutch commercial culture had to find a middle ground between contributing further to the simple popular mythology of Dutch commercial exceptionalism and explaining away the specificity of Dutch proclivity for trade in terms of economic, social and demographic factors, and of factors that could easily be copied by any other state willing to adopt the right policies.22 Finding the right balance between patriotic rhetoric about Dutch commercial ability and historical accounts of economic change and the political pacification of dynastic rivalries was an intellectual challenge. It was one that was not met, for instance, by Eli Luzac when he considered Raynal’s passages on the origins of Dutch trade in the first edition of L’Histoire des deux Indes. The introduction to the first volume of Luzac’s Hollandsch rijkdom argued that it was not true, as some Dutchmen and many Frenchmen believed, that the moral and cultural principles of Dutch commercial liberty emerged entirely at the beginning of the Revolt against Spain.23 It was not the case that political resistance gave rise to trade, because freedom and trade were in fact always related, were independent of politics and had existed in the Dutch territories long before the Revolt. Luzac even argued that as the Romans had learned from Carthage how to use ships in war, the Batavians learned the same lesson in their ancient confrontations with the Roman Empire.24 Thus the 22 Dutch accounts of the origins of the new wealth overlap with the consensus developed among social and economic historians that the weakness of the feudal system, the relative degree of urbanisation and other factors that existed before the Revolt contributed to the development of the republic’s trade. See for instance Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 23 Elie Luzac, Hollandsch rijkdom (Leiden: Luzac, 1780–1783), vol. I, 1–4. 24 Luzac, Hollandsch rijkdom, vol. I, 42. For a related notion, that the Batavian Dutch

and the indigenous Indians were related in their fight against the Habsburg Empire

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Dutch were inspired to find their purpose in the history of world politics not by the anti-Habsburg Revolt but by a much older cultural aptitude for commerce. The Revolt thus served merely to reawaken the ancient Batavian commercial virtue that had lain dormant for many centuries. Luzac’s historical myth about Batavian seafaring traders was part of a wider strategy. He portrayed the Dutch not as colonisers, but as ancient “natural” traders whose role in a reformed balance of power and trade would be to take care of the commerce d’oeconomie of Europe and withdraw from the Indies.25 What is striking, however, is the inelegant and forced way in which he made his case. The intellectual weakness of Luzac’s historical summary did not match his vision of the political and economic role of the Dutch Republic in the later eighteenth century. His superficial historical view of trade, by consequence, did not really support his policy and diplomatic argument. Instead of using the history of trade effectively, in accordance with the standards of his own time, he reverted to the simplicity of early seventeenth-century popular myth and took the tension and persuasiveness out of his own argument. The example of Luzac’s transposition of an early Dutch myth typical of the period of the Revolt to his own late eighteenth-century context leads to questions about how Dutch histories of trade developed over time, what different functions they fulfilled and how they led to a situation in which histories of trade giving the Dutch a central role came to be appropriated by French, English, German and other writers. In what follows I will indicate how the transition from humanist discourses and early ideas about trade framed a constitutional view on the Dutch state in relation to trade. Before policy-oriented histories of trade emerged, there had been Dutch reflections on their overseas commercial adventures. But where did the later functions of policy-related histories emerge and in what way? To develop an understanding of the relation between early Dutch identity formation and the later genre of the history of trade, the next sections will scale back the scope of the inquiry to earlier Dutch accounts of trade, and

because both were victims of the corruption of post-Roman, post-feudal political tradition, see Benjamin Schmidt, Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World, 1570–1670 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 25 Koen Stapelbroek, “Raynal, Luzac and Pinto: global trade, the history and constitution of the commercial state,” in Autour et enjeux politiques de l’Histoire de deux Indes, ed. Antonella Goggi (Ferney-Voltaire: Centre international d’étude du XVIIIe

the Dutch Republic and de l’Abbé Raynal. Genèse Alimento and Gianluigi siècle, 2018), 45–61.

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to their various functions and initial usage and transformation in France and England.

Justifying the State: Dutch Trade, Divine Vocation and Republican Freedom Why had the Dutch, in the course of the Revolt against Spain, stumbled upon global trade and, as a newly independent nation, been propelled to new levels of wealth and power? One answer is that the encounter with proto-colonial trade was less of an accident that needed to be rationalised ex-post than as has traditionally been assumed. Instead of a Revolt, the Eighty Years’ War might be considered a civil war that was fought over religious beliefs and allegiances, with the personal interests of members of the aristocracy a notable secondary factor.26 Recent research, in line with this demystifying perspective, argues that Dutch company trade was imperial from the earliest charters of the East India Company onwards, and yet exceptional in that it allowed foreign investment and attracted more capital, as well as because of its particular financial structures and innovations. The research also claims that the idea that the Dutch Republic operated as a “company-republic” overseas while being justified domestically as a primarily commercial venture first appeared in around 1600 as a deliberately created myth that endured and came to occupy a place in the minds of Dutch citizens until the present day. The formal nationalisation of colonial enterprise into a colonial possession could therefore take place very rapidly in around 1800 without necessarily changing the reality on the ground in Dutch colonial territories.27 These lines of research fit with a more general and also public re-evaluation of Dutch history. Within this

26 Different versions of the civil war perspective can be found in: Pepijn Brandon,

War, Capital, and the Dutch State (1588–1795) (Leiden: Brill, 2015); Marjolein’t Hart, The Making of a Bourgeois State: War, Politics, and Finance during the Dutch Revolution (Manchester: Manchester University Pres, 1993); Henk van Nierop, Treason in the Northern Quarter: War, Terror, and the Rule of Law in the Dutch Revolt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). 27 See the chapters by, respectively: Catia Antunes, “Birthing Empire: The States

General and the Chartering of the VOC and the WIC,” 19–36; Arthur Weststeijn, “Empire of Riches: Visions of Dutch Commercial Imperialism, c. 1600–1750,” 37–65; and René Koekkoek, “Envisioning the Dutch Imperial Nation-State in the Age of Revolutions,” 135–157 in The Dutch Empire Between Ideas and Practice, 1600–2000, ed. René Koekkoek, Anne-Isabelle Richard and Arthur Weststeijn (Cham: Palgrave, 2019).

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process, myths perpetuated in school textbooks for centuries have been exposed, and there has been a recognition of the Dutch role in the slave trade, colonial exploitation and extensive state-sanctioned violence up to the mid-twentieth century. To approach the Dutch role in the history of trade through the lens of “civilisation” is, in this sense, offensive and problematic. At the same time, it was understood from the early seventeenth century onwards that the acquisition of wealth from trade was not simply conquest, nor was it a zero-sum game of liberty gained and taken. Global trade, just like gold and silver, not only created and retained its own utility, but also sparked the human imagination and the desire to obtain and make new goods. And the diversification of consumption and consumer markets in the highly urbanised society of the Dutch Republic ran in parallel to the processes of state creation and the justification of Dutch sovereignty. The idea, then, that the Dutch were colonisers and imperialists like the British and French, except in a cosmetically and rhetorically different way because they acted as self-aware republicans rather than monarchists and organised and presented their institutions differently, is not very satisfactory. It does not explain how and especially why the Dutch came to see and express their own identity through the production of a great many types of literary and figurative symbolisations. I am deeply sceptical about the restrictive idea that just because the United Provinces were not a monarchy, the idea of a comparatively exceptional “empire of riches” was kept afloat without any further explanatory object or focus required.28 The recent tendency to explain Dutch commercial discourse through the idea that in the United Provinces the state was a company (as Joan Derk van der Capellen literally expressed it, later on, in 1780), rather than having a company, has in my view also been imposed by new research on the legal, institutional and administrative structures of British chartered trade on the Dutch case.29 In my opinion, it is not

28 Weststeijn, “Empire of Riches”; and Arthur Weststeijn, “The VOC as a CompanyState: Debating Seventeenth-Century Dutch Colonial Expansion,” Itinerario 38(2014): 13–34. 29 The literature includes: Philip J. Stern, The Company State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); William A. Pettigrew and David Veevers, eds., The Corporation as a Protagonist in Global History, c. 1550–1750 (Leiden: Brill, 2019); Andrew Phillips and J.C.

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so much the form of the republican state or the equation of republican identity with commercial prowess and innocence that lie at the centre of and explain the nature of Dutch political and economic discourse, but the legitimacy of the Dutch state in relation to its commercial success. The challenge of self-justification was more comprehensive than merely presenting conquest as commerce. It went beyond linking the concepts of trade, profit and republican liberty together in opposition to monarchical empire and dominion, and pointed to a more profound transformative process in which the agency of the Dutch needed explaining and they subsequently gained “rights.” In other words, I agree entirely with the recent research on the history of Dutch colonialism and empire in so far as it has stamped out the myth that the Dutch Republic was exceptional because its chartered company trade would have been primarily commercial and not as political, exploitative or violently geared towards territorial aggrandisement as its (earlier) Spanish-Portuguese and (later) French and British counterparts. I also see no reason to question the recent idea that the absence of imperial selfawareness has its roots in an early, original Dutch historical self-portrayal, born in around 1600, of their actions and intentions.30 However, while the demystification of the genesis of Dutch colonialism is as useful as it is overdue, there are certain other elements that need to be integrated into the narrative. And here the intellectual history of Dutch foreign trade and its global impact has not made much progress in overturning the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century notion of a liberal commercial state guiding the world. This is because the new idea of a republic that was equally violent but slightly different from its rival monarchies leaves two important elements untouched, namely the justification of the republic’s sovereignty, which is left unexplained, and the new forms of wealth that somehow arose from global trade, which is not considered.31

Sharman, Outsourcing Empire: How Company-States Made the Modern World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020). 30 Weststeijn, “Empire of Riches,” gives a summary of this tradition. 31 In addition to the previously cited works by De Vries, see, more recently, Pim

de Zwart and Jan Luiten van Zanden, The Origins of Globalization: World Trade in the Making of the Global Economy, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

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When, from the early seventeenth century, the Dutch engaged with the consequences of their global adventures, the ensuing patterns of rationalisation were religious, legal, theological, moral as well as humanisthistorical, and were not restricted to the narrow realm of politics. These rationalising templates were very much part of the public debate, with all of its visual and artistic aspects. Was it a providential sign that the Dutch became rich from trade and were there classical examples that could provide existential guidance? Was it politically sustainable to engage in trade to earn money and the means of subsistence? Was it legally justifiable to capture goods that belonged to merchants of an enemy state?32 Also, this form of identity-seeking was connected to people’s deepest inner consciences: was it good or bad, according to moral and theological doctrines and prescriptions, to invest in trade in the Indies?33 The fault lines of these questions about Dutch trade coincided with other questions that dominated public debates and private consciences in the early Dutch Republic, ranging from questions about predestination and theological interpretation, the relation between science, morality and religion, the limits of human knowledge, and complicated discussions about the political legitimacy of the republic and the previous imperial structure and government of the Dutch provinces. Through these connections, overseas trade had a profound effect on the whole of Dutch political life in all of its unstable parts. The imagery of the Dutch Revolt, with its military and patriotic heroics, certainly merged easily with a triumphant republican set of ideas, including commercial ones. The new wealth that had flowed to the United Provinces could be seen as a divine sign of the merit of independence and the inherent justice of the quest for freedom. Such ideas were transmitted through the institutional and ideological forms of Calvinism and Batavian representations, and were proliferated by the activity of the printing presses. However, reducing Dutch politics to a narrow identification of trade with the republican form of government while pointing to its imperial

32 Martine van Ittersum, “The Long Goodbye: Hugo Grotius’s Justification of Dutch Expansion Overseas, 1615–1645,” History of European Ideas 36 (2010): 386–411; and Martine van Ittersum, Profit and Principle: Hugo Grotius, Natural Rights Theories and the Rise of Dutch Power in the East Indies 1595–1615 (Leiden: Brill, 2006). 33 See Schmidt, Innocence Abroad for the ideas of figures like Willem Usselincx, along with Jur van Goor, Jan Pieterszoon Coen 1587–1629, Koopman-koning in Azië (Amsterdam: Boom, 2015) for the missionary spirit of Calvinist proto-colonialism.

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designs produces an account that is too restrictive to be able to make sense of the historical and economic change that was involved. Likewise, portraying the works of writers like Grotius as mere justifications of state violence and greed, and reductively characterising the mobilising forces of humanist foundation myths or Calvinist missionary zeal as insincere rhetorical inventions of proto-capitalism is ultimately not helpful. Hidden in the justifying rhetoric of Dutch pro-colonialism were also attempts to align the unintended effects of trade with the nature of the Dutch Republic, and here there is a different story to tell alongside the one that highlights colonialism and exploitation.

Trade and the “Right” of the State: From Rationalising Myth to Political Explanation This section provides a broad overview of the development of different functions that the history of trade performed in Dutch politics from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth to, arguably, the early twentieth century. The aim is not to give a full or representative account, but to begin to differentiate between functions in order to recognise the development of Dutch reflections on trade in relation to the emergence of the history of trade as an international genre in political economic writing. First of all, there is the mythical association, in textual accounts as well as in portrayals and iconographical identifications, of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch trade with more removed historical cases and models, such as the Hebrew Republic, Rome and Athens. The theme of Carthage as the archetypal trading republic and lone opponent of Rome and its imperial growth was not yet common, but the idea of new nationhood as the outcome of maritime navigation and exploration was.34 Dutch writers and illustrators turned the development of a global trade system into something of an Aeneid of the north. In their poems and pamphlets, and in the frescoes commissioned by wealthy Amsterdam merchants for their richly decorated townhouses, these artists recorded the establishment of a global trade empire as a turning point in the history 34 Christopher Brooke, “Eighteenth-Century Carthage,” in Commerce and Peace in the Enlightenment, ed. Bela Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky and Richard Whatmore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2017), 110–124; and Wyger Velema and Arthur Weststeijn, eds., Ancient Models in the Early Modern Republican Imagination (Leiden: Brill, 2018), in which the various classical models do not include Carthage.

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of the world and of human civilisation. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these representations turned into manifestations of personal wealth and glory, or exhortative public trumpet calls in support of the restoration of Dutch trade.35 The inherent connection of Dutch trade to the great history of humankind could be revived, so these exhortations suggested, since there was some kind of pre-ordained commercial quality present in the Dutch Republic, in the Dutch Kingdom or in the personal character and capacities of individual merchants, merchant families or companies. Before the eighteenth century, and, in fact, before the late seventeenth century, these kinds of greater historical identifications were required to make sense of what had almost “overcome” Dutch merchants and investors in their quest for profit. The idea is not that these were innocent, honest traders who were naive about the reality of commerce and the desire to obtain incalculable wealth irrespective of the human cost and suffering, but that in any case Dutch merchants, investors and others never consciously intended to unleash a transformative process that turned early-modern societies into commercial states that revolved around the production and consumption of luxury goods and were in direct competition with each other on a global scale. The externalisation and mythical explanation of how the Dutch cities became so wealthy, which rested on the notion of a divine providential order or a larger overarching historical process, served the construction of a cultural and moral self-image in which trade and Dutch culture were tightly connected. These historical identifications, in which history encapsulated trade— whether inspired by theology or hearkening back to antiquity—served the conceptual invention of Dutch nationhood as a natural and superior accommodation of trade and of modern forms of exchange. The problem with subjecting foreign commerce to this kind of reasoning was that it was a novel element in thinking about or representing the specific qualities of a national culture. The language of revolt against monarchical Spain was easy enough to incorporate into an arch-Batavian mythical self-fashioning, but the inclusion of commercial aptitude into an archetypal Dutch culture was more complicated. When

35 Gert-Jan Johannes and Inger Leemans. “‘O Thou Great God of Trade, O Subject of my Song!’: Dutch Poems on Trade, 1770–1830,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 51 (2018): 337–356.

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Isaac Commelin, in his Begin ende voortgangh van de Vereenighde Nederlantsche Geoctroyeerde Oost-Indische Compagnie (1646) publicly justified the punitive actions of the Dutch East Indies company against Spain, he laid the emphasis on the virtue of commercial exploration as a quasimilitary expedition rather than providing a justification for the pursuit of profit.36 Even Pieter van Dam, in his privately commissioned report for the Amsterdam Chamber of the VOC, started in 1693 and finished in 1701 (but only published in 1931), treaded carefully when famously explaining the first origins of Dutch overseas commerce as an indirect consequence of the war with Habsburg Spain. What other choice did the virtuous and oppressed Dutch republicans have but to establish trade outside of Europe?37 It was as if a divine hand guided the Dutch both towards overseas proto-colonial trade and away from political oppression all at the same time. As a result, commercial development and independence were linked and profit was often justified with reference to a higher or greater plan. Profit, in this sense, was not honest and innocent because it was convenient or a virtue in itself, but because it was objectively and externally sanctioned. Displaying wealth with reference to an iconography of Dutch republican exceptionalism was a moral win–win. It meant being chosen by God or history and at the same time signalled a conscious recognition that any conveniences obtained through questionable actions were not necessarily the responsibility of one’s own calculated rationality. Placing the responsibility and agency for Dutch wealth creation elsewhere was a highly effective moral strategy. It was the foreign trade equivalent of the “embarrassment of riches,” which itself was not always sincere. Its core mechanism was the shift of effective cause from the conscious actions of Dutch citizens to historical process or divine intervention, and it had the benefit of aligning commercial innocence, anti-Spanish sentiment and the celebration of Dutch nationhood and its exceptional nature. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, this carefully constructed strategy of morally justifying ever greater wealth ran out of steam as Dutch traders, no longer unique, chosen and exceptional, found themselves competing with equally competent foreigners. In fact, 36 Isaac Commelin, Begin ende voortgangh van de Vereenighde Nederlantsche Geoctroyeerde Oost-Indische Compagnie (Amsterdam: Janszoon, 1646). 37 Pieter van Dam, Beschryvinge van de Oostindische Compagnie, ed. F. W. Stapel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976).

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apart from containing the obligatory celebration of Dutch virtue, selfdefence and commercial anti-monarchism, van Dam’s Beschryvinge of the history of Dutch trade was also a warning, echoing his earlier report, written in 1662, in which he had pleaded for a reform of the Dutch East Indies trade to make it more profitable and sustainable in the long term, given the competition from other states.38 Coming on the time of the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession, the celebration of Dutch glory in the Beschryvinge was clearly not (only) a retrospective historical reconstruction, but also contained the message that even divine redemption through trade needed effective and mundane human political and commercial management. A second function performed by the history of trade resulted from the first and related to the idea of Dutch statehood. From around 1600, the moral and cultural self-awareness, belief and explanation of Dutch wealth as part of a higher plan or greater scheme encouraged patriotic and constitutional positions and provided a support structure for political and commercial ideas and institutions. The range of mythical associations had a strong normative impact on interpretations of what the Dutch state was, what it was for, why and how it should exist, and how other states ought to behave towards it. The pivotal point in the development of this function in more direct relation to Dutch politics was the idea that having “discovered” trade and used it to create a new kind of society, the Dutch had a specific right and intrinsic power to claim sovereign status, as well as to act rightfully (and punitively) towards nationals of other states. The predominant discourse with regard to this was a humanist legal one, and writers like the young Grotius were breaking new ground in the cultivation of narratives that supported such political reasoning. Under the auspices of the idea of the law of nature, an argument developed that the Dutch were furthering the objectives and divinely ordained mission inherent in the creation of the world, since through trade they acted on the promise that the earth

38 Johannes de Hullu, “Een Advies van Mr. Pieter van Dam, Advocaat der OostIndische Compagnie, over een gedeeltelijke openstelling van Compagnie’s Handel voor Particulieren, 1662,” Bijdragen Tot De Taal-, Land- En Volkenkunde Van NederlandschIndië 74 (1918): 267–298.

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had been given to humankind alongside the general moral duty to satisfy human need.39 If the negative starting points of the justification of Dutch statehood turned on the theme of resistance, anti-monarchism and anti-tyranny,40 the positive, constructive claim was that the Dutch nation and its propensity to trade delivered the world from its previous state of uncertain subsistence provision, restricted population growth and sterile consumer markets. God’s gift to all humankind was provided for through the semiaware agency of the Dutch quest for profit, and from then on natural law mixed with Batavian rhetoric, as dominium mixed with imperium in the ex-post justification of a secular Dutch state.41 These kinds of legal philosophical arguments, intertwined as they were with the recent history of Dutch proto-colonialism, aided the invention of a conception of the Dutch state as a (retrospectively) natural republic that was different from, but also politically superior to, other European states due to its more rational accommodation of trade and modern forms of exchange. Beyond the previous idea that the Dutch were natural traders, it produced the notion that their state was justifiably sovereign through its intrinsic power, that is, its human resources and capacities to attract trade and provide for a large and dense national, as well as international, population. In this way, the Dutch state did not derive its sovereignty from a dynastic precept, territorial claim, law of property or monarchical tradition, but instead from the intrinsic power of the state over the fluid entity of trade. Being a different kind of state did not necessarily mean that it had to be a republic, even if being one started as the rejection of monarchical rule. Indeed, it could be argued on this basis that the Dutch state’s governance, laws and institutions could take on alternative forms, including those of a monarchy, as was increasingly claimed in the 39 On Grotius’s place in the natural law tradition of commercial sociability, see Hont, “Needs and Justice in the Wealth of Nations,” in Jealousy of Trade, 389–445 (first published 1983). Cf. Ittersum, Profit and Principle and Eric Wilson, The Savage Republic: De Indis of Hugo Grotius, Republicanism, and Dutch Hegemony in the Early Modern World System (c. 1600–1619) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 2008), among others. 40 See Martin van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, 1555–1590 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), and, regarding colonial oppression, Schmidt, Innocence Abroad. 41 See, for example, Ethan Alexander-Davey, “Nationhood and Constitutionalism in the Dutch Republic: An Examination of Grotius’ Antiquity of the Batavian Republic,” History of Political Thought 38 (2017): 64–91.

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later eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and arguably was also a possibility considered earlier by Spinoza.42 Thirdly, this idea of difference and of having been the divinely ordained discoverers of wealth derived from global trade encouraged a tendency among the Dutch to believe themselves able to play a pacifying and balancing role on the international stage. If Dutch trade inaugurated a new reality of global wealth, new ideas of statehood and new justifications of political action in the international sphere, did these also make up the contours of what we would now call a new world order? From the early seventeenth century, and increasingly so, the double character of the transformation of dynastic politics into commercial competition became clear. By turning global trade into a political factor, the Dutch had created and unleashed a monster, but also the potential for soothing interstate rivalry. The question became very much that of how to make sure that the history of trade could have a peaceful and happy ending, instead of letting the “Jealousy of Trade” bring about total war. Rival political and diplomatic proposals were explicitly presented as scenarios for concluding the history of trade and for reconciling it with the purpose of human nature (that is, a distinct Christian providential understanding of what one might call “civilisation”). Dutch writers themselves tended to believe that their compatriots, as the first to develop modern wealth through trade and as members of the quintessential trading nation endowed with special rights, had retained a special purpose and role in the international system, as well as an ability to bring it to rest in a state of enduring peace, prosperity and tranquillity. The basic idea behind this was that all attempts to achieve hegemony were self-defeating and intrinsically Machiavellian, or in other words inconsistent with the modern world. Instead, peace was the logical and natural outcome of a general political order in which states operated in accordance with their potential and engaged in competitive (market-efficient) trade. This idea marks the moment of the invention of the Dutch state as an international fulcrum able to bring balance through global trade development, a vision that took on different forms in the late seventeenth and, especially, in the eighteenth century. A foundational part of this vision was 42 Hans W. Blom, “Spinoza on Res Publica, Republics, and Monarchies,” in Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Hans W. Blom, John Christian Laursen and Luisa Simonutti (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 19–44.

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the De la Court brothers’ idea that by virtue of their commercial prowess the Dutch were untouchable, immune from violent attacks on their trade and political sovereignty. The key to power was commerce, and the nation that outmanoeuvred its neighbours through foreign trade enterprises shored up by political alliances could potentially elevate itself above its neighbours and avert militarily threats from any of them. Following the period of methodical commercial realpolitik by De Witt in which Spanish, French and English commercial policies were subjected to Dutch interests, the events of the Disaster Year of 1672 brought an end to this idea.43 Another foundational idea was the one noted above, in relation to the 1751 Proposal for a national free port, that “neighbouring Nations will be more or less concerned, in the Conservation of our Trade.” If the Dutch were the privileged sellers of the world’s goods, they could not be attacked by other states without those states suffering self-harm. Finally, there was the idea that war itself was the product of a sub-optimal or incomplete development of trade, leaving space for zero-sum, politically oriented trade and a relapse into “Machiavellian” politics, and that to neutralise the situation the Dutch needed to be assigned certain rights (for example to engage in neutral trade in wartime) or roles (such as multilaterally agreed monopolies on carrying trade) in the global economic system.

Trade Without the Dutch: The Anglo-French Invention of the History of Trade as a Genre The first genre expressions of the history of trade that included the Dutch did not emerge from the republic, but from its neighbours and competitors, Britain and France. In around 1700, the previous “Holland-centric” categorisation of the developing functions of historical reflections on trade turned into a European discourse. The narratives that initially supported the Dutch rationalising myth and took on legal and political meanings sparked a more universally recognisable understanding.44 For one thing, 43 On the subsequent expropriation of the trade of rival neighbouring states through De Witt’s politics, see Jonathan Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585–1740 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 229–258. 44 The transition of the Dutch iconography of global trade into a European one is discussed in Benjamin Schmidt, “Hyper-Imperialism: The Dutch Vision of Empire and

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there was the recognition, as expressed by Jean-François Melon above, that the world of politics had fundamentally changed and that it was imperative for any state aspiring to global power to include commerce in its policy considerations. The underlying factor was not just that fiscal income from trade was indispensable to maintaining the modern state and protecting territorial integrity, but that attracting trade and creating the preconditions for merchants to engage in it globally (notably through chartered companies) and connect with domestic luxury production and consumption became politically essential. This idea of the history of trade, including the way in which Dutch trade had shaped modern politics, was alluded to in the design of ways of dealing with international conflict, competition and the development of general economic growth. What happened after the Dutch tapped into foreign trade as a political factor formed an empirical basis for thinking about future politics and the reform of national and international mechanisms of power and wealth. To begin with, there was the international invention of the idea that it was necessary to emulate the Dutch state and its growing wealth in order to reshape global power. Modernity made it necessary to catch and, if even possible, outmanoeuvre and overtake the Dutch Republic. Dutch trade was both a model and a benchmark for French and British political writers in particular, while the Dutch East India Company, which in foreign accounts was often equated with or seen as an integral part of the state, played a key role in later seventeenth-century histories of trade and analyses of Dutch wealth. In spite of the cosmopolitan pacifist rhetoric about innocent trade, which had become a pillar of their self-perception by 1700, there was no denying that the Dutch had exploited warfare and other political opportunities during the seventeenth century in order to later take over Spanish, English and French trade in the East Indies and the Mediterranean.45 But if by the end of the seventeenth century the issue for other European states was how to recapture global trade from the Dutch, it was clear that this could not involve merely seizing their ships or capturing their ports. Trade had to be made part of the internal constitution of the state, just

the Expansion of the European World,” in Koekkoek, Richard and Weststeijn, The Dutch Empire between Ideas and Practice, 67–87. 45 Israel, Dutch Primacy, 229–258.

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like it was in the Dutch Republic. As it was put in the Le grand tresor historique et politique du florissant commerce des Hollandois, dans tous les etats et empires du monde (1712), which was attributed to Pierre-Daniel Huet and appeared under a number of different titles in various editions in the early decades of the eighteenth century46 : Some Persons of Honour and Distinction, whom I ought by no means to disoblige, having engaged me to write something upon Trade, which might give them a general Idea of it, as it regard Politicks: I believed nothing would better answer that End, than to give them a true Notion of the Trade of the Dutch; which has diffused itself over all parts of the habitable World, and to shew that it is on Account of Trade that their Republick has such a considerable Rank amongst the states of Europe. […] To be convinced of this Truth, we have nothing else to do, but consider the Difference there is between those Countries where Trade flourishes, and those Countries who have none. If we will only remember, that England and Holland, which (by Reason of their Situation) make so great a Figure in the affairs of Europe, regulate their principal Interest always with an Eye to their commerce; and this was the principal Motive which caused the last Wars; (that is, the Security of their Trade,) we shall be entirely satisfied, that Commerce ought to have no mean Place in modern Politicks.47

Huet dedicated this work to the prominent diplomat Jean-Baptiste Colbert de Torcy having in fact compiled a manuscript, entitled Etat du commerce des hollandois dans toutes les parties du monde, dated 1697, at his request. Apart from representing a classic attempt to gauge fully the logic by which global trade created new imperatives to modern politics, these works intervened in French politics by indicating how some trade previously in French hands had been appropriated by the Dutch, and how France could regain the lost territory. A sister text to Huet’s was the Mémoire concernant le commerce des Hollandois depuis leur établissement by François d’Usson, Marquis de Bonrepaus, which was dated 46 The best reconstruction of the circulation and composition of the manuscript, and of the attribution of the text to Huet, is still by P.J. Blok, “Parijsche handschriften over den Nederlandschen handel omstreeks 1700,” Verslagen en mededeelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen: Afdeeling Letterkunde 4, no. 5 (1902), 211–240 and P.J. Blok, “Mémoire touchant le commerce et la navigation des Hollandais,” Bijdragen en Mededeelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 24 (1903): 221–342. 47 Quoted from the English edition: Memoirs of the Dutch Trade (London: Rivington, 1719), i.

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1699, dedicated to Louis XIV and stored in the French foreign ministerial archive alongside the Etat du commerce des hollandois. While Huet emphasised the role of Huguenot émigrés and the Anglo-Dutch alliance in explaining the challenge of Dutch trade, the systematic commercialpolitical disruption and appropriation of foreign trade by the Dutch in fact took place before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.48 Instead of engaging with the history of Dutch global trade with an eye on emulation, the scope and context of the texts by Huet, Bonrepaus (and arguably also Pieter van Dam’s Beschryvinge, following his ominous report of 1662) seem to have been the combination of the reduced future viability of Dutch colonial trade and Franco-Dutch treaty politics in light of the reality of the Anglo-Dutch Protestant alliance.49 The long shadow of Grotius’s logic and the expansion of Dutch trade, which mixed political, legal and commercial reasoning to justify the capture of international markets amidst dynastic warfare and rivalry, was no longer to be seen.50 Even by the late seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was not the formidable power it had been before the fall of the De Witt system of “True Liberty” and had grown reliant on agreements and alliances.51 In fact, the broad circulation of the Memoires de Jean de Witt (1709), the 48 See Israel, Dutch Primacy, 348–349, on the role of the Huguenots in the Dutch takeover of French trade. On the trend for Huguenots to publish works of political economy in the eighteenth-century Republic, and the manuscripts by Huet and Bonrepaus, see Koen Stapelbroek, “Between Utrecht and the War of the Austrian Succession: The Dutch Translation of the British Merchant of 1728,” History of European Ideas 40, no. 8 (2014): 1026–1043. The manuscripts by Huet and Bonrepaus are in the Archives du Ministère des Affaires étrangères (La Courneuve - Paris). Their placement provides cause for further comparison: Huet’s text (not attributed to him in the catalogue) is entitled “Etat du commerce des hollandois dans toutes les parties du monde” and dated 1697 (Mémoires et documents, Hollande, 49), and is followed by three copies of Bonrepaus’ piece, “Mémoire concernant le commerce des Hollandois depuis leur establissement jusques en la présente année 1699” (Mémoires et documents, Hollande, 50–52). 49 For this suggestion, see Koen Stapelbroek, “Reinventing the Dutch Republic: FrancoDutch commercial treaties from Ryswick to Vienna,” in The Politics of Commercial Treaties in the Eighteenth Century: Balance of Power, Balance of Trade, ed. Antonella Alimento and Koen Stapelbroek (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 195–215: 213. 50 For the flexibility of that logic, see for instance Erik Thomson, “The Dutch Miracle, Modified: Hugo Grotius’s Mare Liberum, Commercial Governance and Imperial War in the Early-Seventeenth Century,” Grotiana 30 (2009): 107–130. 51 See, in different ways: Stapelbroek, “Reinventing the Dutch Republic”; Murk van der Bijl, “De Franse politieke agent Helvetius over de situatie in de Nederlandse Republiek

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French translation of Pieter de la Court’s Aanwysing der heilsame politike gronden en maximen van de republike van Holland en West-Vriesland (1669) may be ascribed more to a French historical interest in how Dutch international trade politics used to work than to an ongoing recognition of a Dutch model.52 Colbert’s commercial politics, and their continuation from the 1730s onwards by his spiritual successors, were also geared towards cutting out the Dutch middleman and organising a system of integrated economic competition through a commercial treaty with Britain.53 The idea that the Dutch were best kept out of the design of a sustainable European regime of global trade aligned with a historical perspective that developed in the eighteenth century. Its forerunner was the simpler idea, a product of English seventeenth-century war propaganda, that the Dutch were avaricious, cruel and incapable of citizenship or patriotism, and needed to be defeated.54 English writers of different political allegiances throughout the seventeenth century used Dutch institutions as examples while at the same scorning the Dutch people as simplemannered and unalloyed profit-seekers.55 Tory pamphlets that appeared in the years of the War of the Spanish Succession ahead of the Peace of Utrecht gleefully echoed such anti-Dutch ideas while arguing for a

in het jaar 1706,” Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 80 (1966): 159–194; Israel, Dutch Primacy. 52 The context of the publication and broad international circulation of the Mémoires de Jean de Wit, Grand Pensionaire de Hollande, trans. Johanna Dorothea Lindenaer van Zoutelande (Regensburg: Kinkius, 1709), has not been studied, but Colbert’s fascination with the Interest van Holland as “un volume [..] dans lequel on dit qu’est contenu tout le secret du commerce” from 1660 has been noted, see Ivo W. Wildenberg, Johan & Pieter de la Court (1662–1660 & 1618–1685). Bibliografie en receptiegeschiedenis (Amsterdam: APA-Holland University Press, 1986), 52. 53 Antonella Alimento and Koen Stapelbroek, “Trade and Treaties: Balancing the Interstate System,” in Alimento and Stapelbroek, The Politics of Commercial Treaties, 1–75; Moritz Isenmann. “Égalité, réciprocité, souveraineté: The Role of Commercial Treaties in Colbert’s Economic Policy,” 77–104, in the same volume; and Koen Stapelbroek, “The right to trade: The Dutch translation of Melon’s Essai politique,” in Commerce Versus Conquest: The Political Economy of Jean-François Melon, ed. John Shovlin and Koen Stapelbroek (London: Routledge, forthcoming). 54 The classical expression was the Dutch massacre in 1623 at Ambon, see Adam Clulow, Amboina, 1623: Fear and Conspiracy on the Edge of Empire (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019). 55 See also the chapter by William Ashworth in this volume.

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Franco-British commercial treaty that excluded the Dutch Republic.56 And these British debates from around 1713 in turn provided the formative context for French thinking about trading with the Dutch from the Franco-Dutch commercial treaty of Utrecht until the 1750s.57 The more theoretically refined eighteenth-century idea of the sentiment that the Dutch had to be excluded was the historical notion that because the Dutch first discovered trade and then monopolised it, they stopped all other countries developing into well-rounded commercial states and interacting peacefully with each other. The Dutch, in this interpretation, did not bring balance to international politics, but destabilised it by capturing trade and disfiguring the natural course of history and the possibility of geopolitical balance. This idea went on to play a significant role in eighteenth-century Prussian political writings by figures like Justi, and in Frederick II’s Anti-Machiavel, which fit with the idea that Dutch trade had to be excluded and carved up by Europe’s “proper” monarchical states.58 The same sentiment, that the Dutch Republic was an unnatural, imaginary, artificial entity that needed to be made into a proper state was expressed in the 1790s, when French delegates received their diplomatic instructions to take up their positions in the newly created Batavian Republic.59 Even Fruin, one of the patriarchs of the Dutch

56 Doohwan Ahn, “The Anglo-French Treaty of Commerce of 1713: Tory Trade Politics and the Question of Dutch Decline,” History of European Ideas 36 (2010): 167–180; Antonella Alimento, “Commercial Treaties and the Harmonisation of National Interests: The Anglo-French Case (1667–1713),” in War, Trade and Neutrality. Europe and the Mediterranean in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Antonella Alimento (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2011), 107–128. 57 See Antonella Alimento, “Translation, Reception and Enlightened Reform: The Case of Forbonnais in Eighteenth-Century Political Economy,” History of European Ideas 40 (2014): 1011–1025 and other contributions to this special issue of the journal. 58 Koen Stapelbroek, “The International Politics of Cameralism: The Balance of Trade and Dutch Translations of Justi,” Cameralism Across the World of Enlightenment: Nature, Happiness and Governance, ed. Ere Nokkala, Nicholas B. Miller and Dominik Hünniger (London: Routledge, 2019), 99–124. 59 A striking French Republican expression of this idea is in Archives du Ministère des

Affaires étrangères (La Courneuve, Paris), Mémoires et documents, Hollande, 71: “Notes au Comité de Salut-Public sur l’invasion des Provinces-Unies, par Sanchaman, commis aux bureaux de la commission des armées de terre (1794),” where the second page of the document explains with suitable disdain why the Republic was “une sort de pays magique” that existed only as an artificial entity.

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liberal self-understanding, argued that the republican period was an intermezzo, a strange interruption of a healthier political development towards constitutional monarchy.60

Conclusion: Statehood, Trade and “Civilisation” While the United Provinces became known as the quintessential trading state of its time, there was a certain irony to the “discovery” of global trade by the Dutch in that they had not consciously revealed, designed or created a global interchange of production, consumption and exchange of gold, silver, spices and a widening range of luxury goods. To be sure, the Dutch very consciously and purposefully explored the Americas and Asia in search of profit, but the more revolutionary “invention” of global trade that inaugurated a wholesale change in social structures and political rules was a matter of chance and fortuitous circumstances. Being part of those wider circumstances could, as it turned out, be understood and rationalised in hindsight and give rise to differing views on the policies needed to support the national economy and the wealth and power of the state. Before the genre of the history of trade took shape, the discovery of global trade was reflected upon and rationalised through different conceptual vocabularies than those that would evolve into distinct expressions of political economy. In other words, before the genre emerged, with its political and economic significance and the key role that it reserved for the Dutch, from the late sixteenth century the Dutch themselves were confronted with a situation in which they had to understand, in historical and other terms, what trade could actually be, what it meant, and where it might have come from. The explanations and identifications that arose out of this had little or nothing to do with policy emulation or civilisation, colonialism and international politics, but were the result of the basic and profound self-understanding of Dutch merchants, politicians, regents, investors and citizens. There was in these earlier considerations an elective affinity between the idea that trade cannot be owned, that it is an important factor in politics, and that the essential justifying principle of republican government does not lie in dynastic titles or fixed property ownership. However,

60 Fruin, “De drie tijdvakken.”

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before these reflections on the rise and decline of states as economic powers took on a more formalised character they were expressed in a variety of ways more as existential reactions to an unexpected phenomenon than as proposals for future policies. By the later seventeenth century, these initial treatments became more technical, directly political and part of an emancipating awareness of the growing significance of economic knowledge and trade policy. It was in this period that the history of trade transformed from a mythical rationalisation of the past and new forms of exchange to an early form of political economy. At this stage, the question also becomes whether the Dutch might be seen to bring equilibrium through a generally benign, pacifist and merely commercial agency, or whether their commercial appropriations had disrupted the history of humankind by removing the chance for integration of national economies through reciprocal exchange. Alongside attempts to mitigate the prominence of Dutch trade though institutions like commercial treaties, histories of trade written by French, British and Prussian writers turned the “inventors” of global trade from heroes into villains. Self-congratulatory ideas about the Dutch as pioneers of global trade, such as those developed in the hyper-turbulent and multifarious context of the early seventeenth century, did not entirely die out with the demise of the republic, as similarly suggestive connections between international legal norms and Dutch national culture were revived in the early twentieth-century invention of the “Grotian tradition.” Ushering in the later term “international society” as a conception of international politics that crucially promoted “civilisation,” the idea that the Dutch, the spiritual heirs of Grotius, had a special role and calling in the affairs of world politics re-emerged in the hands of writers like Cornelis van Vollenhoven.61 Conceptually, the latter’s legal-philosophical outlook on the state and on international politics had little to do with Grotius, but the intriguing character of the Grotian tradition and the flirtation with national greatness made his liberal world view attractive, and therefore compelling even on an international scale.62 61 The idea of the “Grotian tradition” was invented by Cornelis van Vollenhoven, De drie treden van het volkenrecht (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1918); Cornelis van Vollenhoven, De eendracht van het land (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1913). 62 Cf. Raymond Geuss, Who Needs a World View? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020).

CHAPTER 5

Emulation, Wealth and Civilisation: Works on the History of Trade and Industry in Early Modern England William J. Ashworth

Introduction If powerful civilisations are created through wealth, in seventeenthcentury Europe it was the trade of the Dutch and the industry of the French that showed the way to it. Thus, the study of their trading history was increasingly considered to be vital, and this became a dominant topic of the detailed, extensive pamphlets and treatises published throughout the early-modern period. The start of this activity can be traced to the Elizabethan period, and it reached its height in the late seventeenth century in the context of increasingly frequent wars in Europe and the Atlantic. Another notable element of this period was the North European exploitation of the Spanish and Portuguese American empire, and its escalating involvement in the slave trade. Without the stolen silver, there would have been very little trade with Asia’s superior manufactures:

W. J. Ashworth (B) University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Alimento and A. Della Fontana (eds.), Histories of Trade as Histories of Civilisation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80087-1_5

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the products that went on to inspire European industrial innovation, especially that of England, which thrived.1 War demanded that the government spend more on the military, not least the creation of an unrivalled Royal Navy, as well as on servicing a growing debt. Many of the economic tracts published during this period reflected these objectives. Between the outbreak of the English Civil War and the end of the War of Spanish Succession in 1713, England attempted to establish fiscal stability, expand trade, extend empire and develop a robust domestic industry. The foundation of Britain’s subsequent Industrial Revolution was laid during this vital period. Central to fiscal development and imperial expansion was the institutionalisation of commercial enterprises developed or promoted during the republican era and frequently modelled on Dutch methods; this country was then at the apex of the re-export trade and in the vanguard of financial instrumentality. The legacy of this period and the subsequent work of many of England’s leading figures played a highly significant role in defining commercial policy from the 1640s onwards. If the Dutch provided the inspiration for England’s trade (and fiscal) policy, it was the French Colbertian protectionist model of the late seventeenth century that shaped the country’s approach to industry. This represented a turning point for England’s subsequent economic trajectory, and would go on to make it unique, or at least the most successful, in integrating both approaches within a strong dynamic state at this time. The state was characterised by distinctive regulatory institutions, such as the Treasury and Excise, which helped make available the finance for the country’s aggressive commercial and territorial expansion. Over the course of the eighteenth century, fiscal credibility in Britain came to be predominantly based upon protected excised domestic manufactures, while trade in the Atlantic and Asia grew much larger than that of the country’s main European rivals. The rise of a distinct English and, from 1707, British civilisation came about through a combination of adopting Dutch trading prowess and French industrial Colbertism.

1 For English imitation of Asian goods see, especially, Maxine Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

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Emulating the Dutch and the Importance of Probity A key economic advisor to both Oliver Cromwell and, from the Restoration (1660–1685), Charles II, was George Downing, one of the first graduates from Harvard University in north-east mainland English America. His experience of virgin English republicanism, more mature Dutch economic praxis and, no doubt, knowledge gained during his former colonial life, would become important to post-1660 reforms. Like many of his contemporaries, Downing knew that the heart of power was fiscal credibility and commercial plenty, and philosophical thought and religious devotion do not seem to have been at the forefront of his ambition. The Dutch, especially, were demonstrating the centrality of trade and finance, and it was increasingly deemed vital for England to emulate their commercial practices. This was an objective Downing worked hard to achieve. In doing so he joined a growing groundswell leaning towards a commercial, but by no means unified, vision of England’s future.2 Far from bringing an end to the republican regime, the Restoration would see many of its key policies thrive, especially around the issue of credit.3 Downing and his ilk clearly recognised that trade was more successful under republican governance. Every European country recognised the importance of credit to its commercial fortunes but obtaining a dependable basis for this was easier said than done. 2 Ephraim Lipson, The Economic History of England, 3 vols., 1931, 4th edn (London: A.C. Black. 1947), vol. 3, 11; Steve Pincus, “Neither Machiavellian Moment nor Possessive Individualism: Commercial Society and the Defenders of the New Commonwealth,” American Historical Review 103 (1998): 705–736 and, especially, Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). Economic emulation, of course, was not confined to England, but the country proved particularly good at it during this period, see Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000–1700 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), 263, Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005) and, especially, Sophus A. Reinert, Translating Empire: Emulation and the Origins of Political Economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 3 D’Maris Coffman, “Credibility, Transparency, Accountability, and the Public Credit

Under the Long Parliament and Commonwealth, 1643–1653,” in Questioning Credible Commitment: Perspectives on the Rise of Financial Capitalism, ed. D’Maris Coffman, Adrian Leonard and Larry Neal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 76– 103. This is expanded in her Excise Taxation and the Origins of Public Debt (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

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Despite a concerted, but futile, an attempt by royalists to blank out the republican era and restore things to how they had been prior to the English Revolution (1642–1660), the subsequent fiscal basis of the Crown retained fundamental key innovations made during the previous two decades with, perhaps, the excise being the most controversial. With the king’s word central to borrowing, the first thing Charles II had to do was earn a reputation for having a safe pair of fiscal hands.4 English eyes gazed enviously across the Channel at the Dutch and desperately sought to replicate the factors underpinning that nation’s fiscal credibility, namely regularity built upon a prosperous trading economy, trustworthy revenues and a centre for commercial information. England’s leading diplomat, Sir William Temple, advised in his Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands (1687), that England desperately needed to understand the reasons behind the success of the Netherlands.5 The Dutch, at this point, were Europe’s primary audit society and leading commercial civilisation.6 The Anglo-Dutch connection was important in creating the modern English state and, at the heart of this was commercial competition although, as we shall see, France and South Asia had much more of a say in this development than is necessarily implied.7 4 Henry Roseveare, The Treasury 1660–1870: The Foundations of Control (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1973), 22–23; C. D. Chandaman, The English Public Revenue 1660–1688 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). For Charles II’s ultimate failure to establish credibility see Moshe Arye Milevsky, The Day the King Defaulted: Financial Lessons from the Stop of the Exchequer in 1672 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 5 For Temple see Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 194–201. 6 Jacob Soll, The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations

(New York: Basic Books, 2014), 70–86. For the importance of commercial knowledge and Amsterdam’s predominant role as a centre of credible information exchange, see W. D. Smith, “The function of commercial centers in the modernization of European capitalism: Amsterdam as an information exchange in the seventeenth century,” Journal of Economic History 44 (1984): 985–1005. Through Jean-Baptiste Colbert, France was also emphasising the importance of information see Jacob Soll, The Information Master: JeanBaptiste Colbert’s Secret State Intelligence System (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009). 7 Gijs Rommelse, “The Role of Mercantilism in Anglo-Dutch Political Relations, 1650– 74,” Economic History Review 63 (2010): 591–611; Jonathan Scott, When the Waves Ruled Britannia: Geography and Political Identities, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 5–9. The Dutch historiography for this period is rich see, for example, Maarten Prak, The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Pepijn Brandon, War, Capital, and the Dutch State 1588–1795 (Leiden: Brill, 2015); and Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment. War, Trade,

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Revenue raised through taxes on domestic produced items and certain international commodities was becoming vital to a nation’s wealth and civilisation. Credit built on such a trustworthy foundation became a recurring theme and required careful tracking. For example, the one-time Excise Commissioner and prominent commercial commentator Charles Davenant made such probity central to public credit; all the accounts connected with revenue should, he stressed, be “methodiz’d, so as to be kept very clear and intelligible without altering the Course of the Exchequer, or interrupting any of the present Methods of keeping the public Accounts.” Similar sentiments were underlined by the Tory leader, Robert Harley: “It [credit] is produced, and grows insensibly, from fair and upright Dealing, punctual Compliance, honourable Performance of Contracts and Covenants; in short, ’tis the Off-spring of universal Probity.”8 This view now transcended ideological and political boundaries. The work to achieve this had been carried out earlier by Downing and like-minded men. This was part of the comparatively weak English state’s continuing transformation since 1642, from being a relatively unreformed body to being one that played a role in a central and western European period of state building. Much of this was a legacy stemming from the failure to deal with the fiscal problems of the second half of the sixteenth century. Obviously, without money the Crown was unable to fund a successful foreign policy.9 Reflecting upon the republican

and Settlement in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016). For the impact of Dutch commerce and its stimulation of knowledge, see Edward G. Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic: The Shaping of Discovery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Harald J. Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). 8 Charles Davenant, An Essay upon the National Credit of England (London: Printed

by A.R. […] and are to be sold by B. Bragg, 1710), 9; Robert Harley, An Essay upon Publick Credit, 1710 and reprinted in Anonymous, A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts, 4 vols. (London: F. Cogan, 1748), 3. For Davenant’s career in the Excise see Miles Ogborn, “The Capacities of State: Charles Davenant and the Management of the Excise, 1683–1698,” Journal of Historical Geography 24, no. 3 (1998): 289–312. 9 Jonathan Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in

European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 67–68, 72–73 and 403. For the importance of revenue, new fiscal instruments and military success during the Interregnum, see Michael J. Braddick, “An English Military Revolution?” Historical Journal 36 (1993): 965–975 and Michael J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England 1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 177–290.

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military success of the Interregnum, Downing wrote from the Netherlands in March 1662: “I would to God…something [was] done…for the augmentation of his Majesties Revenue…nothing being more certaine, then that…his Majesty cannot keepe…neither honor nor interest with his neighbours…unlesse his Majesty have a much greater Revenue.”10 In 1668 the confusing system of several different revenue farmers harvesting the excise around the country was centralised. The nationalisation of the country’s revenue would prove to be a vital step to ensuring the nation’s credit and rise to power.11 By comparison, France and the United Provinces had far more diffuse tax systems, as Gijs Rommelse writes regarding the latter: The States General found it almost impossible to reach unanimous decisions because the provinces often had conflicting political and economic interests. The tax system was decentralized and the percentage contributed by each province became fixed. The institutional structure of the United Provinces and the political deadlock between the provinces made changes to this system impossible.12

The French, too, suffered from a fragmented domestic system of taxation and were well aware of the fact.13 The advantage and ability to nationalise the revenue proved far easier in England than among its European and Asian rivals. The Treasury Board quickly established a fixed timetable for business and regularised meetings. Predictability and punctuality of tax revenues were fundamental to this process with the excise being, potentially, the best tax to provide this. Such an approach would start to make real headway after the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689.

10 Downing is quoted in Scott, England’s Troubles, 312. 11 Patrick K. O’Brien, “Fiscal exceptionalism: Great Britain and its European rivals

from civil warto triumph at Trafalgar and Waterloo,” in The Political Economy of British Historical Experience, 1688–1914, ed. Donald Winch and P. K. O’Brien (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 245–265: 256. 12 Rommelse, “The Role of Mercantilism,” 598; Prak, The Dutch Republic, 75–84. 13 J. F. Bosher, The Single Duty Project: A Study for a French Customs Union in the

Eighteenth Century (London: University of London Athlone Press, 1964).

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The Revolt of the Gentry, Visibility and Taxation Not long after the arrival of Dutch Prince William of Orange, England was plunged into a hugely expensive military conflict with France that lasted nine years. Funding such an expensive war required a revolutionary extension of prevailing fiscal measures and creation of new financial expedients. In February 1689, Parliament introduced a monthly assessment for six months. This was regarded by Members of Parliament as a land tax, and it was the first time that such a levy had been introduced in ten years. One problem with the assessment was its unequal distribution— based upon estimated land value—with the east of England contributing more than the western part. By 1694 the landed gentry was becoming resentful of having to shoulder the burden of increased tax to pay for the war. The government increasingly turned to an inland tax on its yet rather negligible domestic manufactures as an alternative source of revenue. Additionally, it took care not to give the impression that it was introducing a general excise, despite the idea of such a universal tax being popular with well-known commentators like Davenant. For example, he feared that if a four shilling levy in the pound remained on the landed class, they would probably become so indebted that their estates would be confiscated by greedy moneylenders making huge profits at their expense.14 Many others, however, believed that a general excise could give William the power to rule without Parliament. Moreover, if this was a tax upon everyone then the “common people” could turn upon traditional social authority.15 The landed tax was thus seen as having the potential to trigger a revolt among the aristocracy, while an expansion of the excise could provoke the same among the great masses. A decision, however, had to be made sooner or later as to which way the axe would fall. In the short term, the state’s fiscal administrative system could be tackled through efficiency savings. The 1690s saw a high level of scrutiny of public accounts by various commissions characterised by a traditional country and anti-executive stance. The emphasis upon greater information and visibility of income and expenditure continued to grow in the eighteenth century. The reams 14 J. V. Beckett, “Land Tax or Excise: The Levying of Taxation in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century England,” English Historical Review 100 (1985): 285–308: 288–301. 15 Anon., The General-Excise Consider’d, 2 and 6.

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of reports concerning fiscal matters “were part,” argues Julian Hoppit, “of a continual use of political arithmetic which had been” developing during this period.16 In other words, the increasing stress on tracking revenue and consolidating borrowing payments gave impetus to technology for achieving such objectives. Induction was, arguably, being spearheaded within the state’s fiscal apparatus more than natural philosophy and the interrogation of nature. The huge expense of war, quest for money and the sheer urgency of the situation was a much greater fuel for such innovation. Nurturing and establishing national economic credibility was, in this sense, a major boost to a method of state empiricism and a quantifying spirit. The historical model was, once again, the Dutch but with an even greater emphasis on such inductive information. Data collection was becoming central to England’s growing commercial civilisation. The outward expression of these attributes was correctly kept account books without deliberate alterations or suspicious erasures; this was also a key feature of the Excise’s instructions in making and recording all taxgauging charges and keeping a diary.17 Such was the importance of good accounts that the London-based hack, Daniel Defoe, devoted a significant chunk of his The Complete English Tradesman (1725) to this imperative. “Next to taking care of his soul,” he wrote, “a tradesman should take care of his book.” This, no doubt, was a measure drummed into him during his former occupation in 1695 as an excise commissioner for glass. Account books “should always be kept clean and neat; and he that is not careful of both, will give but a sad account of himself either to God or man.”18 Such accounting was also crucial to the credibility of trade. Here Defoe was building upon his earlier work entitled

16 Peter Buck, “People Who Counted: Political Arithmetic in the Eighteenth Century” Isis 73 (1982): 28–45; John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 221–249; Julian Hoppit, “Political Arithmetic in Eighteenth-Century England,” Economic History Review 49 (1996): 516– 540; and Julian Hoppit, “Checking the Leviathan, 1688–1832” in Winch and O’ Brien, The Political Economy of British Historical Experience, 267–294. 17 See, for example, Anon., Instructions to Be Observed by the Officers of Excise (Edinburgh: n.p., 1707), 15. 18 Daniel Defoe, The Complete English Tradesman, 2 vols., 1st ed. 1725 (Oxford: Thomas Tegg, 1841), vol. 1, 275 and 311. For Defoe and defining “credit” see John F. O’Brien, “The Character of Credit: Defoe’s ‘Lady Credit’, ‘The Fortunate Mistress’, and the Resources of Inconsistency in Early Eighteenth-Century Britain,” English Language History 63, no. 3 (1996): 603–631.

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A General History of Trade, and Especially Consider’d as It Respects the British Commerce, as Well at Home, as to All Parts of the World (London, 1713). Arguably, more than any other institution it was the Treasury and the Excise that really put such an approach into practice during this period.19 These two fiscal bodies were soon joined by the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694, inspired by the Bank of Amsterdam (established 1609), to complete what would become a crucial alliance during the eighteenth century; trust in the fiscal future was certified via this credible trinity. Along with trade and industry, this institutional axis would become a key to defining England’s and, subsequently, Britain’s, commercial civilisation.

“New Manufactures Must First Be Taught”: Quality and Emulating the French The credit of a nation was, ultimately, only as good as the source and collection of its taxes. Over the course of the eighteenth century, these would become heavily reliant upon an excise levying a growing domestic industry and, also, staple colonial products such as tobacco and sugar. Fiscal and state administrative reforms were accompanied by a strategic approach to nurturing trade, naval power, colonisation and, especially, domestic manufactures, all behind protective tariffs. Any understanding of Britain’s ensuing Industrial Revolution must take into account this interlinked nexus. All these factors combined to develop the country’s commercial power and civilisation. The origins of this impulse were in the seventeenth century and the model was French regulation and protectionism—especially under Jean-Baptiste Colbert.20 During this century there was a gradual shift from an emphasis on trade to a concern with the need to nurture the domestic industry. New trading networks stemming in part from a growing demand for exotics from the Americas and, especially, Asian manufactured imports, were further stoking political fear over the balance of trade. It was also eroding traditional trading relationships as the rise in long-distance commerce to 19 For the Excise, from this perspective, see Brewer, The Sinews of Power and William J. Ashworth, Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England, 1640– 1845 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 20 Shepard Bancroft Clough and Charles Woolsey Cole, Economic History of Europe (Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1952), 318–343.

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the Americas and Asia continued to increase. Crucially too, trade with Asia required ever-greater supplies of bullion from the Iberian American empire. Henry Robinson’s suggestions for commercial catch-up during the seventeenth century were a succinct synthesis of what were fast becoming a set of standard axioms among numerous contemporaries. Robinson was a one-time merchant and Secretary to the Excise Commissioners during the early Interregnum. His views, which the Commonwealth took very seriously, were characteristic of what would define the country’s economic policy for well over a century. In 1641 he emphasised the importance of encouraging the exportation of domestic goods and doing everything to hinder the imports of foreign competition. Robinson’s seventh proposal was the need to create new domestic manufactures, for which the foreign skilled labour which England would need should be greatly encouraged.21 His peers accepted and paid heed to his latter point. The French, likewise, had been energetic in wooing Venetian, German and Swedish skilled labour to aid its production of mirrors and mining activities.22 In 1680 William Petyt, a leading barrister, economic commentator and onetime active exclusionist (that is, one who sought to bar the Catholic James—brother of Charles II—from acceding to the throne), underlined the need to nurture domestic manufactures: “Whereas Manufactures and a great Foreign Trade, will admit of and oblige an increase of people even to infinity: And the more the Manufacturers increase, they will the more enrich one another, and the rest of the people; it may then be proper to inquire how the Manufactures of a Nation may be increased and improved. This may be done either by enlarging former Manufactures, or by introducing new ones.”23 To achieve this, he added, “New Manufactures must be first taught, and then encouraged, and if made of Foreign Materials, the Materials must be Imported.” This would require, he concluded, greater encouragement of skilled foreign labour: “Without these primary Encouragements and Superintendence of the Government,

21 Henry Robinson, England’s Safety in Trades Encrease (London: Nicholas Bourne, 1641), 8–9 and 16–19. 22 Clough and Cole, Economic History, 335–336 and 340. 23 Petyt, Britannia Languens, 29–30.

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it will be hard to nourish up any new Manufacture, or to enlarge any old ones, at least, suddenly, to any degree.”24 The key to reducing imports of foreign rival goods, as the French demonstrated, was to impose high tariffs and cut or severe duties on the export of domestic equivalents. If this was not done, Robinson warned, all other nations “who have already begun to make Cloth, will be able to undersell and beate us quite out, so that a Master-piece it would bee, if possible, to give them so good cheape abroad, as others might not make to live by it.” Likewise, a great deal of money was to be had by making England the emporium and centre for the re-exporting of East India spices, calicoes and other goods from that region. The best way of doing this would be to establish a corporation “able to plant Colonies by degrees and make head in the Indies if need be against the Hollanders.” Such a body, he advised, should be formed by joint and well-governed stock.25 Robinson was a keen advocate of restricting trade with the colonies to English vessels. The significant legislation in this area was the Navigation Act of 1651. The prequel to the act played on the fear that Spain might be seeking, as Benjamin Worsley put it that year, “Universal Monarchie of Christendom.” More importantly, however, was the perceived quest by the Dutch for “Universal Trade, not only of Christendom, but indeed of the greater part of the known world.” People like Worsley and Robinson became important architects of the English economy being constructed during this period. From what historical records we have, Worsley was probably raised in London, educated in Dublin at Trinity College and then served in the English republican army in Ireland during the 1640s. He was a staunch advocate of colonisation and the aggressive pursuit of trade.26 In addition, he spent two years in the Netherlands

24 Petyt, Britannia Languens, 30. 25 Robinson, England’s Safety, 24–25. 26 Benjamin Worsley, The Advocate: Or a Narrative of the State and Condition of Things Between the English and Dutch Nation in Relation to Trade (London: William Du-Gard, 1651), 1; Thomas Leng, Benjamin Worsley (1618–1677): Trade, Interest and the Spirit in Revolutionary England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), xi and 22– 23; Carl Wennerlind, Casualties of Credit: The English Financial Revolution, 1620–1720 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 55–79; and Charles Webster, “Worsley, Benjamin (1617/18–1677),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

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scrutinising their economic policies and spearheaded the drafting of the first Navigation Act.27 Whether the subject was the navy, tax or trade, domestic industry was never far away from the debate. For example, John Bland’s tract, Trade Revived, written in the last days of the republic in 1659, was subsequently plagiarised by numerous writers. Like Downing, Bland had spent a formative period in the mainland American colonies although, in his case, further south in Virginia, where he became a significant investor in the region from the mid-1630s. His son, Giles Bland, became Collector of Royal Customs in 1673 before being executed three years later for his role in Bacon’s Rebellion (a civil war that raged in the colony in 1676).28 Bland emphasised the need to nurture domestic industry but, in so doing, ensured that manufacturing regulations were enforced so as to raise the quality of products and restore their reputation abroad by making them instantly recognisable. This was instrumental in the success of the French industry.29 Consequently, via “the true and exact makings of our own Manufactures,” Bland concluded, buyers could be sure that they were not “deceived in the Commodity.” However, such a national process of regulation would have to wait for the reorganisation of the Excise later in the century and its expansion during the eighteenth. Here the Excise created, as William Cunningham once observed, “a system of industrial supervision on national lines,” which was important in maintaining “a high standard of quality for goods of every kind, manufactured for sale either at home or abroad.”30 Most of Bland’s proposals would be implemented, many of them also being subjects of Samuel Fortrey’s highly successful tract England’s Interest and Improvement, Consisting in the Increase of the Store and Trade of This Kingdom (1663). Fortrey’s emphasis on trade, protectionist policies, an aggressive stance against the French and the need to encourage the immigration of skilled foreign Protestants to help nurture England’s

27 Worsley, The Advocate, 3–7; Leng, Benjamin Worsley, 35 and 49–59. 28 Stephen Saunders Webb, 1676: The End of American Independence (New York: Syra-

cuse University Press, 1995), 50, 152–153 and 203–204; Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800, 2nd edn (London: Verso, 2010), 256–258. 29 Clough and Cole, Economic History, 337–338. 30 Bland, Trade Revived, 8; Cunningham, The Growth of English Industry, vol. 2, 308.

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industry, made it a firm favourite at a number of key historical moments, leading to its republishing in 1673, 1713 and 1744.31 Fortrey was the son of a successful London merchant—also called Samuel Fortrey—whose Protestant family had fled Flanders to escape religious prosecution during the Elizabethan era.32 Like Bland, whose tract he was clearly aware of, Fortrey underlined the need to facilitate the export of successful domestic manufactures, free from taxes so “that the merchant may afford his commoditie abroad, as cheap as others, or else he could not be able to vent it.” Secondly, those foreign items that “cannot be raised here, should be brought to us under easie customs, the better to enable us at an easie exchange, to vent our commodities abroad.” Lastly, all luxury goods imported into England that could not be domestically produced “should pay extraordinary customs.” In this way, “the State will raise a good revenue, and the country save their wealth, that would be wastefully spent abroad, and so increase our own manufactures at home.” He famously calculated that England was swamped by French goods by a trade deficit of £160,000.33 England’s increasingly vocal realisation that it was industrially limited was being expressed at an unprecedented level. A major advantage Colbert had in the tariff war was the fact that France produced items of such a high quality that they would still be bought whatever the import levy. This was not the case with English and Dutch products, and initially both those countries sought lower tariffs and exclusion from strict French quality controls. In short, the French stressed quality and the English (and Dutch) focused on price. This was probably one of the most prominent issues in negotiating trade treatises at that time.34 The royalist Carew Reynel, desperate to gain public office, penned his The True English Interest in 1674. Drawing strongly upon Colbert’s policies, particularly by means of the work of Jacques Savary (a key figure in the revision of French trade laws between 1670 and 1673), he drew attention to England’s lack of productive self-sufficiency. As with others, he 31 Gauci, “Fortrey, Samuel (1622–1682?),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 32 Gauci, “Fortrey.” 33 Fortrey, England’s Interest, 22–24. 34 Moritz Isenmann, “Égalité, Réciprocité, Souveraineté: The Role of Commercial

Treatises in Colbert’s Economic Policy”’ in The Politics of Commercial Treaties in the Eighteenth Century: Balance of Power, Balance of Trade, ed. Antonella Alimento and Koen Stapelbroek (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017), 76–103: 92–103.

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stressed the need to encourage the domestic populace to consume homeproduced goods and then to increase the customs on foreign equivalents. Reynel insisted that a negligible amount of duty—or, better still, none at all—should be placed on English exports.35 Trade desperately required tariff reform. Among other things, Reynel targeted the need to nurture the linen industry and to stimulate the fledgling silk manufacturers. The former, he emphasised, was potentially more profitable than woollen textiles. The knock-on effects of cultivating such an industry would be immense: “The Linen Trade will save an infinite deal of money we send to France and Holland, and employ half a million people; keep in Tillage much Land, set many Husbandmen on work by the great quantity of Hemp and Flax, that will be sown for the carrying of it on.” The cultivation of the latter was to save money then going, again, to France and Italy, while the setting up of a linen industry would make possible the long-term establishment of paper industry. Without linen rags, Carew rightly explained, it simply would not be possible to produce paper since such rags were the main raw material in its manufacture: “No Nation uses more Paper than we, and yet make none ourselves.” While many lobbied for the expansion of an English linen and silk industry, others vehemently pointed out the need to protect the key woollen textile sector. One of the main issues was the rise in illicit exports of raw wool. Joseph Trevers, a one-time clothier and customs officer, spoke for many when he expressed his fear that such smuggling would lead to the terminal decline of English woollen textiles.36 35 Carew Reynel, The True English Interest: Or An Account of the Chief National Improvements (London: Giles Widdowes, 1674), iv–v and 8–11. For the importance of Savary’s The Perfect Merchant or General Instructions Regarding the Mercantile Trade of France and Foreign Countries (Paris: Jean Guignars, 1675), see L. B. Packard, “International Rivalry and Free Trade Origins, 1660–78,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 37 (1923): 412–435, 432. For an eighteenth-century review of the impact of Colbert’s policies on England’s industrialisation, see, for example, Anon., An Appeal to Facts. Regulating the Home Trade and Inland Manufactures of Great Britain and Ireland (London: George Woodfall, 1751), 14–17. 36 Reynel, The True English Interest, 24–25 and 36–37; Joseph Trevers, An Essay to

the Restoring of Our Decayed Trade (London: Giles Widdowes, John Sims and William Milward, 1677). The clamour to start a serious linen industry was becoming more and more forceful, see for example Anon., The Prevention of Poverty. or, New Proposals Humbly Offered for Enriching the Nation (London: H. H., 1677), 4–5. For the extent of the illicit trade in raw wool, see E. Keble Chatterton, King’s Cutters and Smugglers 1700–1855,

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The Balance and History of Trade The balance and history of trade were key and industrial self-sufficiency was essential to these objectives, with a knowledge of maritime history and law also central. The legal writer and lawyer, Charles Molloy, tried to codify such policies in his extensive work on navigation, De Jure Maritimo Et Navali, Or, a Treatise of Affairs Maritime, and of Commerce (London, 1676). This tract on maritime law became very popular and remained so with lawyers, merchants, and shipping agents well into the eighteenth century. Indeed, it was reprinted no less than ten times, the last occasion being in 1778. Maritime trade had become vital to British wealth and civilisation. Despite its success, Molloy’s work was not original but to a large degree drew on earlier publications to illuminate historical changes in trade. In particular, the works of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Antwerp-born merchant, English Commissioner to Spanish Netherlands and Master of the Mint, Gerard de Malynes, and the English financial writer, John Marius.37 Likewise, the economic government advisor, colonial enthusiast and political philosopher, John Locke, underlined the fundamental importance of trade and navigation to a nation’s wealth, power and civilisation. In 1704 he published a long tract-tracing this argument through the history of navigation, commencing with Noah and the ancients and moving to the Dutch and ultimately to the English. The past could teach England how to face the challenges of the new commercial world. In the opening lines to his work Locke underlined the key role of the navy and trade: “Of all the inventions and improvements the wit and industry of man has discovered and brought to perfection, none seems to be so universally useful, profitable and necessary, as the art of navigation.”38 Trade was at the heart of civilisation and this was impossible without a powerful navy that, in turn, would be ineffective without knowledge of 1st ed. 1912 (London: G. Allen & Co, 2010), 24–25 and Richard Platt, Smuggling in the British Isles: A History (Stroud: Tempus, 2007), 84 and 107–112. 37 Gerard de Malynes, Consuetudo, vel, Lex Mercatoria: or, The Law Merchant: Divided into Three Parts, According to the Essential Parts of Traffick Necessary for All Statesmen (London: Adam Islip, 1622) and John Marius, Advice Concerning Bills of Exchange (London: Printed by I.G. and are to be sold by Nich. Bourne, 1651). The latter remained in print into the nineteenth century. 38 John Locke, The Whole history of Navigation from Its Original to This Time (London: Awnsham and John Churchill, 1704), 1.

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navigation. England needed to emulate the successful elements of the past and, more so, the recent trajectory of the Dutch and French in the quest for commercial superiority. Domination of trade and military might be vital to a country’s wealth. Defoe also reiterated this approach and aim a few years later in his A General History of Trade. By this point, it had become a truism that trade was vital to the reason of state.39 This emphasis on trade as the heart of civilisation had, perhaps, reached its crystallisation in the earlier French tract by the theologian PierreDaniel Huet, and his The History of Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients (1666, translated into English in 1717). Lessons of past experience—in this instance mostly that of Ancient Rome—provided a road map for the present commercial sphere. The original was commissioned by and dedicated to Colbert, while the English translation nominated the Directors of the East India Company. In the opening pages of his tract, Huet was emphatic in stating that trade was the key denominator of civilisation, “we have many instances of wild People in Parts of the World lately discovered, living upon the most barren Lands without any Trade, or the least Communication with Strangers, loving their Country, and contented in their Miseries.”40 This sentiment, as we have seen, opened the door to numerous subsequent histories of trade and its centrality to wealth and civilisation. Huet repeated his argument, this time focusing primarily on the Dutch, in his treatise entitled Memoirs of the Dutch Trade (1712 and translated into English in 1719). History showed that spreading trade across the globe was a civilising process. It required state protection and privileged companies—no wonder the English translation of Huet’s History of Commerce came out in 1717 at a time when the trade of the East India Company was, once again, under attack from domestic textile makers. From the outset, England’s and, subsequently, Britain’s colonial economy in the Americas was an agricultural-based commercial form of imperialism. As such, the appropriated land concentrated on staple goods like sugar, tobacco, rice, grain, fish and manufacturing raw materials, including dyes, cotton, and shipping supplies. Plantation imports to

39 Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 28–30. 40 Pierre-Daniel Huet, The History of the Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients,

trans. 1717 (London: B. Lintot and W. Mears, 1717), 1–2.

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England grew by 100% between 1663 and 1701. This contrasted with Spain’s silver-based and elite-driven extractive empire.41 Moreover, the Americas had also become a vital market for English manufactures with domestically produced exports to the colonies growing as fast as the re-export sector in colonial staple goods. In general, New World imports and exports with the colonies stimulated both commercial and industrial innovation in England; during the Restoration period colonial trade accounted for some 20% of all overseas commerce. By 1700, English colonies had soared in population to some 400,000 people compared to the country’s domestic market of five million consumers. In comparison, the French colonies only had a population of 70,000 and the Dutch some 20,000. The hub of English colonial trade was London, which by the close of the century had become Europe’s largest city on the back of this colonial surge.42 Colonial Atlantic trade clearly had a crucial impact upon England’s subsequent industrial trajectory, as it resulted not only in innovation to meet diverse colonial demands, but also in the stimulation of domestic consumption. With trade being central to a nation’s future, experienced advisors were needed and this led to the establishment of The Board of Trade and Plantations in 1696. This body was given the remit of promoting English trade and also had the task of inspecting and improving colonial plantations, in particular producing a close study of the state of general trade such as the nature of imports and exports, the origin and destination of goods, those trades that “are or may prove hurtful and what beneficial to this Kingdom; and by what means the Advantageous Trades may be improved, and those that are prejudicial discouraged.” Fundamental to this was the need to nurture domestic substitutes for adverse imports and promote lucrative manufactures in general. As the Board reported in 1700: “To consider by what means profitable Manufactures already

41 G. L. Beer, The Old Colonial System 1660–1754, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1912); David Hancock, Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) and, especially, John H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492–1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). 42 Nuala Zahedieh, The Capital and the Colonies: London and the Atlantic Economy 1660–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 4–33 and 184–185.

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settled may be further improved, and how other new and profitable Manufactures may be introduced.”43 The Board, with Locke a leading member, underlined that the nurturing and promotion of domestic manufactures were inseparable from commercial policy in general. This, as Locke and his colleagues knew, was crucial if indirect taxation via the excise was ever going to become the dominant source of revenue and foundation for fiscal credibility. It was the balance of trade that moulded such a policy and the tool used to carve this was numerical information. This emphasis upon quantification allowed calculation, which led to direct decision-making and, perhaps, diluted conflicting views among its members. In this sense, the Board was formed to utilise such knowledge practically, and the post of Inspector General of Exports and Imports was introduced almost simultaneously for the specific purpose of helping to collect the necessary trade data. Not surprisingly, the country that occupied the Board’s attention the most was France. The first computation the Board found concerning the balance of trade with France was taken from an earlier document entitled “A Scheme of the Trade” (1674). The Board reproduced the report’s findings concluding that trade from France that year was a staggering £1,136,150. By contrast, they claimed, English exports to France for the same year amounted to a mere £171,021. The Board were particularly concerned by the degree of French protectionism. They concluded, “We have been overbalanced in that Trade, in most of the said years” by about one million pounds per annum.44 Foreign produced goods had to be replaced by domestically manufactured equivalents. A sense of what the Board was planning had already been proposed by the Bristol Merchant, John Cary. His published economic views were clearly respected and reached a wide audience. For example, his Essay on the State of England (1695) was reprinted in various editions throughout the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century, including translations into

43 “Answer of the Commissioners of Trade & Plantations to the Honourable the House of Commons,” 22 March 1700, in A Collection of Papers Respecting Trade, Imports and Exports, Taxes etc., by Abraham Hill Esq., British Library: SP 2902; Ian K. Steele, Politics of Colonial Policy: The Board of Trade in Colonial Administration 1696–1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 3 and 18. 44 “Board of Trade and Plantation’s to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty,” 23 December 1697, in A Collection of Papers Respecting Trade, Imports and Exports, Taxes etc., by Abraham Hill Esq. British Library: SP 2902.

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French in 1755 and from French into Italian in 1764.45 For Cary, international dominance was based upon “hegemony rather than harmony,” guns and protectionism rather than free trade and peace; the foundation of civil society was commerce and the growth of civilisation a product of an ever “intensifying division of labour.”46 History demonstrated this. A major focus of the new Board, as its full title specified, was the various colonial plantations. They acknowledged a north–south divide in the productivity of the mainland North American colonies but pointed out that, although the northern areas lacked a staple product, they were important purchasers of English woollen textiles, craftwork, farming implements and other items. In addition, “to maintain and increase our Navigation…we humbly conceive the Trade to and from those Colonies deserve the greatest incouragement, and will be very advantageous, as long as the Acts of Navigation and Trade be duely observed.” Importantly, the Board wanted an added injection into the slave trade—the planting and harvesting of goods like tobacco, sugar, cotton, rice, indigo and ginger was “best carried on by the Labour of Negroes.” It was therefore vital to supply the colonies with as many African slaves and to do so as cheaply as possible.47 The African continent and American colonies were England’s equivalent to Spanish mines and, to continue with the metaphor, the Caribbean colony of Jamaica was initially a major warehouse. This West Indian colony was, wrote Cary, “a Magazine of Trade to New-Spain and the Tera Firma, from where we have yearly vast Quantities of Bullion imported to this kingdom both for the Negroes and manufactures we send them.” He concluded by condemning the monopoly of the African Company as stifling England’s potential enlargement of the slave trade.48

45 Morgan, “Cary, John (b. 1649 and d. 1719 or 22),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004 and, especially, Reinert, Translating Empire, 73–128. 46 Reinert, Translating Empire, 6, and 81–83. 47 “Board of Trade and Plantation’s to the King’s most Excellent Majesty”; John

Pollexfen, A Discourse of Trade, Coyn and Paper Credit (London: Brabazon Aylmer, 1697), 86–87. 48 John Cary, An Essay on the State of England in Relation to Its Trade, Its Poor, and Its Taxes (Bristol: W. Bonny, 1695), 74–77 and 84. Here Cary and the Board were joined by several petitions see, for example, Anon., Some Considerations Humbly Offered to Demonstrate How Prejudicial It Would Be to the English Plantations, Revenues of the Crown, the Navigation and General Good of This Kingdom, That the Sole Trade for Negroes

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From Jamaica provisions, manufactured goods and slaves were sold to the Spaniards. In short, the island soon became the entrepôt for English goods (be they material or physical) in the Caribbean. In exchange, an important supply of silver and gold was given that enriched both England and its colonies with a hard currency. Spain had no slave-trading status and imported Africans via contractors known as “assientists,” and Jamaica soon became one of the contractor’s main sources for slaves. Not surprisingly, then, the assientists wanted protection in and around the island from the increasingly hostile opposition of the local English colonial planters, and attacks from the privateers and pirates also operating from the island.49 Elsewhere Portuguese Brazil especially was demonstrating that great wealth was to be made from extensive sugar plantations worked by slaves. Likewise, the English planters in Jamaica emphasised through the Island Assembly in 1688, “the only means to Enrich and Support this Island” was via the “plentifull supply” of “Negroes.” Armed with this argument, the Assembly condemned the affluent assientists, claiming they both inflated the price of slaves and picked all the fittest bodies, while draining much of the island’s crucial provisions.50 The promotion of trade with Spain was thus an extremely high priority for England and the members of the Board of Trade. The Jamaican planters and their various actions to prevent the exportation of slaves, along with the activities of pirates and privateers off the Spanish coast, were eventually defeated. There was also a concerted attempt in 1694 to gain the asiento itself; however, the contract was awarded to a Portuguese company. The large, experienced Iberian trading element within the Board, no doubt, was utilised to ease this transfer and keep the slave trade thriving with the new contract holders.

Should Be Granted to a Company with a Joynt-Stock Exclusive to All Others (London: n.p., 1695). 49 Curtis Nettels, “England and the Spanish-American Trade, 1680–1715,” Journal of Modern History 3 (1931): 1–32, 1–2; S. J. Stein and B. H. Stein, Silver, Trade, and War: Spain and America in the Making of Early Modern Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 107–108; Elliott, Empires, 100; and Virginia Leon Sanz and Niccolo Guasti, “The Treaty of Asiento between Spain and Great Britain,” in Alimento and Stapelbroek, Politics of Trade Treatises, 150–172. 50 Nettels, “England and the Spanish-American Trade,” 4–5.

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Protectionism, Textiles and the East India Company The Anglo-French Trade Treaty of 1713 was a vital moment in the solidifying of British economic policy. The debate building up to the settlement was typically cast under the political umbrella of Whig versus Tory with, for example, one anonymous commentator writing in 1713: “Torism can never agree with Trade which is in other Hands, and can never be in theirs, while Persecution and Discord are so much encouraged by them.” For this writer, at least, all Tories were Catholic, pro-French and a threat to Britain’s commercial wealth and liberty.51 However, the reality was far more complicated with a great deal of wheeling and dealing going on within and across both political sections, while paradoxically the French actually ended up fearing the original freer trade proposals.52 Whatever the true impetus to the treaty, the result legislated the prohibition of most French goods for the rest of the century. Emulating policies was easier than emulating foreign goods. It was China and India as much as the French that were the manufacturing rivals which England’s industrial aspirations had to address. The most energetic advisor at the Board of Trade and Plantations, John Pollexfen, nemesis of the East India Company, was in no doubt about the adverse trade with South Asia: As ill Weeds grow apace, to these Manufactured Goods from India met with such a kind reception, that from the greatest Gallants to the meanest Cook-Maids, nothing was thought so fit, to adorn their persons, as the 51 Anon., Torism and Trade Can Never Agree: To Which Is Added, an Account and Character of the Mercator and His Writing (London: A. Baldwin, 1713), 12; Anon., An Account of the Woolen Manufactures Made in the Province of Languedoc, and at Abbeville, in Picardy (London: n.p., 1713). Doohwan Ahn has identified the author of the former pamphlet as John Oldmixon, an English historian and polemical Whig. See Doohwan Ahn, “The Anglo-French treaty of commerce of 1713: Tory trade policies and the question of Dutch decline,” History of European Ideas 36, no. 2 (2009): 167–180, 173. 52 Thomas J. Schaeper, “French and English Trade After the Treaty of Utrecht: The Missions of Anisson and Fenellon in London, 1713–1714,” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 9, no. 1 (1986): 1–18. For the trade treaty within the debating of the transnational Utrecht Peace Treaty see, especially, Antonella Alimento and Koen Stapelbroek, “Trade and treatises: Balancing the interstate system” in Alimento and Stapelbroek, The Politics of Commercial Treatises, 1–77: 15–27. For a much more black and white depiction of the treaty cast in Whig versus Tory terms see Ahn, “The Anglo-French treaty of commerce of 1713.” The architect of the Tory pro-French and anti-Dutch commercial aspects were Bolingbroke and Davenant, see 170–176.

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Fabricks of India; nor for the ornament of Chambers like India-Skreens, Cabinets, Beds and Hangings; not for Closets, like China and Lacquered ware; and the Melting down of our Milled Money, that might by the name of Bullion be Exported to purchase them, not at all considered.53

The importation of such sophisticated foreign goods, especially those deemed luxuries, was not only a drain on the country’s bullion but also destructive to domestic employment. But England, at that time, had no industrial answer, lacking the necessary knowledge and skills. The development of workshop technology would become another important factor in Britain’s commercial civilisation.54 England’s leading trading body was the East India Company, which attracted a considerable amount of controversy during this period. Indeed, in many ways this episode reveals how England ultimately diverted from its chief European trading rivals. In his tract entitled An Essay on the State of England, in Relation to Its Trade, Its Poor, and Its Taxes (1695) Cary, like Pollexfen, spent much time condemning the East Indian trade in silk and cotton textiles. These two items, he claimed, “do us more prejudice in our Manufactures than all the Advantage they bring either to private purses or to the Nation In general.” Not only did they erode the domestic woollen textile industry, but they also nurtured competitors abroad. For example, because English people were buying Indian calicoes instead of German linen, the latter was now producing woollens that they would previously have purchased from England.55 A long pamphlet published in 1696 by Blanch similarly condemned the East India Company for the same reasons as Cary and Pollexfen had done. The fashion craze for Indian calicoes was damaging trade in traditional English woollen textiles in general. He pleaded: “I cannot see what reason may be given against a total Prohibition of their being worn in England, which will be the quickest way to have them disused.” And if 53 Pollexfen, A Discourse of Trade, 99. 54 Gillian Cookson, The Age of Machinery: Engineering the Industrial Revolution, 1770–

1850 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2015). 55 Cary, An Essay, 52. For later attacks upon the detrimental impact of the East India

trade, see, for example, Anon. An English Winding Sheet for the East-India Manufactures (London: n.p., 1700); Anon., A Short Abstract of a Case Which was Last Sessions Presented to Parliament: Being a True Relation of the Rise and Progress of the East India Company Shewing How Their Manufactures Have Been, Are, and Will Be Prejudicial to the Manufactures of England (London: A. Balwin, 1700).

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that was not an option, he prophetically predicted, then it was necessary to nurture an English cotton industry instead. The Southern plantations in North America, he suggested, could be used to cultivate raw cotton by slave labour to supply such a potential industry. On this subject Cary was also confident and in “no doubt we might in time make Calicoes equal in their sorts with those Imported from India.” He also expanded these arguments the same year in a separately published pamphlet entitled A Discourse Concerning the East-Indian Trade (reprinted the following year).56 The primary attack against the Indian calico trade was two-pronged: it was detrimental to the nation’s woollen cloth and silk textile industries and it was draining the country’s bullion. Europeans may have wanted the Asian calicoes but they, in return, had little, apart from silver, that Asians wanted. In this way Spanish American bullion became ever more crucial and the African connection to Asia was solidified, with indigenous Americans and imported African slaves being important to gold and silver mining in South America.57 The East India Company tried to fight the growing hostility to its trade by first wheeling out the early seventeenth-century defensive thesis of Thomas Mun, which was written in about 1630 but not published until 1664. Mun was an early Director of the Company. He argued that such trade did not drain the treasure of the country and that the balance of trade should be judged generally and not per country. Without the export of bullion, he argued, there could not be any trade with the East, and thus there could be no lucrative re-export trade of Asian items (something that returned bullion with interest)—a key point in the company’s defence. This trade also produced numerous other important effects, such as the promotion of shipping and the cultivation of sailors that were fundamental to the Royal Navy in times of war. In spite of these

56 John Blanch, The Naked Truth, in an Essay upon Trade (London: n.p., 1696), 53–60. 57 Charles Wilson, “The Other Face of Mercantilism,” in Revisions in Mercantilism, ed. Donald Coleman (London: Methuen, 1969), 118–139: 128–129; Harley, C. Knick, “Trade: Discovery, Mercantilism and Technology,” in The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, 3 vols., ed. R. Flood and P. Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), vol. 1, 175–203: 179.

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claims, the argument against the trade was gaining an almost unstoppable momentum, and by the close of the century defending the company became a much harder task.58 Although the importance of woollen textiles to employment was not questioned by anyone, the banning of domestically printed Asian cloth had real social implications. For example, a petition of 1696 claimed that it could potentially put thousands of women and children employed at “second manufactory” of Asian imported cloth out of work. It was only through their employment, the petition continued, that “the Weaker Sex have been preserved from those Temptations to which Want might otherwise incline them and, by this Housewifery, many Modest Virgins have recommended themselves to Frugal and Industrious Husbands.”59 The now large number of people employed in the domestic calico-printing industry would be an important factor in the imminent 1701 Calico Act. The then director of the East India Company, Josiah Child, unlike Mun and Davenant, did not think there was any point in engaging with the bullion argument. Instead, he simply dismissed it as a red herring: “I am of Opinion, that silver and Gold, coined or uncoined, tho they are used for a measure of all other things, are no less a Commodity than Wine, Oyl, Tobacco, Cloth or Stuffs; and may in many cases be exported as much to National advantage as any other Commodity.” He warned, “No Nation ever was or will be considerable in Trade, that Prohibits the Exportation of Bullion,” and if the English East India Company did not pursue the Asian trade, it would all go to Holland. In a swift dismissal of Indian calico and silk imports challenging England’s young and vulnerable silk industry, he instead stressed the damage Indian re-exports of silks and calicoes were doing to England’s European competitors.60 58 Thomas Mun, England’s Treasure by Foreign Trade (London: Thomas Clark, 1664). Similar arguments are made in Charles Davenant, An Essay on the East-India-Trade. By the Author of the Essay upon Wayes and Means (London: n.p., 1696), 6 and 10. 59 Anon., The Petition and Case of the Embroiderers, Flourishers, Raisers and Stichers of East-India Silks, and Other Goods, and Stainers Thereof (London: n.p., 1696). Much of this polemic had earlier been made by Robert Ferguson in his The East-India-Trade: A Most Profitable Trade to the Kingdom (London: n.p., 1677). For perceived female weakness, cotton textiles and fashion during this period, see C. W. Smith, ““Calico Madams”: Servants, Consumption, and the Calico Crisis,” Eighteenth-Century Life 31 (2007): 29–55. 60 Josiah Child, A Treatise Wherein Is Demonstrated I. That the East-India Trade Is the Most National of All Foreign Trades (…) (London: Robert Boulter, 1681), 4–7 and 25–27. Child went on to focus even more intensely on the importance of the East India

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Perhaps the most well-known defence of the East India trade came from the pen of Henry Martyn (sometimes spelled Martin), this being his Considerations Upon the East-India Trade, published in 1701. Martyn, who succeeded Davenant as Inspector-General of Imports and Exports in 1714, claimed that the East Indian trade increased the bullion, domestic manufactures and land rents of England. For one thing, Indian textiles were more valuable than bullion and, as Mun, Davenant and Robert Ferguson emphasised, via re-exportation they actually brought in more bullion than was originally used to purchase them, even after transportation costs. Despite European prohibitions of Indian goods, Martyn argued: “Foreigners will find out ways to get such into their own countries, or they will come after ’em into ours.” In short, Europe had nothing to compete with Indian textiles and such goods would find their way in one way or another.61 Despite this robust counter-defence of the East India Company, a flood of pamphlets attacking the trade continued to spew from the printing press. For example, an anonymous publication, signed by a certain T.S. in 1701, claimed the arrival of vast quantities of Indian calicoes had destroyed the production of certain textiles, such as tammets (a type of light worsted woollen whose yarn was “shrunk and smoothed by scouring” and then woven) in Suffolk and Norfolk. It was also eroding the London Spitalfields and Canterbury silk manufactures along with the Gloucestershire woollen clothing trade, while the “pernicious trade” had also “brought stained Linnen into Fashion.” In short, claimed the angry writer, “whatever Commodity is made in England of wooll may be

Company to England’s naval power, see A Supplement to a former Treatise, concerning the East-India Trade (London: n.p., 1689). Child’s and Davenant’s arguments are succinctly summarised in Jonathan P. Eacott, “Making and Imperial Compromise: The Calico Acts, the Atlantic Colonies, and the Structure of the British Empire,” William & Mary Quarterly 69 (2012): 731–762, 736–740. The view of bullion as simply a commodity like any other was widespread. For example, James Houblon had made this explicit in the examination of a committee of the commons set up to consider ways to prevent the draining of England’s bullion, see G. L. Cherry, Early English Liberalism: Its Emergence Through Parliamentary Action, 1660–1702 (New York: Bookman Associates, 1962), 286. For Davenant’s defence of the East India Company, see Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 201–227. 61 Henry Martyn, Considerations Upon the East-India Trade (London: A. and J. Churchill, 1701), 36–40, 55–58 and 69–73. For an overview of Martyn’s arguments see Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 246–258.

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imitated, and in many ways exceeded in Cotton Manufactured in India, and afforded Cheaper than our English Trades-Men can afford theirs.”62 Pollexfen, through the Board of Trade and his own published works, relentlessly attacked Child and, especially, Davenant. He accepted that gold and silver could be simply commodities and that keeping them hoarded would not make England richer. However, he pointed out, “Yet it being that in which the Riches of the Nation doth so much consist, and so necessary for the Payment of Fleets and Armies, and carrying on of commerce, that we cannot be safe, nor Rich without it.” Thus, the wasteful export of bullion was a disaster waiting to happen. Instead, he advised what was fast becoming mainstream policy: “It is more our Interest to apply ourselves to increase our Products and Manufactories, and Consumption of them.” All that the export of bullion for Indian textiles did was drain England’s wealth, promote luxury and erode the country’s most important industry, woollen textiles.63 He seemed to ignore the argument that via the re-export of such items, perhaps even more bullion would return. Many of the anti-East India trade arguments won the day, and the government believed a ban on imported silk cloth and Eastern printed and dyed calicoes would aid the domestic silk and woollen industry, ease unemployment, dampen increasing social protest and stem the export of bullion. The title of the 1701 calico legislation was “an act for the more effective employing the poor by encouraging the manufactures of the kingdom.” The safeguarding of employment was considered vital to national prosperity and getting the balance between this, revenue, trade and industry could be difficult. The import of chintzes (printed patterned cotton with a glazed finish from India) for domestic use may have been banned, but they could still be imported into bonded warehouses for reexport. The legislation also still allowed the importation of plain calicoes (white or unbleached cotton fabric) and cotton yarn. All of this helped fuel the already significant domestic printing and dying cloth industry. Indeed, it was after the 1701 Act that the domestic printing of designs upon calico, mixed cottons and linen greatly accelerated. Although the printing was of a far inferior quality, the resulting cloths were much 62 T. S., England’s Danger by Indian Manufactures (London: n.p., 1701), 1–5. On tammets, see Eric Kerridge, Textile Manufactures in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 53. 63 Pollexfen, Discourse of Trade, 6–8.

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cheaper and diffused much further down the social scale. Probably, as a result, custom duties were also placed on plain calicoes in 1701 followed by rises in 1704 and 1708, while excise duties were levied on domestically printed calicoes in 1712 and 1714.64 A few years later the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations concluded that the Calico Act had simply encouraged the domestic printing of plain Indian calico imports: Though it was hoped that this prohibition would have discouraged the consumption of these goods, we found that the allowing calicoes unstained to be brought in has occasioned such an increase of the printing and staining calicoes here and the printers and painters have brought that art to such perfection that it is more prejudicial to us than it was before the Act.65

The act, declared the pro-woollen textiles Customs Commissioner John Haynes, had simply fuelled a domestic calico and linen printing industry, “that greater quantities of Calicoes and other Linnen have been Printed and worn in England Annually, since the importing of it was prohibited, than ever was brought from India.”66

Divergence Unlike England, the French banned the wearing and printing of linen and cotton textiles in 1686 to protect its silk industry.67 This prohibition, as Prasannan Parthasarathi remarks, “hampered the development of 64 A. W. Douglas, “Cotton Textiles in England: The East India Company’s Attempt to Exploit Developments in Fashion 1660–1721,” Journal of British Studies 8 (1969): 28– 43, 35; Lipson, The Economic History of England, vol. 3, 41–42; Maxine Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Prasanan Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence 1600–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), ch. 4–6. 65 The Board of Trade and Plantations is quoted in P. J. Thomas, Mercantilism and East India Trade, 1st ed. 1923 (London: Frank Cass, 1963), 122. 66 John Haynes, A View of the Present State of the Clothing Trade in England (London: n.p., 1706), 10–11, 19, 25–27, 62, 68 and 81–93; and John Blanch, The Interest of Great Britain Consider’d in an Essay Upon Wool, Tin and Leather (London: R. and J. Bonwick, 1707), 13 and 20–21. 67 H. Frendenberger, “Fashion, Sumptuary Laws, and Business,” Business History Review 37 (1963): 37–48, on 41–43.

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the [French] cotton industry for decades,” while many of the country’s skilled textile printers came to England and elsewhere to continue to ply their trade. Giorgio Riello concludes: “The 1686 ban might have retarded and in some case halted the development of domestic calico printing” in France. In short, “while Britain allowed printing for export and fustian and mix cottons, France upheld a total ban that included also domestic production.” Britain’s other great European commercial rival, the Netherlands, never enacted any prohibitory legislation due to the dominance of its trading interest.68 Daniel Defoe, writing anonymously in 1719, repeated the claim that the wearing of domestically printed Indian calicoes would soon destroy the trade in the home woollen and silk textile industries. The model Britain should adopt was, once again, that of the French and their passing of the 1686 edict banning the printing, using and wearing of all (including plain) Indian wrought silks, cottons and calicoes. “It was,” wrote the author, “without question, an unaccountable Mistake in those who solicited the first Prohibition of Indian Printed Callicoes, that they contented themselves with prohibiting the use of calicoes Printed Abroad, but did not insist upon prohibiting the Wearing and Use of those Printed at Home, as Things in themselves equally ruinous to our Manufactures.”69 History, he claimed, demonstrated this. Point taken. The continual lobbying of the English woollen and, especially silk manufacturers, eventually resulted in the Calico Act of 1721 that further legislated a total ban on the importation of any Indian plain cotton fabric for domestic consumption. It was now illegal to wear such cloth, although muslins, neck cloths and blue calicoes were still legal. Printed calicoes could still be imported by the East India Company for re-export to the American colonies, and plain calicoes could also be imported to be domestically printed and then re-exported.70 The English domestic calico printers had already conquered the British market since the 1701 ban

68 Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich, 133; Giorgio Riello, Cotton: The Fabric That Made the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 124–125. 69 [Daniel Defoe], A Brief State of the Question, Between the Printed and Painted Callicoes and the Woolen and Silk Manufacture (London: W. Boreham, 1719), 23. 70 For the interesting role of the American colonies as an important consumer of East India Company cotton textile exports from India, see Eacott, “Making and Imperial Compromise.” In particular, Eacott picks up on the fact Colonial consumers were not treated the same as Britons as consumers.

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and, after 1721, their position was consolidated by concentrating almost wholly on the printing of fustians along with other types of mixed cottons and linens for domestic consumption and export. It was the Lancashire production of these light fustians and other types of mixed cotton, linen check cloths, which subsequently became an important export to Africa and the West Indies. Thus, while France and much of Europe banned the importation, printing and wearing of plain calicoes in the late seventeenth century, England had encouraged it. The product was then protected from superior Indian competition of printed calicoes (1701) and, by the 1721 Act, nurtured by producing substitute textiles to print. This, as Alfred P. Wadsworth and Julia De Lacy Mann concluded long ago, was eventually vital to the subsequent British pure cotton textile industry, the industry most associated with the Industrial Revolution.71 Protectionism and cultivating a domestic version of foreign manufactures characterised the emergence of most of Britain’s manufactures. Traditional products tended to be excised while the new export-led industries were either untaxed or only lightly taxed. In conclusion, it was particularly powerful English, and from 1707 British, state that lay at the heart of the country’s commercial ascendancy. Trade and, soon after, domestic industry, lay at the heart of Britain’s subsequent civilisation. The history of Dutch and French commercial experience became entwined in Britain’s general economic approach. This, in turn, depended upon colonisation and a powerful navy, all of which was redundant without the necessary navigation skills, trustworthy revenues and protection legislation. The history of successful trade and industry, as published by contemporaries, demonstrated this, and revealed the path to economic wealth and supremacy. As the country’s trading and industrial dominance during the eighteenth century grew, especially in the second half, so too did the translations of the country’s economic tracts. However, it was not the texts we are now told were important but those that confirmed what would today be branded illiberal policies.

71 Alfred P. Wadsworth and Julia De Lacy Mann, The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire 1600–1780, 1st ed. 1931 (New York: A.M. Kelley, 1968), 125. The Technological Development of Britain’s Cotton Textiles is Best Told in Cookson, The Age of Machinery.

CHAPTER 6

Re-employing Sources to Reflect on Merchants and Sovereigns: Medici Nostalgia and Civilisation in Eighteenth-Century Livorno Antonella Alimento

Introduction In the first volume of Settecento riformatore, Franco Venturi pointed out that in the decade following the War of the Austrian Succession, Livorno became the “centre of a vast and practical culture, eager to learn about the world and entirely utilitarian.”1 In effect, “long before Peter Leopold and his ministers intervened to create a culture of expertise in support of

1 See Franco Venturi, Settecento riformatore. Da Muratori a Beccaria (Turin: Einaudi, 1969), 318, which revealed this circumstance starting from the interest reserved by the Journal économique of January 1757 in the work of the printer Fantechi.

A. Alimento (B) Department of Civilisations and Forms of Knowledge, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Alimento and A. Della Fontana (eds.), Histories of Trade as Histories of Civilisation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80087-1_6

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their wide-ranging reforms,”2 the Livorno publishing houses were able to seize the most innovative contributions on scientific matters and take part in discussions with the political and cultural circles which in the ancient Italian states, England and France were reflecting on the relationship between political freedom and trade, on the ability of international trade to create prosperity or subordination, and on the need to “ennoble” those working as merchants. These themes were particularly appealing to Livorno, a city created by the Medici to promote the economic development of the Grand Duchy,3 which, after the death of the dynasty’s last ruler, Gian Gastone, in 1737, came under the control of the House of Lorraine.4 Significantly, it was in Livorno, the city at the centre of the reform plans of Francis Stephen and the Lorraine Regency (1739–1765), that the political proposal outlined by Savary des Bruslons in the Préface historique to the Dictionnaire du commerce (1723–1730) was read and then reworked in a totally original way.5 Savary, and with him the group of administrators and politicians who wanted the policy of territorial conquest pursued by Louis XIV to be jettisoned in favour of one that prioritised commercial development, proposed Tsar Peter as a model for the young Louis XV who, after coming of age in 1723, was about to accede to the French throne. The Préface historique was the first history of trade to provide an account of the reasons behind the success of the nations dedicated to trade rather than considering only the ancient states which Huet, at Colbert’s request, had made the focus of his Histoire du commerce (1716). As such, Savary’s text gave considerable prominence to the famous “grand embassy” organised by Peter the Great in 1697. During his stay in England and The Netherlands, the Tsar had not hesitated to investigate matters of traditional concern to merchants, bankers

2 Corey Tazzara and Paula Findlen, “Tuscany and Enlightenment, in the Atlantic Word,” in Florence After the Medici: Tuscan Enlightenment, 1737–1790, ed. Corey Tazzara, Paula Findlen, and Jacob Soll (New York and London: Routledge, 2020), 18. 3 Corey Tazzara, The Free Port of Livorno and the Transformation of the Mediter-

ranean World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), with an extensive and up-to-date bibliography. 4 Sandra Contini, La Reggenza lorenese tra Firenze e Vienna. Logiche dinastiche, uomini e governo (1737–1766) (Florence: Olschki, 2002). 5 Canon Louis Philémon Savary des Bruslons, Préface historique in Dictionnaire universel de commerce (Paris: J. Estienne, 1723–1730), vol. I, i–xxvij.

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and sailors, which he did not think unworthy of the consideration of a sovereign. In doing so, he had demonstrated that a monarchy could emulate the economic success of the United Provinces and Great Britain, giving rise to manufacturing and commercial activities, as long as it had its own merchant navy. In the hands of those printers, doctors, provosts, merchants, tutors and administrators to whom the extraordinary period of publishing of the 1750s is owed, the recommendation to involve merchants6 in the management of public affairs, on the basis that, as Savary pointed out, empires could survive and prosper only through trade,7 turned into a powerful weapon in a cultural as well as political battle. The proposal put forward by Savary to involve traders in a specific choice of political economics—namely making the French economy competitive by creating a direct interconnection between it and the economies from which it could import and export goods without resorting to Dutch intermediation—in Livorno was reinterpreted and freely used to make explicit the strong sense of nostalgia that significant parts of Florentine and Livornese society felt towards the model of civilisation created by the Medici.8 As Savary stressed, the Medici had gone from being a private family to a reigning dynasty thanks entirely to commerce.9 What is more important is that in Livorno the nostalgia for Medicean culture, which in Florence would go on to become a genuine project to institutionalise the memory of the Medici, was allied to a decisive interest

6 Who Savary, in the Préface historique distinguishes from “profession particuliere” of the “Marchand,” i. 7 “Si les grands Empires s’établissent par la valeur & la force des armes, ils ne s’affermissent & ne se soutiennent que par les secours que leur fournissent le négoce, le travail & l’industrie des Peuples: & les Vainqueurs languiroient […] s’ils n’avoient recours aux richesses que produisent la culture des terres, les manufactures & et le commerce, pour conserver par les Arts tranquilles de la paix, les avantages acquis dans les horreurs & le tumulte de la guerre,” Ibid. 8 On Florentine nostalgia, see Eric Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1517– 1800: A History of Florence and the Florentines in the Age of the Grand-Dukes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973). 9 “L’autre exemple de la fortune & de la gloire, où de simples particuliers ont sçû parvenir par l’unique voye du Commerce, n’est pas moins remarquable, & est encore plus illustre. La famille des Medicis a toujours été recommandable, soit par l’ancienneté & la noblesse de son origine, soit par la grandeur de son crédit & de ses richesses,” Savary, Préface historique, xj.

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in contemporary European economic reflection.10 Those who chose to use the Préface historique to Savary’s Dictionnaire by conveniently integrating it with other histories of trade that appeared in the highly popular English periodical the Universal Magazine of Knowledge “tried to alter the present.”11 Far from being motivated by mere erudite curiosity, the architects and sponsors of the publication of the Discorso preliminare ovvero Dissertazione Storica sopra il commercio, published as the preface to the Livorno edition12 (1751) of Del commercio (1750) by the Roman banker Belloni13 and of the Dissertazione preliminare sopra il Commercio, the preface to the Introduzione alla pratica del commercio 14 (1751), intentionally decided to make use of the genre of the histories of trade to wage an intellectual battle that was also political, arguing for the contemporary relevance of the economic approach adopted by the Medici to secure the Grand Duchy much more than a mere supporting role in the Mediterranean region.15 As I will argue in the first part of this essay, the realisation of this complex publishing initiative16 took place in a highly politicised economic context. The process, analysed in the second part of the essay, in fact 10 Antonella Alimento, “Tra Bristol ed Amsterdam: discussioni livornesi su commercio, marina ed impero negli anni cinquanta del Settecento,” in Dall’Origine dei Lumi alla Rivoluzione. Scritti in onore di Luciano Guerci e Giuseppe Ricuperati, ed. Donatella Balani, Dino Carpanetto and Marina Roggero (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Biblioteca del XVIII secolo, 2008), 25–45. 11 I take the quote from the title of book V, dedicated to Lami, who “discovered the past and tried to alter the present,” by Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries. 12 Discorso preliminare ovvero Dissertazione Storica sopra il commercio, in Del commercio. Dissertazione del Sig. Marchese Girolamo Belloni, new edition (Livorno: Fantechi, 1751). 13 Girolamo Belloni, Del Commercio (Rome: Pagliarini, 1750). 14 Dissertazione preliminare sopra il Commercio, in Introduzione alla pratica del

commercio. Ovvero Notizie utili per l’esercizio della mercatura contenente un Trattato di aritmetica, valutazione di qualunque sorte di monete, pesi, misure, e cambj che sono in uso nelle principali piazze d’Europa, coll’aggiunta di un metodo facile per ragguagliare i cambi forestieri con quelli di Livorno (Livorno: Fantechi, 1751), v–xxiii. 15 Brian Brege, The Empire that Wasn’t: The Grand Duchy of Tuscany and Empire, 1574–1609 (Stanford: Stanford University, 2014). 16 Christian Jouhaud and Alain Viala, eds., De la publication. Entre Renaissance et Lumières (Paris: Fayard, 2002), in which the act of publishing is problematised by highlighting the various actors in the process and considering them as links in a chain, which could have missed the final meaning of the operation.

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involved leading figures of the “Spanish party” who, in the turbulent phases that led to the succession of the house of the Medici (1737), had supported the candidacy of Charles of Bourbon, the future king of Naples. The members of this group, including Senator Carlo Ginori (1702–1757), believed that, unlike the Lorraine, the Bourbons would better protect the political equilibria and economic interests of the Tuscan ruling classes.17 In Livorno, this frondeur view of the current rulers was shared by: the publisher Giovanni Paolo Fantechi, active from 1750, who in the following year published, “with the endorsement of the superiors,” both histories of trade; one of Fantechi’s closest collaborators, Giovanni Gentili, a medical consultant of the Livorno Deputation of Health and pupil of Cocchi, and one of the seventy Livornese subscribers to the Italian translation of the Cyclopedia or an universal Dictionary of arts and sciences by Ephraim Chambers18 ; and the Finocchietti, a rich and influential family of merchants19 who had turned to Gentili to find a tutor for the young Iacopino after the death of his father, Giovan Pietro, who had married the sister of Filippo Huygens, a cultured merchant of Flemish origin,20 and who, like him, actively traded with the Levant.21 The coordinator of this complex publishing initiative, with its significant cultural and political implications, was without doubt the Florentine patrician Carlo Ginori, who had arrived in Livorno as the civil governor in October 1746, and to whom, significantly, the Livornese edition of Del commercio was dedicated. The concurrent publication in Livorno of two histories of trade praising the memory of the Medici and at the same time the free initiative of the economic actors on which the development of Tuscany, if properly supported by the political authorities, 17 Marcello Verga, Da “Cittadini” a “Nobili”. Lotta politica e riforma delle istituzioni nella Toscana di Francesco Stefano (Milan: Giuffré, 1990). 18 On the seventy Livornese subscribers to the Dizionario universale delle Arti e delle Scienze (Venice: Pasquali, 1748), 9 vols., see Paolo Edoardo Fornaciari, “La fortuna del Dizionario Universale,” Studi livornesi VII (1992): 137–140. 19 Mario Baruchello, Livorno e il suo porto. Origini, caratteri e vicende dei traffici livornesi (Livorno: Bastogi, 1932), 467. 20 Anna Augusta Timpanaro Morelli, A Livorno, nel Settecento. Medici, mercanti, abati, stampatori: Giovanni Gentili (1704–1784) ed il suo ambiente (Livorno: Belforte, 1997), 115–116. 21 Allen D. Thompson, “Progetti in vantaggio del Principe, del Pubblico, e del Commercio della Toscana: i mercanti di Livorno e l’economia toscana al momento della successione lorenese,” Critica storica XXVIII, no. 3 (1991): 427–488.

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depended, should in fact be traced back to this multifaceted entrepreneur and refined connoisseur of Montesquieu and the authors of the nascent “new science of commerce,” who had been “exiled” to Livorno by Francis Stephen himself in order to neutralise him politically.22 The fact that the office of civil governor had been split from the military one lays bare the sovereign’s distrust of the Florentine senator, who in the years in which he had been part of the Regency Council (1739–1746) had defended the autonomy and economic interests of Tuscany after they were called into question by Emmanuel de Richecourt, the faithful executor of the politics of the House of Lorraine and later of Habsburg-Lorraine interests following the 1745 election of Francis Stephen as emperor. Despite having been removed from the centre of political power and lamenting his “miserable figure as governor,”23 Ginori never ceased to propose solutions aimed at taking the Tuscan economy as a whole back to the glories of the past by updating the pragmatic approach of the Medici, who had managed public affairs with an entrepreneurial mindset by backing and protecting the independent initiative of the merchants. To fight, from his “exile” in Livorno, against the economic dirigisme and institutional rationalisation sought by Richecourt, Ginori together with the frondeur group connected with the printer Fantechi recruited the ambitious abbot Zanobetti, the tutor of the house of Finocchietti, who arrived from Florence to Livorno in January 1750 on the recommendation of the Florentine provost and antiquarian Anton Francesco Gori. It was Gori who was responsible for the rediscovery of Galileo and the great Tuscan scientific tradition,24 and for the compilation of

22 Antonella Alimento, “Carlo Ginori and the Modernization of the Tuscan Economy,” in Tazzara, Findlen, and Soll, Florence After the Medici, 157–175. 23 In Ginori’s letter to Pfütschner, he states: “I have been cutting a miserable figure as

governor for ten years already, it is enough for a proposition to be mine for it to annoy those whom I have to depend on or give them a bad opinion of it. But it doesn’t matter, I will go on as long as I can, trying to do my duty with spirit.” This is dated 1755–1756 by R[ita] B[alleri], who published it in “Livorno,” in Album Carlo Ginori. Documenti e itinerari di un gentiluomo del secolo dei Lumi (Catalogo della mostra tenuta a Sesto Fiorentino nel 2006–2007) (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2006), 37. 24 On the proposal by Gori, professor of history in the Florentine Studium and member of the Società Colombaria Fiorentina see the monographic edition of the Symbolae Antiquariae (2008), and for his role in the rediscovery of Galileo, see Paula Findlen, “Long After the Trial: Galileo’s Rediscovery, Florentine Nostalgia, and Enlightened Passions,” in Florence after the Medici, ed. Tazzara, Findlen, and Soll, 227–276.

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the Museum Florentinum (1731–66), “a visual compendium of the art treasures of the Medici family”25 which scholars and art lovers of Europe could use to study and admire the contribution of the Florentine Renaissance to European civilisation and perpetuate the memory of the Medici dynasty. Zanobetti, who was not “of Spanish ideas”26 but needed to earn, accepted the task of writing the Discorso preliminare, the preface to Del commercio. Because he continued to accept commissions from this same circle, Zanobetti became embroiled in an “affaire” that forced him to flee the Grand Duchy after having withdrawn, a month before the book’s release, the other history of trade that he had compiled and which was nevertheless published as the preface to the Introduzione alla pratica del commercio, though it was attributed to Father Guidotti.27

Medici Nostalgia, the Politicisation of the Economy and the Economic Culture of Governor Ginori In the same year in which, in Florence, the secretaries of finance Giovanni Francesco Pagnini and Angelo Tavanti published the Italian translation of a work by John Locke under the title Trattato della moneta, dedicated to the president of finance Richecourt, to whom they paid tribute with effusive eulogies in the preface,28 Fantechi printed in Livorno a new edition

25 Heather Hyde Minor, “Making Renaissance Art Florentine,” in Florence After the Medici, ed. Tazzara, Findlen, and Soll, 277–288: 285. 26 This is how he describes Giovanni Batista Zanobetti in a letter to Gori, Lucca, 28 November 1752 in Biblioteca Marucelliana Firenze (henceforth BMFi), MS B VIII 14, fols. 144–145v. 27 This is what can be learned from a letter that the priest Carlo Guidotti sent on 3 December 1751 to Lami along with a book on “the reduction of weights and measures, with a Dissertazione preliminare sul commercio,” excusing himself for having taken “arguments diametrically opposed to his ministry, to correspond to the concerns of those interested in the publication of that book, and especially to favour the printer, after Mr. Maso Zanobetti, to his regret, wanted to withdraw his Dissertazione a month before it was due to see the light,” in Biblioteca Riccardiana, Florence, MS 3734, fols. 31–32v: 31. 28 Ragionamenti sopra la moneta, l’interesse del denaro, le finanze e il commercio. Scritti pubblicati in diverse occasioni dal signor Giovanni Locke, 2 vols. (Florence: Bonducci, 1751), vol. II, 37.

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of a work first published just a year earlier in Rome by Pagliarini.29 The person responsible for telling Fantechi about the release of Del commercio by the Roman banker could have been either Ranieri Finocchietti, a cleric and pontifical administrator, or Filippo Guglielmo Huygens, who often went to Rome where he could count on the support of the Corsini,30 a powerful family of Florentine origin to whom Carlo Ginori was related. By having married Elisabetta Corsini in 1730, Ginori had in fact allied himself to a family which, after making its fortune in the silk and wool trade and in banking, and after holding many public offices in the city state of Florence, counted a pope (the late Clement XII, Lorenzo Corsini) and the influential cardinal Neri Corsini among its members. On 7 August 1750 Bottari, who had been the family’s tutor and was at the time the custodian of the Vatican library, had announced to Bartolomeo Corsini, the future Viceroy of Sicily and brother of Elisabetta, that “the marquis Belloni will print a treatise on commerce, but the work is rather short. I have not seen it.”31 While it is not possible to state with certainty that it was the Corsini, leaders of the “pro-Spanish party” who sent a copy of Belloni’s book to Livorno, what is certain is that whoever decided in 1751 to reprint Del commercio, adding a Discorso preliminare that significantly altered the anthropological premises of the text and exalted the Medici, had very clear political objectives in mind. The text by the Roman banker, financier and host to the pretender James Stuart and his son during their exile in Rome,32 was printed in as many as seventeen editions in seven languages between 1750 and

29 On Belloni, the fundamental studies remain those of Alberto Caracciolo, L’albero dei Belloni. Una dinastia di mercanti del Settecento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1982); and G. Belloni, Scritture inedite e Dissertazione Del Commercio, ed. A. Caracciolo (Rome: Istituto per la Storia del Risorgimento italiano, 1965). 30 See the letter from Filippo Guglielmo Huygens to Carlo Ginori, Livorno, 21 October 1750, with which he informed him of his next trip to Rome and asked him to procure “the patronage of the excellent Corsini house, as you kindly expressed, which would favour me in the present situation,” in Archivio Ginori Lisci (henceforth AGL), Florence, XII, 3, row 7, fol. 109. 31 In the same letter Monsignor Bottari revealed his doubts about Belloni’s expertise : “I have faith that [Belloni] knows more about the practice of commerce than the theory,” in Caracciolo, L’albero dei Belloni, 117n28. 32 Caracciolo, L’albero dei Belloni, 249 and Corp Edward, ed., The Stuart Court in Rome: The Legacy of Exile (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).

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1788,33 and undoubtedly gave numerous stimulating points to ponder to Livorno, an object of Francis I’s special attention. On 1 October 1746, the law establishing the Council of Commerce, an institution charged with conceiving and proposing ways to revive Tuscan commerce and incentivise manufacturing activities in the Grand Duchy, was passed. On 25 May 1747, following the signing of the peace and free trade treaty with the Ottoman Empire, the Tuscans, along with the citizens of Trieste, enjoyed the same navigation and commercial benefits granted to the English, the Dutch and the French in trade with the Levant. This treaty was followed by peace and free trade agreements with the Pasha of Algiers (8 October 1748), with the Regency of Tunis (23 December 1748) and with the Regency of Tripoli (27 January 1749).34 Reinforcing these advances was the naval edict: this provision, issued on 10 October 1748, aimed to create a Tuscan merchant navy,35 and at the same time reduced the powers of the Council of Commerce, which was transformed into a judicial body with no power over manufactures and placed directly under the authority of Richecourt. From 31 March 1747, Richecourt was in complete charge of the presidency of the finances after the dissolution of the Council of Finance, and by virtue of this position he had direct control over the economy of the port of Livorno, where he demonstrated strong leadership: to “encourage the navy,” he called back home the Tuscan sailors who “serve other powers” and prevented them from being recruited by foreign ships. Ginori, who from 1746 had chaired the Council of Commerce, contested the provision on the grounds that it was not relevant to the Tuscan situation: the captains would not find sufficient work, which, in

33 Five in Italian (1750, 1751, 1752 and two in 1757), one in Latin (1750), six in French (1751, 1755, 1756, 1757, 1765 and 1787), two in German (1752 and 1782), one in English (1752), one in Russian (1771), and one in Spanish (1788), see Caracciolo, Scritture inedite. 34 Antonella Alimento and Koen Stapelbroek, “Trade and Treaties: Balancing the Interstate system,” in The Politics of Commercial Treaties in the Eighteenth Century. Balance of Power, Balance of Trade, ed. Alimento Antonella and Koen Stapelbroek (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 1–76. 35 Carlo Mangio, “Commercio marittimo e Reggenza lorenese in Toscana. (Provvedimenti legislativi e dibattiti),” Rivista Storica Italiana XC (1978): 898–938; and Daniele Edigati, “The Tuscan Edict of 1748 and ancien régime maritime legislation,” in War, Trade and Neutrality. Europe and the Mediterranean in the Seventeenth and the Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Antonella Alimento (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2011), 68–81.

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his opinion, had first to be created by encouraging private enterprise. He also severely criticized the repatriation procedure used by Richecourt to increase the number of captains, and was against the naturalisation processes that in his opinion were subject to bias,36 proposing instead the dispositions adopted by the Medicean “royal predecessors” who had granted all those who permanently resided in Livorno the status of nationals.37 The clash over naturalisation highlighted the deep divergencies between the governor’s economic approach, which had specific parallels in his political views, and that of Richecourt, which also derived from a unique political heritage. In this regard, it is important to note that Ginori’s departure from Florence was essentially the result of a clash over economic issues: having fought to moderate the extraordinary tax desired by Vienna to repay the military expenses of the War of the Austrian Succession,38 he had collected Tuscan capital to form a “Tuscan Company” in an attempt to secure for it the contract for tax collection and at the same time relaunch the production and export of “goods from the Grand Duchy.” According to his plans, the “Tuscan Company” would revive the fortunes of the economy by reorganising customs tariffs, eliminating internal duties and abolishing several monopolies.39 Committed to reducing the debt, Richecourt had rejected the proposal because in his opinion a “Tuscan Company” would not have been in the interests of the subjects but would have done the bidding of a business oligarchy that made its fortunes through complicated and corrupt judicial mechanisms which the Regency aimed to eliminate. Richecourt favoured the penetration of Franco-Lorrainese capital in the ferma 40 because the economic marginalisation of the Florentine nobility would make it possible to achieve the political objective of bringing order to the Tuscan laws and institutions which, in his opinion, hindered the economic growth of the Grand Duchy. 36 Ginori to Pfütschner, draft letter, 2 December 1748, in AGL, Affari di Governo, 18, file 1748, Risposte del marchese Ginori al Barone Pfütschner in detto anno, c. 766. 37 Rappresentanza per attirare i marinari forestieri colle naturalizzazioni, of 14 March 1748 in AGL, Affari di Governo, 18, fols. 127–128, copy. 38 The tax was 6%, see Contini, La Reggenza lorenese, 192–196. 39 Verga, Da “Cittadini” a “Nobili”, 187. 40 Jean-Claude Waquet, “Les fermes générales dans l’Europe des lumières: le cas toscan,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome 2 (1977): 983–1027.

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All the measures promoted by Richecourt, from the press law (1743), which redesigned relations between church and state, to those on the fideicommissum (June 1747), on the fiefs (April 1748) and on nobility and citizenship (October 1750), responded to this logic, which saw sovereign power as the foundation of the organisation of state and society. The sovereign was the only source of the law and thus of liberties and privileges, and his subjects received their own political legitimacy from his functionaries. From an economic point of view, this vision implied a strong narrowing of the margins of autonomy of economic operators: if left free to follow their own interests and embed themselves in the social structure, as had happened at the time of the Medici, such subjects would strengthen their privileged positions to the detriment of the public good. The dirigiste economic view expressed by Richecourt,41 was in collision with an economic and political culture that Ginori had come to manage, having re-read in the light of the nascent European political economy, the lesson of his father, Senator Lorenzo, who, at the personal request of Cosimo III had left Lisbon, where he practiced trading and held the position of consul, to move to the port of Livorno and assume the office of customs supervisor (1688). Like his father, who had managed the customs house in such a way as to avoid standing in the way of commerce,42 Carlo contended that the development of the Grand Duchy, and the tax revenues that would be derived from it, depended on the unhindered resourcefulness of economic actors who needed to be supported and protected with appropriate agreements, such as that signed in 1747 by Francis Stephen and the Divine Porte, which Ginori put into immediate effect. Taking advantage of the firmans granted by the Ottomans, in 1749 Ginori established the “Compagnia Orientale di Livorno,” a limited partnership headed by Giovanni di Martino, a leading figure of the city’s Armenian “nation,” who every year from 1749 sent a ship loaded with piastre, Florentine silks, coral and trinkets from Venice to Basra, Baghdad and Bengal, which were exchanged for the muslin that

41 Waquet, Les fermes générales argues that Richecourt’s economic and financial vision was not so innovative, with the exception of his proposal to use the income of secular charitable foundations to pay the public debt, 1002. 42 On the behavior of Lorenzo, who managed the customs house “coddling the foreigners,” see Francisco Javier Zamora Rodriguez, “War, trade, products and consumption patterns: The Ginori and their information networks,” in War, Trade and Neutrality, ed. Alimento, 55–67: 59–67.

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the merchants resold in the Levant, saving themselves export duties, and for “woollen cloths, yarns, herringbone, some silks and lots of jewellery” that were deposited in Livorno to await buyers.43 Ginori, with his talent for collecting and gathering capital, could not tolerate any legislative measures that hindered enterprise, such as the law on fiefs which, as he experienced first-hand, jeopardised invested capital. In order to reclaim land belonging to his marquisate of Cecina, around 10,000 hectares that he had put together from 1738, Ginori had in fact “committed all of my assets, since, while it is true that I still have the Factory in Doccia, and some houses, to cover the expenses of Cecina I took in exchange around 70 thousand scudi.”44 What he had in effect created in the Maremma was a veritable colony inhabited by workers employed in factories linked to the fishing of sardines, the production of terracotta and the processing of coral from the nearby sea, which were exported to India and Great Britain. Unlike the repopulation colony that Richecourt was trying to establish, with difficulty, in Massa, the Cecina settlement was heavily populated and, more importantly, was selfsupporting: “it does not require investment for its maintenance, as the Master [the Emperor] is still now forced to introduce into Massa,” wrote Ginori who for a long time asked to be excluded from the application of the law on fiefs.45 The idea of building the suburb of San Jacopo to the south of Livorno46 was another fruit of this same entrepreneurial mentality that was firmly anchored in the Medicean past but open to new advances, in

43 Unsigned note, from Vienna, 1 August 1754, quoted in Antonella Alimento, “Tra “gelosie” personali” e “gelosie” tra gli stati: i progetti del governatore Carlo Ginori e la circolazione della cultura economica e politica a Livorno (1747–1757),” Nuovi Studi livornesi 16 (2009): 63–95, which examines the whole affair. 44 Ginori to Pfütschner, draft letter, 25 June 1751 in AGL, Affari di Governo, 6, file Minute di lettere di Ginori a Pfütschner, 1751, fol. 622, in which he complained that because of the law “the feuds are currently a burden to the feudal lords”. 45 Ibid. After an initial suspension of the application of the law on the fiefs (Furio Diaz, I Lorena in Toscana. La Reggenza [Turin: Utet, 1988], 149), in 1752 he had to return the fiefdom of Cecina and annexes to the crown; Francis Stephen allowed him to keep the title of marquis, gave him the county of Urbech in Casentino, and awarded him an indemnity of 90,000 scudi as compensation for the expenses incurred, see R[ita] B[alleri], “Cecina,” in Album Carlo Ginori, 28–33. 46 On the painful construction of the suburb, a complex of 192 terraced houses developed on several floors, see R[ita] B[alleri], “Livorno,” in Album Carlo Ginori, 34–40.

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particular to what was happening abroad. Significantly, in order to obviate Richecourt and the Regency’s objections to his ambitious project, which involved the creation of a quarter outside the city walls not only to house fishermen, as the Regency wanted, but also to locate factories and a shipyard, Ginori referred to what was happening in “England and the state of Genoa [where] manufacturing is practiced more in the countryside than in the cities,” due to the difference in cost of living. In order to attract skilled workers and entrepreneurs, Ginori suggested granting them tax relief on the basis of what Louis XIV had done and what the King of Sardinia47 was still doing: “What was done last year by the King of Sardinia for Villafranca and Nice, I believed to be an outcome well-suited to our situation, and I therefore proposed it in my aforementioned observations, which I uphold more and more, reading that the king of France in 1669 did almost the same for the expansion of Marseille.”48 The reference to the methods used in Genoa and Nice to incentivise commerce reasserted the modernity of the measures taken by the Medici, who had always subordinated the fiscality to economic development: “When the royal predecessors thought about the creation of Livorno, they did not regulate their expenditure to the advantages which they could derive from it in the short term, but decided to wait for them; Livorno then became the wealth and sustenance of Tuscany.”49 Confirming that the actions taken by the Medici remained a valid model for the present, in a plan for 1752 he referred to “the translation of the book reprinted last year by Mr. Gee on Commerce and navigation in Great Britain, p. 89: ‘A father who plants a vine spares neither money nor care and is willing to wait some time before having any wine from it.’ So it should be in a state that conceives a new plan.”50 47 Carlo Ginori, autograph letter from home, 21 December 1749, in Archivio di Stato di Firenze (henceforth ASFi), Reggenza, 654, insert 1; significantly in AGL, Affari di Governo,18, file Duplicati di progetti di S.E. il Sig. Marchese Carlo Ginori o del Consiglio del Commercio, at fols. 274–275 we find a memorandum, Porto franco di Nizza, 14 January 1751. 48 My underlining. 49 Carlo Ginori, autograph letter from home, 21 December 1749, in ASFi, Reggenza,

654, insert 1. 50 Ginori’s plan of 12 June 1752, in ASFi, Reggenza, 67 is partly quoted in Mangio, Commercio Marittimo, 921–922n77. The quote is effectively from J. Gee, Considérations sur le commerce et la navigation de la Grande-Bretagne, Ouvrage traduit de l’Anglois de Mr. Joshua Gee, sur la quatrième édition (Geneva: Antoine Philibert, 1750), 89.

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In effect, the success of many of the projects and strategies championed by Ginori stemmed from his robust knowledge of disciplines with strong applications, such as practical mathematics, the rudiments of which he tried to learn in preparation of setting up a nautical school in Livorno,51 and of more theoretical disciplines, like civil law, which he had studied at the University of Pisa by attending the lectures of Averani after reading Pufendorf’s Les devoirs de l’homme et du citoyen, which his father had bought him.52 With time, Ginori combined the study of law with the new political economy, which, as the reference to Gee clearly demonstrates, he also used to reshape the present and to complete economically innovative projects. In the memoranda that he submitted to the Regency, Ginori referred to undertakings in the Italian states and to texts he had read either in their original language or in Italian translation. Like the physician Gentili, he was one of the seventy Livornese subscribers to the Italian translation of Chambers’s Cyclopedia, and the Venetian edition (1740) of Il Consolato del mare colla Spiegazione di Giuseppe Maria Casaregi was dedicated to him.53 In effect, Ginori was a man who read widely. His papers contain frequent references to international treatises, which he studied through Dumont’s Corps universel diplomatique du droit des gens 54 in order to verify the soundness of the agreements signed by Francis Stephen with the Barbary Regencies. He also read travel memoirs, like the Relación histórica del viage a la América meridional (1748) by don Juan and don Antonio de Ulloa, which he used in an attempt to introduce carmine

51 See in AGL, Affari di Governo, 33, file Moderni ed ultimi progetti del fu Sig. marchese Ginori, the Proposizione per insegnar la nautica in Livorno, in the name of the Council of Commerce, 7 July 1752, fol. 397. 52 See il Quaderno di spese quotidiane di Ginori Senatore Carlo (1721–1729), in AGL, 198, 270v. 53 On the official nature of the republication of this work in 1720, in Lucca, by Sebastiano Domenico Capurri and Antonio Maria Santini, at the expense of Donato Donati, and on the importance of the comment by the Genoese jurist Casaregi, who was summoned by Cosimo III to Florence as Auditor of the Consulta and Ruota and with whom Ginori studied, see Daniele Baggiani, “Tra crisi commerciali e interventi istituzionali. Le vicende del porto di Livorno in età tardo medicea (1714–1730),” Rivista Storica Italiana CIV (1992): 678–729. 54 See Ginori to Pfütschner, draft letter, 2 December 1748, in AGL, 18, file Pfütschner, 1748, Risposte del marchese Ginori al Barone Pftüschner in d. anno, fol. 766.

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to Tuscany,55 but also to locate an “abandoned” Caribbean island on which to “establish a factory that, independent of the policies of other nations, would assure us of direct trade with America, perhaps serving as the first necessary step in greater projects.”56 The idea to connect Livorno directly to the Caribbean did not remain on paper, for Ginori capitalised on Francis Stephen’s desire to acquire specimens of rare animals to set up a menagerie in Vienna57 and gave a trustworthy man, Captain Biagini, precise instructions to locate an island in an economic area that he knew well thanks to the ties he had forged with the Dutch governor.58 Ginori in fact looked at the island of Saint Eustace with particular interest: the aggressive policy of commercial neutrality and the flexible customs policy practiced by the Dutch governor59 accorded perfectly with the way he wanted to carry out his own role as governor to guarantee traders “the maintenance of the freedom of trade and the free port of Livorno,”60 or in other words to remove the obstacles placed in their way by the ferma.

55 See the memorandum in which Ginori requests the cochineal worms by referring to what he read in the “travel report by D. Juan and D. Antonio de Ulloa, printed in Madrid in 1748, in book 4 ch. 2, n. 787,” in AGL, Affari di Governo, 33, file Commercio con le Americhe, fol. 450. 56 Ginori to Pfütschner, draft letter, [1757], AGL, Affari di Governo, 33, file Lettere e minute di lettere scritte nelle congiunture della spedizione del Capitano Biagini e del capitano Bonamici in America, fol. 524. 57 On Francis Stephen’s interests as a naturalist and on the menagerie completed in 1751, see Renate Zedinger, Franz Stephan von Lothringen (1708–1765). Monarch Manager Mäze, (Vienna: Bhlauverlag, 2008), 248–256. 58 Istruzioni al capitano Biagini primo capitano toscano spedito con bandiera toscana in America con oggetto di prendere conoscenza di qualche isola atta allo stabilimento di una colonia, in AGL, Affari di Governo, 33, fols. 422–428, and fols 429–430 Notizie dell’Isole di Barlovento abbandonate, le quali secondo l’istruzione confidatavi, voi dovete riconoscere, levarne la pianta, giusta esposizione, e quel più che nell’istruzione vi si ordina. 59 In the same letter to the emperor, dated 1755–1756 from Balleri, in which he lamented his “miserable condition” in Livorno, Ginori wrote: “The island of Saint Eustace is ruled by a Dutch governor, and is totally dependent on the states of Holland. The port is free, and accessible to all nations, who do their trade in complete freedom. Duties are 5 per cent above for incoming goods, and the same on outgoing ones. […] Thus I have given an idea of the island of Saint Eustace; certainly not with the same clarity I could give about Livorno, due to the confusion and arbitrage that reigns there,” 37. 60 Ginori, 23 January 1747, quoted in Baruchello, Livorno e il suo porto, 464.

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The conviction that “those means with which a country has become great are the same with which it maintains itself and grows”61 —which, when related to Livorno, meant the “freedoms” enjoyed by the free port, including smuggling—had to be maintained and further developed did not, however, imply a mere nostalgia for the past. As demonstrated by the San Jacopo suburb project, in addition to being fully aware that the brokerage trade ensured by the warehouses of the free port should be “protected” and “facilitated,” Ginori also believed that Tuscan products which met the taste of the consumers should be exported from Livorno, and that it was appropriate to create in the immediate vicinity of the port factories directly controlled by the merchants and removed from the hegemony of the city corporations. Ginori had come to this original theoretical reconsideration, thanks to his constant examination of the most significant representatives of the European economic and political culture, in particular the authors who contributed to the “new science of commerce,” whose premises and political proposals he shared. The governor used Uztáriz, who he had read in the translation annotated by Forbonnais,62 to reaffirm the need to establish a tariff policy aimed at reinvigorating Tuscan production, and the aforementioned Gee to point up the need to subordinate the needs of the tax system to those of trade. He borrowed from Plumard de Dangeul’s Remarques sur les avantages et les désavantages de la France et de la Grande Bretagne the idea of creating an “Academic Society to spend a few hours on a set day each week to discuss and develop projects of use to trade and to encourage and point out ways to develop it.”63 In the article “Du commerce en general” published by Forbonnais in the Elémens du commerce, which he paraphrased in his Alcune Proposizioni

61 Ginori to Pfütschner, 2 July 1756, in AGL, Affari di Governo, 18, file Progetti per incoraggiare la marineria e richiamare i marinai toscani che servono altre potenze, fols. 122–123. 62 [F. Véron de Forbonnais], Théorie et Pratique du Commerce et de la marine, traduction libre sur l’espagnol de Don Geronymo de Ustáriz, sur la seconde édition de ce livre à Madrid en 1742 (Paris: Veuve Estienne et Fils, 1753). 63 Memoria, in AGL, Affari di Governo, 33, file Moderni ed ultimi progetti del fu Sig. marchese Ginori, fols. 390–391.

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sopra il commercio,64 he found confirmation of his conviction that trade needed to be liberated from monopolies and duties and be protected. Ginori also used the lesson of Montesquieu to respond to the war of “jealousy” that the Papal State, followed by the Kingdom of Naples and the Republic of Genoa, unleashed against Tuscany after the conclusion of its treaties with the Barbary powers. The quarantine imposed on Tuscany by the Italian states, which cited reasons of public health, in fact drove English and Dutch ships to abandon the port of Livorno, and Ginori proposed to respond by arming a number of vessels made available by Francis Stephen and make the Barbary states respect. The articles of their treaty, and above all to make them observe the health regulations precisely. Our opponents would then have nothing to connect with, they could not continue their quarantines without violating the Gius delle Genti whose fundamental principle is that “Les nations doivent se faire dans la Paix le plus de bien possible” (Esprit des Loix, Liv. 1, ch. 3), since all the other reasons they give to board our ships and to be able to mix with the Barbaries are known to all as pretexts without foundation, militating the same for the English, Dutch and French.”65

Finally, Ginori had taken inspiration for the design of the suburb of San Jacopo from reading the entry “Commerce de Marseille” in the Dictionnaire of Savary des Bruslons. On the provision establishing the Genoese insurance company, which he had found inserted in the entry “Compagnie d’Assurance” in the same Dictionnaire, he had modelled the Livorno-based maritime insurance company that he had created with Tuscan, Jewish, French and English capital.66

64 In AGL, Affari di Governo, 33, file Moderni ed ultimi progetti del fu Sig. marchese Ginori, fols. 402–405 (no. 23), which should be compared to François Véron de Forbonnais, Du commerce en général in Elémens du Commerce, 2 vols. (Leiden: Briasson, 1754), vol. I, 1–90. 65 See the Memoria sopra lo stato presente del commercio di Livorno, e sopra i modi di prevenirne i danni in AGL, Affari di Governo, 18, file Memorie dell’anno 1749 e 1751 sopra il commercio di Livorno, e della Toscana, e sopra i modi di prevenire i danni, fols. 537–543v: 541r and v. 66 See in AGL, Affari di Governo, 18, file Progetto d’assicurazioni; for the underwriters of the maritime insurance company organised by Ginori, see Alimento, “Tra “gelosie” personali e “gelosie” tra gli stati,” 78 and 94–95n96.

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The Abbot Zanobetti and the Two Histories of Trade Taking into account the highly politicised economic context, Ginori’s personal standpoints and his familiarity with Savary’s Dictionnaire, it is reasonable to hypothesise that the governor of Livorno was deeply involved in the publication into Italian of two histories of trade that draw much of their narrative from the Préface historique of the Dictionnaire. The first of these, the introduction to Del Commercio, in fact brings together the parts of the Préface historique that ended with the exaltation of the Medici dynasty and the article “An historical Dissertation of Trade or Traffic,” which had appeared in July 1748 in the Universal Magazine of Knowledge under the signature of A. Bristoliensis.67 The second, the foreword to the Introduzione alla pratica del commercio, gathers together parts of the Préface historique and the article from the Universal Magazine of Knowledge already used in the first history, along with the entry “Company” from the Chambers Cyclopedia and another article published by the Universal Magazine of Knowledge in 1747. The person who actually crafted the two stories and made this “publishing operation” possible was abbot Zanobetti. He had arrived in Livorno in 1750 as a tutor in the Finocchietti family where he encountered a most unusual situation because, as his Florentine mentor, the provost and antiquarian Gori put it: “in that famous port, where a stable pact had been made between Minerva and Mercury,” “the letters and arts,” understood as practical knowledge, “drew a great advantage.”68 As Zanobetti himself said, in “Livorno [I] learned about the construction of ships, the names of the tools that were used to make them, and noting everything, I come to develop a nautical lexicon.”69 And he developed a passion for economics, both theoretical and practical.

67 The journal was backed by John Hinton, one of London’s most important booksellers and publishers, who edited it until his death (1781) and was known to have participated in the publication of the Universal History in 1744. 68 Anton Francesco Gori, Symbolae litterariae quae exhibent florilegium voluminis VI Noctium Corythanarum et Opuscula varia nunc primum in lucem editae volumen octovum, Viii (Florence: Ex Imperiali Typographio, 1751), IX–X, which contains the opinion in reference to the creation of the Livorno branch of the Società Colombaria Fiorentina chaired by Filippo Venuti. 69 Zanobetti to Gori, March–April 1750 in BMFi, MS B VIII 14, insert 296.

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It was Giovanni Gentili, the doctor of the Finocchietti household, who taught Zanobetti to take great pleasure in economics. According to Zanobetti, the doctor imprudently “speaks barbarically about the court of Vienna, and about the Comte de Richecourt. He has gone as far as referring to him as His Excellency the Tyrant of Tuscany, and talks in a very bad way of even some of the Count’s good actions.”70 Conversing with Gentili, Zanobetti discovered that “compared to human society, modern literature is a small matter; and that commerce is more beautiful, more noble, more delightful and more necessary, and if I were to be reborn I would abandon Pallas to follow Mercury.”71 The ambitious abbot, an enthusiastic reader of Pufendorf,72 decided to take advantage of the ideas that came to him from the Livorno environment in order to obtain a job worthy of his abilities. Thus having learned that Sig[nor]a Orietta Huygens, sister of Margherita and mother of Iacopino, “spoke to the empress in French when she came to Livorno,”73 he decided to write to the abbot Zaccaria “in French so that I could practice this language.”74 In addition to improving his French, he also worked on his English. Every day, after finishing his lessons with Iacopino: “I set out to study the English language, in which I have made some considerable progress in this short time. I have been blessed with some English books called the Universal Magazine, a pleasing collection of knowledge.”75 Zanobetti set about learning the language in particular by taking lessons from the Catholic Hambly Pope,76 cousin of Alexander Pope, since he felt sure that gaining a command of it would give him 70 Zanobetti to Gori, Gabbro, 3 July 1750 in BMFi, MS B VIII 14, fols. 33–37. 71 Zanobetti to Gori, March–April 1750 in BMFi, MS B VIII 14, insert 296. 72 Zanobetti to Gori, Villa, 8 September 1750, in BMFi, MS B VIII 14, fols. 72–73:

72v. 73 Zanobetti to Gori, Valle Benedetta, 17 July 1750, in BMFi, MS B VIII 14, fols. 43–45: 45. 74 Zanobetti to Gori, Villa, 13 August 1750, in BMFi, MS B VIII 14, fols. 49–51: 49. 75 Zanobetti to Gori, Lucca, 28 November 1752, in BMFi, MS B VIII 14, fols. 144–

145v: 145. 76 Zanobetti to Gori, Livorno, 22 January 1751, in BMFi, MS B VIII 14, fols. 93–

95:93v; Hambly Pope translated, with the collaboration of Gentili, the Scelta delle più belle e utili speculazioni inglesi dello Spettatore, Ciarlatore e Tutore tradotte in italiano, 3 vols., (Livorno: Fantechi, 1753–1756), and the Viaggio intorno al mondo fatto negli anni 1740-41-42-43-44 dal Signor Giorgio Anson presentamente Lord Anson (Livorno: Fantechi, 1756).

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greater chances of success: “The acquisition of the English language is certainly a good thing because by also knowing French I can stand out more.”77 To practice English comprehension, Zanobetti made use of the five volumes of the Universal Magazine of Knowledge that had come into his possession on 3 July 1750.78 He translated some articles which in particular aroused the interest of Doctor Gentili, who “wanted to hear me explain some parts of my English translations to Sig. Huygens. I showed them a notebook in which I had translated a Dissertazione sopra la storia del commercio. They marvelled at every word they read, and after having read it alongside the original said that nobody could have translated it better.”79 Zanobetti, who thought he would secure “infinite advantages” thanks to his English, since few people in Tuscany spoke it, “except for Mr. Niccolini, Mr. Cocchi and Gentili,”80 felt so emboldened by Gentili and Huygens’s praise for his translations that he decided to launch a commercial venture that hopefully would be profitable, namely the publication of a periodical modelled on the Universal Magazine of Knowledge. The “English Literary Journal” had attracted him not only for its visual appeal and wealth of content but also because it targeted a wide readership, in other words, many buyers.81 With the backing of Gori and capital from the Finocchietti and Huygens, Zanobetti took over the presses of a printing house and founded a typographic workshop, Antonio Santini and Co, which produced the Magazzino italiano di istruzione e di piacere,82 which between May and August 1752 featured a partial translation of 77 Zanobetti to Gori, Valle Benedetta, 17 July 1750, in BMFi, MS B VIII 14, fols. 43–45: 44. 78 Zanobetti to Gori, Gabbro, 3 July 1750, in BMFi, MS B VIII 14, fols. 33–37, which contains the index of the five volumes in his possession. 79 Zanobetti to Gori, Gabbro, 3 July 1750, in BMFi, MS B VIII 14, fol. 36. 80 Ibid. 81 “The English Magazine is a very beautiful book, and it is beautiful for all types of people, since apart from educating briefly and with precision the most virtuous sciences, it also educates on the arts,” Zanobetti to Gori, Gabbro, 3 July 1750, in BMFi, MS B VIII 14, fol.36v. 82 On the periodical, which was published between March 1752 and June 1753, see Elena Gremigni, “La stampa periodica a Livorno nel secolo dei Lumi,” in Giornali del Settecento fra Granducato e legazioni, ed. Silvia Capecchi, (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2008), 143–176.

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another trade history, this time by Montesquieu. The suggestion to publish the Riflessioni del Sig. di Montesquieu sopra le rivoluzioni che ha patite il commercio, estratte dal Libro dello Spirito delle leggi may have come from Gentili—who collaborated in the production of the Magazzino italiano with translations of his own—or else from the abbot Filippo Venuti, provost of the Collegiata, who before arriving in Livorno in 1751 had been in direct contact with the author of the Esprit des lois.83 He founded the Livorno branch of the Società Colombaria Fiorentina, whose meetings Ginori, a keen reader of Montesquieu, attended.84 While Zanobetti translated other articles from the Universal Magazine of Knowledge in order to fill the issues of the Magazzino italiano, Gentili and Huygens must have reflected on the opportunity to disseminate in Livorno the Dissertazione sopra la storia del commercio that Zanobetti had translated, and to use it to compose an Italian-language history of trade that paid homage to commerce as an agent of civilisation and, at the same time, commended the civil society created by the Medici family, who hailed from the world of commerce. As he was sincere enough to reveal to his mentor Gori, Zanobetti agreed to write this history not “to play the man of letters, but to earn.”85 The drafting of the text was completed before 6 April 1751 when Zanobetti, informing Gori of the imminent publication of “Belloni’s Dissertation on Commerce,” asked him to send “by post a copperplate to place in the frontispiece of this Dissertazione 83 “Riflessioni del Sig. di Montesquieu […] sopra le rivoluzioni che ha patito il Commercio, estratte dal Libro dello Spirito delle Leggi,” in Magazzino Italiano, Livorno, (1752), vol. I, 95–99 and 125–129; vol, II, 8–10 and 41–42. Filippo Venuti, who was under the protection of Pope Clement XII and had already been the librarian and secretary of the Académie des Sciences et Belles Lettres in Bordeaux, presided by Montesquieu, had been called back to Italy by Pope Benedict XIV as the procurator of the Dattiloteca Palatina and in 1750 was named by the Grand Duke as the provost of Livorno, arriving there in 1751. See Antonio Rotondò, Riforme e utopie nel pensiero politico toscano del Settecento, ed. M. Michelini Rotondò (Florence: Olschki, 2008), in which are published thirteen “Lettere inedite di Montesquieu al suo corrispondente toscano Filippo Venuti,” 1–16; and Timpanaro Morelli, A Livorno, nel Settecento, 90–99 and 117n56. 84 His participation is confirmed by the topic of the thirteenth meeting of 1754, when two coins of the Da Varano lords of Camerino owned by the governor were shown, see Cristina Cagianelli, “Le Conversazioni Letterarie Venutiane Liburnensi: Filippo Venuti, Anton Francesco Gori e la Colonia Colombaria nella Livorno della metà del Settecento,” in Livorno, 1606–1806: Luogo di incontro tra popoli e culture, ed. Adriano Prosperi (Livorno: Allemandi, 2009), 211–224: 219. 85 Zanobetti to Gori, Livorno, 26 April 1751, in BMFi, MS B VIII 14, fols. 108–110:

110.

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as myself, the chancellor Tilli and Gentili would be much obliged.”86 Like Gentili, Gaspare Tilli, who graduated in Pisa in 1722 in utroque iure (both civil and ecclesiastical law), was an official of the Grand Ducal administration who attended the meetings of the Livorno branch of the Società Colombaria Fiorentina. In order to keep earning, Zanobetti continued to accept commissions from the frondeur circles associated with the Fantechi printing house and, at the request of Filippo Huygens, wrote a response to a pamphlet that the merchant considered insulting to France, his nation of origin. In so doing, Zanobetti made a blunder for which he paid dearly, namely “appearing a little disrespectful towards my government, to which I have always had a blind obedience.”87 For failing to respect the law on the press, Zanobetti, who had “entirely different attitudes from those of the Huygens and Finocchietti houses with regards to the government,”88 incurred the wrath of Richecourt and had to take refuge in Lucca, while his Dissertazione Storica del Commercio, sopra le memorie di varj autori Moderni Inglesi, e Francesi went on to enrich the Livorno edition of Del Commercio because, as we read in the printer’s note to the reader “it shows to what degree of glory Commerce has raised the Nations, which have been able to profit from it, a fundamental basis on which Sig. Marchese Belloni plants the principles of his reasoning.”89 The enrichment about which the editor, Fantechi, wrote in his note was neither erudite nor neutral: the text was in fact an exaltation of the Medici dynasty that partly modified the anthropological premises of the Roman banker, yet which also contained reflections and proposals very close to the economic sentiments of the governor Ginori. The Roman banker in fact argued that the “Noblemen, Gentlemen, Bankers, and Consuls of Arts” needed to participate in the development of projects since “thus the Order of Merchants might appear in a better

86 Zanobetti to Gori, Livorno, 6 April 1751, in BMFi, MS B VIII 14, fols. 106–107:

107. 87 Zanobetti to Gori, Lucca, 29 March 1752, in BMFi, MS B VIII 14, fols. 160–161v: 160v; on these events, see Timpanaro Morelli, A Livorno nel Settecento, 97–99. 88 Zanobetti to Gori, Lucca, 28 November 1752, in BMFi, MS B VIII 14, fols. 144– 145v: 145. 89 “Lo Stampatore al Lettore,” in Del commercio, vj.

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Light, and be thought more honourable.”90 In his opinion, not only those who engaged with “the Great Branches of Commerce by Sea, and with foreign Nations” but also “those who shall exert themselves in introducing Arts, and Manufactures, and Improvements of this Kind” deserved to be admitted “to Honours, and civil and military Employments; and that if they belong to the Order of the Nobilty, they shall not be deemed to have thereby fallen from the Rank due to their Birth and Quality, so that both they themselves, and such of their Descendants as shall continue on the same Line of Commerce, may be admitted into the Order of Knighthood, have access to be of the Council of State, and aspire also to military Preferments.”91 After having paid homage to the figure of the merchant by dignifying his profession so that the nobles could embrace it without fear of diminishing their own status, as Savary had claimed in his Préface historique, Belloni invited the sovereign to exercise his authority in order to increase his own profit along with that of his subjects. In order to reach this goal, the sovereign had to avoid resorting to arbitrary monetary manipulation and above all prevent capital from haemorrhaging from his own territory. In this respect, the Roman banker distinguished active trade, which “signifies the Exportation of those Commodities wherewith that Kingdom trades, when they are sent in Kind for the Use of other Nations,” from passive trade, a term he applied to “the Importation of those Commodities which Foreigners send for the Use of that Kingdom.” He also pointed to the trade with the East Indies as the cause of the “immense Gulph of passive Commerce, in which they are involved by Means of the Commodities which the Europeans import from those Parts. For not only the great Quantities of Jewels and Manufactures, and the numberless Liquors and Spices, the greatest Part where of the Luxury and Pride of Men.” In fact, “the great Advantage which the Kingdoms of Europe receive from the West-Indies, and the great Quantities of Gold and Silver, and other useful Things which are brought from thence,”92 was not enough to balance this passivity.

90 Del commercio, 65. The English-language quotations are taken from the translation of 1752: A Dissertation on Commerce, (London: R. Manby, 1752), 101. 91 Del commercio, 68; A Dissertation on Commerce, 107. 92 Del commercio, 10–11; A Dissertation on Commerce, 6 and 13–16.

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In order to bring about active trade, Belloni suggested the selected use of tariffs, taking into account the needs of “each province.” For those that produced and exported wheat and wine, Belloni in fact proposed the “lowering the Duties upon the Exportation of such Commodities; nay, they should even be sacrificed entirely to such an useful Design, if that should be necessary to compleat it.” For the “inland Provinces, which lie at a considerable Distance from the Sea, and which we have supposed to be of a barre Soil, producing very little, and its Inhabitants having no foreign or domestic Trade” he proposed not only to exempt them from paying duties, as the increase in the population would make up for the lost revenue, but also, following the example of what had been done by Henry VII of England, to “supply them with Money, and appoint proper Inspectors to oversee the new Manufactures that are to be introduced.” In the case of areas producing silks and wools fit for export, Belloni suggested making sure that their goods could be “exported Duty-free” and that in the same way “the Goods, which are brought into the Kingdom to be manufactured by the Hands of the Subjects, be imported Duty-free; and that the same Privilege be extended to such Commodities as new Fashions render necessary, to be interwoven with Silk or Woollen Manufactures, such as foreign Wools of a finer Staple than the Native, Castor, Camel’s Hair, Cotton, and such other Goods as contribute to the Usefulness and Perfection of the Manufactures.”93 The fiscal policy suggested by Belloni, which the Marquis of Argenson, reviewing Del commercio in the Journal économique in March 1751, opposed with his “laisser aller policy,”94 found numerous admirers in Livorno.

93 Del commercio, 52, 53–54; A Dissertation on Commerce, 81, 83–85; Belloni associ-

ated this policy of selective export duties with a policy of high import duties on foreign products: “the Importation thereof ought to be loaded with such heavy Duties, that the Subjects might by Degrees grow weary of them, and, which would soon happen, earnestly desire them to be entirely prohibited,” Del commercio, 57; A Dissertation on Commerce, 89. 94 It is worth underlining that the Critica di un Oltramontano [marchese d’Argenson]

alla Dissertazione del Sig. Belloni sul Commercio, was also published in Livorno in the Magazzino Toscano, vol. III, March 1756 (28 February 1757), 447–451, a journal that in vol. I, March 1754–February 1755, 424–432, had included the translation of Gee, which followed the Estratto Del Ragionamento sul Commercio Universale by Genovesi, vol. III, March 1756–February 1757, 550–565.

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While acknowledging, as Caracciolo has pointed out,95 the different vocation of the provinces of the state of the Papal States, the distinction between provinces producing wheat and wine and those far from the sea and without manufacturing proved to be extremely useful for Ginori, who, as we have seen, was committed to creating decentralised factories designed for high-quality products for export.96 Ginori, who since the early 1740s had challenged Richecourt’s planned increase of customs tariffs, and who called for free circulation of grain to counteract the depopulation of the Maremma,97 in a report dated 12 June 1752 used the concept of passive trade employed by Belloni to restate the need to support the export of Tuscan “products,” including oil and wine. The proposal to reduce the duties on the export of oil, which was prohibited by law, rekindled Ginori’s confrontation with Richecourt, who responded negatively to the proposal and also opposed another proposition he had made. In the same memorandum of 1752, the governor called on the Regency to use the ships that the emperor had placed at its disposal in 1751 to encourage Tuscan producers to export their “products” and manufactures directly from Livorno. To achieve this, Ginori opined that they should be exempted from paying duties and taxes and granted export grants, following the example “given by England, which to encourage its navigation and the export of its products not only exempts them from impositions but grants incentives to those who export the kingdom’s products on English ships. It should be noted that if we want to do some trade in England with these ships we can only do so with our own products and with goods manufactured in the state, according to the Navigation Act that oversees English navigation, whose articles 4 and 8 allow passage into England only to foreign ships carrying goods produced by their respective States.”98

95 Caracciolo, Scritture inedite, 15. 96 For the velvet factory built by Ginori in the old fortress and the reorganisation

of silk production in Pisa, see Daniele Baggiani, “Le prime manifatture di Livorno e la promozione produttiva al tempo della Reggenza lorenese (1747–1765),” Nuovi Studi livornesi V (1997): 83–119, who points out these initiatives, aimed at weakening the hegemony of the city corporations and promoting the creation of decentralised factories controlled directly by traders. 97 See Contini, La Reggenza lorenese, 51. 98 The plan by Ginori of 12 June 1752, in ASFi, Reggenza, F 67, partially cited in

Mangio, Commercio Marittimo, 921–922n77.

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Taking into consideration these proposals, advanced by Ginori in 1752 with reference to the navigation act contained in the Geneva edition of Gee’s work, it is reasonable to believe that the Livorno edition of Del Commercio was intended to generate support for the adoption of a system based on “freedom” (from corporate constraints)99 and “protection” (of trade through export grants). Ginori used the press law of 1743 to instigate a debate on these issues, just as, according to the accusations levelled against him by Richecourt in 1741, he had done before by using the office of the secretary of the riformagioni, which controlled the publication of books, to direct public opinion in an anti-dynastic and pro-Roman direction.100 The Livorno edition of Del commercio in fact had bigger ambitions, as emerges clearly from the Discorso preliminare that Zanobetti had written at the request of the frondeur circles that revolved around the printer Fantechi. Despite having ennobled commerce and considering it a powerful factor of sociability,101 Belloni expressed a firmly traditional conception of the origins of society. Mankind, in his opinion, “by the wonderful Counsels of Providence” had united in a society to put itself “under the Protection of a single Person.” The sovereign, on the other hand, “by the wonderful Counsels of Providence, which has raised Monarchies, and bestowed on Princes those Lights that are necessary for the Government of their Subjects” had no other function than to ensure that their subjects might “live in greater Happiness and Safety.”102 99 For his opposition in 1740 to any patent and contract for the sale and processing of iron on the island of Elba, see Diaz, I Lorena in Toscana, 68–69. 100 See Sandro Landi, Il governo delle opinioni. Censura e formazione del consenso nella Toscana del Settecento, (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000), 77–92; Sandro Landi, Naissance de l’opinion publique dans l’Italie moderne (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006). 101 Belloni thought that the origin of trade “ought to be traced as far back as the

first Foundation of Cities: When, by the special Influence of Divine Providence, Mankind, from a Sense of their Wants, agreed to enter into Societies, that they might be in a Condition to give mutual Assistance to one another; […] But afterwards, and in Process of Time, as they gradually advanced in Industry, civil Policy, and the Improvement of Arts, Commerce rose to such a Pitch of Greatness, that what at first was solely intended for the Relief of Wants, became the Means of vast Advantages, and a powerful Support to human Society: Nor was it only the Source of all the Riches that flowed into Kingdoms, but also the Bond of Peace and Union between those Kingdoms, the Chain that united Nations, and even the whole Race of Mankind,” Del commercio, 6–7; A Dissertation on Commerce, 2–3. 102 Del commercio, 41; A Dissertation on Commerce, 65.

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The vision expressed by Belloni, according to whom, “all the Affluence and Riches are the common Patrimony of the Prince and of the People,”103 was clearly contradicted by the Discorso preliminare in which it was argued that commerce was responsible for giving life to civil society, which in turn created political authority. In the Discorso preliminare we read, for example, that the “first notions of trade arose from light of nature, which directed man how supply his wants.” Moreover: it is to trade, or the intercourse of buying and selling, that we ascribe the beginning of civility and society; a just sense of which brought the forms of dealing, and the true spirit of commerce into use; and when this had improved men’s circumstances, the desire of keeping and quietly enjoying the property, so obtained, introduced, and established equal, limited, and legal governments; the living under, and the being protected by such governments, is strictly, truly, and properly stiled liberty; which therefore is not only highly consistent with, but, in some measure, essentially necessary to trade. Therefore, if liberty, property, an equal government, a flourishing state of learning, perfection in arts and sciences, public magnificence, private abundance, and a capacity of defending and preserving these blessings against all invaders, be certain and incontestable benefits, they are such as commerce, and such as only commerce is able to give to any people or nation.104

The profound divergence between the economic anthropology that underpins Belloni’s essay and the one underlying the first six pages of the Discorso preliminare can be explained by bearing in mind that the latter are a translation of the article, “An historical Dissertation on Trade or Traffic” that appeared in volume III of July 1748 of the Universal Magazine of Knowledge, signed by A. Bristoliensis,105 an essay which, as we will recall, Zanobetti had translated at the end of summer 1750, earning the admiration of Gentili and Huygens.106 Zanobetti translated the whole of 103 Del commercio, 65; A Dissertation on Commerce, 64. 104 Discorso preliminare, xj–xij. 105 The article, preceded by a letter from Bristol, 20 July 1748, under the name of A. Bristoliensis, had also been published in the July edition of The London Magazine. Or, Gentleman’s Monthley Intelligencer, 336–338. 106 See the previously cited letter from Zanobetti to Gori, Gabbro, 3 July 1750 in BMFi, MS B VIII 14, fols. 33–37: 34.

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the first part of the essay, which praised trade as an agent of change and improvement: “A man knows that his labour shall be crowned with plenty, he proceeds with courage, vigour, and activity. His mind is enlivened, and he is daily either inventing new scheme, or accruing arts already known to the utmost perfection.”107 However, evidently feeling that it was not appropriate to the context of Livorno, Zanobetti decided not to include in his translation a passage that reveals the political intent behind the history of trade written by A. Bristoliensis, namely that “the people who prevail at sea, will in the end prevail on shore. No maritime power was ever ruined by a land war, till her power was first broken at sea, or lost the power of the sea.”108 Zanobetti followed the reflection on the role of commerce in the creation of a civil society with some historical examples drawn from the Préface historique that illustrated the assumption of A. Bristoliensis’s article: Zanobetti faithfully translated, in some cases summarising, Savary’s text up to the rebirth of commerce by way of the Spanish. Wanting to illustrate the vicissitudes of Holland and the United Kingdom, he chose not to use Savary’s entirely political analysis of the Dutch case. Savary, who recommended the new French sovereign to establish direct commercial relations with countries, such as Russia, which could guarantee reciprocal trade with France, and who encouraged him to equip France with its own merchant navy, accused the Dutch of having enriched themselves off the backs of the producing nations by having taken control of universal commerce. In order to illustrate the Dutch and English cases, Zanobetti turned once more to the Universal Magazine of Knowledge, which contained the affirmation that “it has been trade alone that has given the United Provinces its freedom, power and opulence.”109 He “domesticated” the article by A. Bristoliensis, where it discussed the progress made by English trade under Queen Elizabeth, by removing a long passage on the impact of the civil wars on the English economy. To deal with Muscovy, Zanobetti returned to the Préface historique, embracing its enthusiasm towards a sovereign who had taught a “nation as ferocious as it was idle,” the “advantages of commerce.” After translating,

107 Discorso preliminare, xj–xij; A. Bristoliensis, “An historical Dissertation on Trade or Traffic,” in Universal Magazine of Knowledge (July 1748), 3–7: 5. 108 A. Bristoliensis, “An historical Dissertation on Trade or Traffic,” 5. 109 Ibid., 6.

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in a manner true to the original, the passage in which Savary praised the famous 1697 embassy, Zanobetti added a sentence of his own in which he expressed his regret for the “untimely death” of “Tsar Peter, rightly known as the great.”110 Without translating the piece that Savary had dedicated to Jacques Cœur, the wise and wealthy merchant who had placed a large part of the wealth he had accumulated through commerce at the disposal of King Charles VII, Zanobetti ended his Discorso preliminare by translating what Savary had written about the Medici family: “And if one wants an example of private people who reached a sublime level of glory through Commerce, one should look at the glorious Medici family, which owes the origin of its wealth and grandeur to commerce alone.”111 Savary alluded to Cosimo the Elder: “commerce alone was the sole cause of his glory,” and to his brother Lorenzo: “[who] was so well known at the Ottoman porte through his agents, whom he maintained in all the ports of the Levant, and because of the large number of ships which he sent to Bajazet, that proud emperor of the Turks, that this august Lord not only always regarded him as one of his allies, but many times called him his friend.”112 Worthy of note is the fact that Zanobetti, in order to endorse the laudatory judgement expressed by Savary towards the dynasty, added, using the rhetorical device of amplificatio, two notations. The first highlights the economic support given in the past by the Medici to their subjects: “A greatness that would hardly be credible, if in our time we had not seen the last signs of it in their government of the people, whose freedom in other times they supported with their wealth, and with their advice.” The second praises the civilising role of the Medici who “had restored the lost

110 Discorso preliminare, xxix. 111 “L’autre exemple de la fortune & de la gloire, où de simples particuliers ont sçû

parvenir par l’unique voye du Commerce, n’est pas moins remarquable. La famille des Medicis a toujours été recommandable, soit par l’ancienneté & la noblesse de son origine, soit par la grandeur de son crédit & de ses richesses,” Préface historique, xj. 112 “Le commerce seul fut cependant la source de tant de gloire. […] Laurent son frere, fut si connu à la Porte à cause des Facteurs qu’il entretenoit dans toutes les Echelles du Levant, & du grand nombre de Vaisseaux qu’il y envoyait, que Bajazet ce fier Empereur des Ottomans, non seulement le regarda toujours comme un de ses Alliés, mais meme l’honora du nom de son ami,” Ibid.

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letters and fine arts in Europe.”113 A notation of the latter, it should be noted, strengthened the enhancement of the artistic, cultural and scientific legacy of Medicean Tuscany promoted by the Florentine circles close to Gori and the Società Colombaria. Zanobetti must also have reflected at length on another article published in the Universal Magazine of Knowledge, because he begins the Dissertazione preliminare included as the foreword to the Introduzione alla pratica del commercio, by paraphrasing the words by “A Merchant” in “On the excellency, advantages, and antiquity of Commerce,” namely that “War necessarily introduced tumult, Disorder, and Desolation, and carries trouble and confusion along with it into all Places: and on the contrary, Trade and Commerce breathe nothing but Peace and Tranquility.”114 After having emphasised that peace was the requisite for the growth of commerce and with it “the perfect happiness” of every nation, Zanobetti used the same historical examples employed in the Discorso preliminare included as the preface to Belloni, and passages from “An historical Dissertation on Trade or Traffic” as well as from the Préface historique. In the Dissertazione preliminare we in fact find praise for Solomon for having united men through the arts of peace, in other words commerce; praise for the ancient cities that commerce and navigation had caused to flourish to the point of becoming “the despotic cities of commerce and navigation”; for Tyre and Sidon, “sufficient proof of the level of glory, power and wealth that a nation can reach only thanks to commerce”; for Carthage, whose “youth was educated only for trading,” and which was able to “fight with Rome for the empire of the world”; and for Alexandria which, thanks to its favourable location, had become the “universal Warehouse of the World.” He also wrote about the “jealousy” of the Romans, the disasters produced by the Goths, and the rebirth of commerce through the agency of Venice and Genoa. He lavished praise on the Hanseatic cities and the inhabitants of the Seven Provinces, who “applying themselves to commerce, and after commerce had made them 113 “& c’est à Côme de Medicis, ce célebre citoyen de Florence, qui mérita si justement le nom de Grand, de Père du peuple, & de libérateur de la Patrie, qu’elle est redevable des premiers, ou au moins des plus solides fondemens d’une grandeur qui seroit à peine croyable, si encore aujourd’hui nous ne voyons son heureuse & illustre Posterité gouverner avec tant de sagesse, ces mêmes Peuples qui durent autrefois leur liberté au courage & à la prudence de ce premier Citoyen de leur Republique,” Ibid. 114 A Merchant, “On the excellency, advantages, and antiquity of Commerce,” in Universal Magazine of Knowledge (July 1747), 69–71: 71.

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rich and powerful, to liberate themselves from having to obey the Spanish then established a just and equitable government”; he applauded Queen Elizabeth for having spurred on English trade, which, “added to the natural advantages of the country, is the source of the wealth of this fortunate island”; and he admired the wisdom of Colbert and the genius of Tsar Peter.115 While in the Discorso preliminare the collage between the Universal Magazine of Knowledge and the Préface historique served the praising of the civilising role of commerce at the same time as that of the Medici family, in this Dissertazione preliminare it is directed towards the adoption of a policy of political economy that implied the involvement of private capital guaranteed by the intervention of the sovereign. In fact, the final part of this history of trade expresses hope for the creation of a privileged trading company on the model of those that Charles Emmanuel III and Frederick II were preparing to establish. Zanobetti justified this option by referring to the “excellent government, the wise laws all intended to increase the traffic, with which England and Holland support themselves.” The laws to which he attributed “their majestic traffic” were those that guaranteed the security of small traders, the freedom and social recognition enjoyed by the merchants, the protection of commerce through “squadrons and coastguards” and above all the “prudent institution of various Companies […] composed of the wealthiest merchants, and supported by men with experience in that Trade.”116 Significantly, Zanobetti adopted the distinction that the article “Compagnie” of Savary’s Dictionnaire made between a Society and a Company: the first comprised “two or more Merchants who unite together to manage some mediocre traffic” and the second was composed “of many varied People who by bringing together large sums of money sell the rich goods of the East or West Indies, trade in the foodstuffs of the North or the Levant to the exclusion of others.” Once it was clear that the trading company he hoped to create had to attract sizeable capital and be run by men from the world of commerce, Zanobetti painted a portrait of the companies that operated in England, Holland, France and Denmark, which, “aided and protected and facilitated by the privileges that were

115 Dissertazione preliminare, xvii–xviii. 116 Ibid., xviii.

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accorded to them, increased the power of these states, and enriched individual members beyond measure.”117 To outline the framework of the formation and current situation of these companies, Zanobetti translated an article from a text that Ginori and Gentili knew well, having subscribed to its Italian translation. It was the article “Company” in the Chambers Cyclopedia which, notably, in turn summarised the article “Compagnie” by Savary. At first, reading this history of trade would seem to express political and economic views different to those that supported the history that Zanobetti had written for Del Commercio. The Dissertazione preliminare calls for a direct intervention from the new dynasty that Fantechi, in the notice “to the Responsible Body of Traders in Livorno” cited favourably since, just as was done in England, the “true model of good and right thinking,” “the wise provisions of our august monarch, and the right intention of his enlightened ministers” were oriented towards the “preservation of the security and liberty of commerce.”118 In reality, the concepts of preservation, security and free trade were, as we have seen, at the root of the economic culture of Ginori who, through the proposal of creating a privileged company, offered the House of Habsburg-Lorraine the opportunity to interact positively with the Livornese merchants who Fantechi in his announcement defined as the “procurators and maintainers of the abundance of riches and commodities of a country.” In effect, the praise for the civilising role of commerce and at the same time for Francis I and his minister Richecourt implied that the latter should graft their own reformist activity onto that of the “always memorable, illustrious House of de’ Medici,” which Zanobetti cited openly when recalling the support given by the previous dynasty to the Florentine manufacture of silk.119 Through the concession of the patent to a company managed by Tuscans and constituted of Tuscan capital, the Lorraine dynasty had the opportunity to create a synergy with the Livornese merchants and thus become the heirs and guardians of a cultural, political and economic entity which they had not created but nevertheless had to govern.

117 Ibid., xviii–xix. 118 Fantechi “to the Responsible Body of Traders in Livorno,” in Introduzione alla

pratica del commercio, iii. 119 Dissertazione preliminare, ix.

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Conclusion The frondeur group headed by Ginori deliberately used the history of trade genre to reflect on the role of Livorno as a free port in the context of an economic specialisation that relied on mobilising Tuscan capital but looked positively at the prospect of “Tuscan goods” being traded in a much bigger area than where they were traditionally sold, in virtue of the fact that the Grand Duchy had been absorbed into the Habsburg Empire.120 The mobilisation of political economy, clearly visible in the publishing operation behind the two stories of commerce, certainly had the objective of updating the pragmatic approach to economics employed by the Medici who, having themselves come from the world of commerce, were committed to protecting the freedom of traders, as demonstrated by the very foundation of Livorno and its designation as a free port. However, the knowing use of English and French economic thinking also responded to a broader cultural objective, which Ginori was able to represent visually thanks to an artistic production of the highest quality that completely exemplifies his image as a “conservative innovator.”121 Through the experiments conducted in the private physics and chemistry laboratory housed in his ancestral Florentine palace, and also the involvement of designers brought from abroad, in 1737 Ginori founded a porcelain factory in Doccia that would go on to compete with that of Meissen. In the same year as the publication of the two histories of trade, 1751, the factory produced the precious baroque artefact known as the “Tempietto delle glorie della Toscana,” and this, together with the histories, would go on to memorialise a dynasty, that of the Medici, which, having emerged out of commerce had always protected and facilitated it, experimenting with various types of intervention. The “Tempietto,” which in 1756 Ginori donated to the Etruscan Academy of Cortona after being elected its decumone thanks to the support of Filippo Venuti (the man to whom in all probability is owed the aforementioned translation of the history of trade by Montesquieu), is characterised by a complex iconography to which Ginori entrusted the task of reconstituting the relationship between Tuscan civil society and the new dynasty. 120 Carey Tazzara, “Commercial Crisis in Livorno and the Remaking of the Tuscan Hinterland,” in Tazzara, Findlen, and Soll, Florence After the Medici, 176–198. 121 Alimento, “Carlo Ginori,” in Tazzara, Findlen, and Soll, Florence After the Medici, 157–164.

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The porcelain portraits of Maria Theresa and Francis Stephen are in fact placed at the top of a composition made up of seventy-two cameos of the Medici, their consorts and Charles of Bourbon, the alternative candidate to Francis Stephen. The little temple essentially presents the ruling dynasty as the product of the complex political and institutional experience of the Grand Duchy. Furthermore, as suggested by the Dissertazione preliminare, the Tempietto portrayed the House of Habsburg-Lorraine as the heirs of the work of the Medici also in economic matters. At the summit of the artefact, we in fact find a statuette of Mercury, the god who protects the trade of which the two histories published in 1751 traced the vicissitudes and moments of splendour that were due in large part to the way in which the rulers had supported the work of all economic entrepreneurs and their associates. From this point of view, Livorno’s early use of the genre of trade histories must be considered one of the most significant fruits of the Tuscan Enlightenment that built a bridge between the Medici—the dynasty that gave life to an unparalleled artistic and cultural period, that of the Florentine Renaissance—and the new dynasty of the House of HabsburgLorraine. In this regard, it is important to remember that the process of institutionalising the memory of the Medici, of which the two histories of trade and the “Temple to the glories of Tuscany” produced in 1751 in the Doccia factory were an integral part, took shape immediately after the death of Gian Gastone, since it was his sister, Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, who negotiated the terms under which Francis Stephen, Duke of Lorraine, took possession of the Grand Duchy. With the family compact of October 1737, Anna Maria Luisa obtained an agreement that Tuscany’s cultural heritage would not be dismembered or transferred. As is known, the decision to keep in place the products of the artistic, scientific and experimental culture of Tuscany translated into a project of the celebration of the Florentine Renaissance equal in terms of effort and quality of contributions to the celebrations that in the past had been reserved for Greco-Roman antiquities. This eighteenth-century rediscovery of the Renaissance122 included the enhancement of the Uffizi gallery, the rearrangement of archives, and the collection and publication in critical editions of the manuscripts of those who had given prestige to Tuscan culture, not only Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Bruni, Alberti, 122 Paula Findlen, “The Eighteenth-Century Invention of the Renaissance: Lessons from the Uffizi,” in Renaissance Quarterly 66 (2013): 1–34.

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Machiavelli, Vasari, Cellini and Galileo, but also the early global Tuscan merchants such as Amerigo Vespucci and Francesco Carletti. Also part of this huge undertaking was the opening to the public of four libraries belonging to erudite Florentines, among which stands out that in 1760 of the library created in 1666 by Cosimo III, who in 1738 had taken over the book collection of Lunéville. The public opening of the Mediceo

Fig. 6.1 Carlo Ginori and Gaspero Bruschi, “Tempietto Ginori”, donated by Carlo Ginori to the Etruscan Academy of Cortona (1756) Source Reproduced courtesy of the MAEC, Museo dell’Accademia Etrusca e della Città di Cortona

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Palatina library, which combined the literary legacy of the two dynasties,123 actualised the request to graft the initiatives of the new kings aimed at reinvigorating the economy of the Grand Duchy onto the robust trunk of Medici civilisation, a request that the two stories of trade and the “Temple of the glories of Tuscany” had advanced since 1751 (Fig. 6.1).

123 Emanuelle Chapron, Ad utilità pubblica. Politique des bibliothèques et pratiques du livre à Florence au XVIII e siècle (Geneva: Droz, 2009).

CHAPTER 7

August Ludwig Schlözer’s General History of Trade and of Seafaring (1758): Cameralism, Natural History, and the Rise of Civilisation Ere Nokkala

Introduction Considering that Göttingen historian, political scientist, statistician, and writer August Ludwig von Schlözer (1735–1809)1 is a well-known name in historiography and is particularly famous for his notion of world history 1 August Ludwig Schlözer was born in Hohenlohe, Germany. He studied at the Universities of Wittenberg, Göttingen and Uppsala. He earned his first income in the cities of Göttingen, Lübeck, Altona, Stockholm and St. Petersburg. His first academic post was in St. Petersburg, and in 1765 he became a professor in Russia. In 1769 he was appointed professor of Russian literature and history at the philosophy faculty of the University of Göttingen, and it was there that he began giving lectures on general world history. For a short biography of Schlözer and his European networks, see Martin Espenhorst, “Der ‘mobile’ Europäer—Zur historischen Konstruktion des europäischen Menschen bei Schlözer,” in August Ludwig (von) Schlözer in Europa, ed. Heinz Duchhardt and Martin Espenhorst (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 197–212: 200–203.

E. Nokkala (B) University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Alimento and A. Della Fontana (eds.), Histories of Trade as Histories of Civilisation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80087-1_7

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(Welt-Geschichte), it is surprising how little attention has been paid to his first book, Essay on General History of Trade and of Seafaring.2 Schlözer, the main exponent of the Göttingen School of academic history, started his career as a historian in Sweden. His earliest work was published in Swedish as Försök til en allmän historia om handel och sjöfart uti the äldsta tider (1758),3 and historian Thomas Heinrich Gadebusch (1736–1804) later translated it into German under the title Versuch einer allgemeinen Geschichte der Handlung und Seefahrt in den ältesten Zeiten in 1761.4 It is noteworthy that the first history that Schlözer ever wrote was a history of trade intended as a history of civilisation. This chapter explores how the history of trade was a porous literary genre through which a plurality of discourses and interpretative categories were circulated, mediated, and developed in rivalry with other discussions. For Schlözer, writing a history of trade was a way of participating in the intertwined contemporary debates on natural history, economy and WeltGeschichte. The integration of his political and economic thought into the debates on natural history and political life of the time makes his reasoning clear. This chapter places his book in the intellectual, political, and economic contexts of Göttingen and Uppsala, and more broadly within the setting of European debates on the creation of wealth and the support of commerce and freedom. I also contextualize his early work within the development of political economy in the second half of the eighteenth century, arguing that his General History of Trade gave him an opportunity to develop ideas springing from variations of cameralism grounded in natural history.5

2 Henceforth General History of Trade. 3 August Ludwig Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel och sjöfart uti the

äldsta tider (Stockholm: Grefing, 1758). 4 August Ludwig Schlözer, Versuch einer allgemeinen Geschichte der Handlung und Seefahrt in den ältesten Zeiten (Rostock: Koppischen, 1761). 5 On cameralism, see Ere Nokkala and Nicholas B. Miller, eds., Cameralism and The Enlightenment: Happiness, Governance and Reform in Transnational Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2020); Marten Seppel and Keith Tribe, eds., Cameralism in Practice: State Administration and Economy in Early Modern Europe (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2017); Philipp Robinson Rössner, ed., Economic Growth and the Origins of Modern Political Economy: Economic Reasons of State, 1500–2000 (London: Routledge, 2016); Andre Wakefield, The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009).

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Firstly, I argue that Schlözer’s early work, which was published when he was twenty-three, is evidence of his early development as a historian. Many of the strands of thought for which he is known—such as his emphasis on innovations and technological breakthroughs rather than on the succession of rulers—are already to be found in his General History of Trade. Secondly, I place his essay in a new position within the context of the development of political economy by reconsidering the relationship between trade, natural history, and economy. I pay special attention to his development of economic topics in Sweden and in the German lands. I argue that the young Schlözer was an advocate of a Swedish approach to the practices and discourses of statecraft known as cameralism, and that his economic thought was infused with ideas of natural history.6 Thirdly, I argue that developing an understanding of the Swedish political context in which the General History of Trade was published sheds new light on the origins of his enduring anti-aristocratic sentiment: as I will show, Schlözer in many respects sided with the so-called Cap Party and its critique of the concentration of power in the hands of the ruling Noble Estate.7 Taken as a whole, this chapter places the General History of Trade within the horizon of eighteenth-century German and Swedish political and economic thought, which itself was transnational and European in character. The chapter has been inspired by the work of Antonella Alimento and Koen Stapelbroek, in particular their emphasis on the importance of understanding the Nordic political and economic debates of the period

6 On the relationship between natural history and economy see Margaret Schabas, The Natural Origins of Economics (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005); Lisbet Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). 7 In Swedish historiography the period between 1719 and 1772 is referred to as the Age of Liberty, a term coined by contemporary writers in the 1750s, who argued that the Swedish constitution prevented the misuse of royal power. During the Age of Liberty, the four Estates—the nobility, clergy, burghers and peasants—shared power in the Diet, which in practice was independent of the king. The Estates met at a triennial Riksdagar. The General History of Trade was published in a time characterised by a fierce rivalry between two competing parties in Sweden. The Francophile Hat Party advocated the political and economic interests of civil servants from the high nobility, while the Cap Party had close contacts with Russia and England and had many members from the clergy and the peasantry. Since the end of the 1750s the Caps had been increasingly challenging the rule of the Hats, along with the established economic, political and social order. See Michael Roberts, The Age of Liberty: Sweden 1719–1772 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

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and relating them to the broader eighteenth-century debates under way in Europe on the historiography of commerce and interstate politics.8 Schlözer’s conceptions of wealth and sociability were linked with the new natural law theories of civilisation, from which political economy was born. According to these accounts, trade created commercial societies, and new theories about commercial societies fuelled by theories of civilisation served as a basis for the new discipline. In his General History of Trade Schlözer used the concept of civilisation to define “the second nature of man,” that is, the nature of men acquired as a result of a historical process, a process which he conceptualised in terms of the progress of civilisation driven by trade.9 His early work not only contributed to the history of political economy but also helped him to develop ideas on politics, economy, history, and global networks. Instead of celebrating the rise of Europeans above other civilisations, Schlözer emphasised technical breakthroughs, such as the invention of glass by the Phoenicians. As Jürgen Osterhammel has argued, we owe him a debt for his insights into the networks that make global historiography possible, which he believed were created by trade and communication. In other words, for Schlözer communication and commercial networks made possible a global history that occupied a space above and beyond national and regional histories.10

Entangled Intellectual Background Contexts: ¨ From Gottingen to Uppsala and Back Schlözer was nineteen years old when he arrived in Stockholm in May 1755, where he found employment as a tutor in the household of Andreas Murray, the dean of the German Evangelical congregation in the city. Being unhappy with his situation, he moved to Uppsala to continue the university studies that he had started in Wittenberg and Göttingen.

8 Koen Stapelbroek and Antonella Alimento, “The Wealth and Freedom of the North: Scandinavian Political Cultures and Economic Ideas in the Eighteenth Century,” History of European Ideas 40 (2014): 662–674, 668. 9 Hans Erich Bödeker and Istvan Hont, “Naturrecht, Politische Ökonomie und Geschichte der Menschheit: Der Diskurs über Politik und Gesellschaft in der frühen Neuzeit,” in Naturrecht, Spätaufklärung, Revolution, ed. Otto Dann and Diethelm Klippel (Hamburg: Meiner, 1995), 80–89. 10 Jürgen Osterhammel, Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment’s Encounter with Asia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 64–65.

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In Göttingen he had worked under the supervision of Johann David Michaelis (1717–1791) during the 1754–1755 academic year. Michaelis was an orientalist, theologian, and philologist, a leading figure in the University of Göttingen, and one of Europe’s foremost biblical scholars and specialists in Near Eastern languages. Not unlike Schlözer, who was a son of a priest, Michaelis grew up in an environment permeated with biblical scholarship. Although he focused on theology and oriental languages, he stated in his memoires that history was his favourite subject, and he could be considered a neologist with a keen interest in natural history. For him, historical analysis was aimed at redefining the beliefs of Christianity and other religions.11 Especially important in this respect was Michaelis’s approach to the study of the Bible, which he considered a “literary and philosophical artefact of a hypothesised classical ancient Israelite civilization.”12 His methodology, which Schlözer was to follow, was historical-critical and he gave precedence to observations drawn from empirical evidence over probabilistic hypotheses.13 When Schlözer wrote his General History of Trade by applying the empirical methodology of his mentor—and echoing Michaelis’s belief in the possibility that past events are of use when deducing general laws or maxims of trade—he allied himself with the style of historical writing that later came to be known as the Göttingen School.14 This stood in contrast to the later Physiocratic philosophy of history, which can be characterised as conjectural, hypothetical, and sceptical about the possibility of generalising empirical knowledge.15

11 Peter Hanns Reill, The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism (Berkeley: Berkeley University Press, 1975), 44; Lawrence J. Baack, Undying Curiosity: Carsten Niebuhr and the Royal Danish Expedition to Arabia (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2014), 30–32. 12 Baack, Undying Curiosity, 32. 13 Avi Lifschitz, “The Book of Job and the Sex Life of Elephants: The Limits of

Evidential Credibility in Eighteenth-Century Natural History and Biblical Criticism,” The Journal of Modern History 91 (2019): 739–775. 14 On the term “Göttingen School of History” see Martin Gierl, “Change of Paradigm as a Squabble between Institutions,” in Scholars in Action: The Practice of Knowledge and the Figure of the Savant in the 18th Century, ed. André Holenstein, Hubert Steinke and Martin Stuber (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 1: 267–287, see page 285. 15 For an analysis of the differences between the histories of trade and the Physiocratic philosophy of history, see the chapter in this volume by Antonella Alimento and Aris Della Fontana, and the chapter by Arnault Skornicki.

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Michaelis was interested in the Bible as a source of historical information on flora, fauna, and customs. His aim was to give evidential credibility to eighteenth-century natural history and biblical criticism, two closely connected fields.16 These connections are visible in the tight collaboration and correspondence between Michaelis and the naturalist Linnaeus (1707–1778) and the philologist Johann Ihre (1707–1780), both based in Uppsala. There had been strong links between Uppsala and Göttingen since the 1740s17 as numerous Swedish students went to study in the German city while many non-Swedish students, especially those interested in natural history, were drawn to Sweden. This was also the case with Schlözer, although in truth he spent his time in Sweden on more than study. Immediately after his arrival he began work as a political journalist and commentator for the Altonaer ReichsPost-Reiter. In those times Altona where Altonaer Reichst-Post-Reiter was published was under Danish control. It was one of the foremost German journals of the period, for which he provided Swedish news for German readers, including on developments in Swedish politics and scholarship, especially as regarded the study of historiae naturalis et oeconomiae that was being cultivated in the country. Schlözer, it seems, believed that Sweden was a stronghold of natural history.18 As Margaret Schabas has shown, there was a methodological and conceptual overlap of natural philosophy and natural history with economic thought, and this too would be reflected in Schlözer’s work, as we will soon discover in relation to the General History of Trade.19 After moving from Stockholm to Uppsala, Schlözer commenced studies in natural history under Linneaus and also devoted himself to the study of the history of language under Johann Ihre, who is widely considered the founder of Swedish philology. Under Ihre’s supervision, he applied himself to Gothic, Old Norse and 16 Lifschitz, The Book of Job, 750–751. 17 Christian Callmer, “Svenska studenter i Göttingen under 1700-talet,” Lychnos.

Lärdomshistoriska samfundets årsbok (1956): 1–30; Mathias Persson, “Det nära främmande: Svensk lärdom och politik i en tysk tidning 1753–1792” (doctoral thesis, Uppsala University, 2009). 18 Holger Böning, “Vom Umgang mit Zeitungen: Schlözer und die neuen Medien des 18. Jahrhunderts—der Publizist als Zeitungsleser, Zeitungsliebhaber, Zeitungskorrespondent and Zeitungstheoretiker,” in August Ludwig (von) Schlözer in Europa, ed. Heinz Duchhardt and Martin Espenhorst (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht, 2012), 133–155: 136 and 144. 19 Schabas, Natural Origins, Preface, ix.

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Icelandic, and wrote his thesis on the journeys of the Nordic people to Greece. He stayed in Uppsala only for the winter of 1756–1757, after which he returned to Stockholm where he spent another year and a half working as a secretary for a commercial agency.20 During his stays in Göttingen and especially in Uppsala, Schlözer developed a strong desire to explore the biblical cities of the Orient, and discussed this with Michaelis. It turned out that the famous Royal Danish Arabian Expedition (1761–1767) was to a significant extent directed from Göttingen, and that Michaelis was largely responsible for its conception.21 One of the mission’s main aims was to obtain empirical evidence, and Schlözer was eager to participate, and corresponded with Michaelis about the possibility of being given a place. As Martin Espenhorst has argued,22 Schlözer’s first monograph, the General History of Trade, was an attempt to justify and finance his study of the Orient,23 and it appears that all his activities in the second half of the 1750s were motivated by this objective. According to Christian Schlözer, the genesis of his father’s first book was bound up with Carl Wilhelm Seele’s (1707–1781) generous offer to pay for the costs of printing a volume dealing with the history of trade. Seele was a rich Swedish merchant and director of the commercial agency in which Schlözer worked as a secretary. He had been surprised to learn from Schlözer that in ancient times the Phoenicians had engaged in world trade (Welt-Handel ),24 and Schlözer dedicated his book on the 20 Johann Stephan Pütter, Friedrich Saalfeld, and Georg Heinrich Oesterley, Versuch einer academischen Gelehrten-Geschichte von der Georg-Augustus-Universität zu Göttingen, 4 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1765–1838), vol. 2, 166. 21 Johann David Michaelis, Fragen an eine Gesellschaft gelehrter Männer, die auf Befehl Ihro Majestät des Königs von Dännemark nach Arabien reisen (Frankfurt: n.p., 1762). 22 Martin Peters, Altes Reich und Europa: Der Historiker, Statistiker und Publizist August Ludwig (v.) Schlözer (1735–1809) (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2003). Martin Peters changed his name to Martin Espenhorst in 2011. Consistent with other recent scholarship on Schlözer, I refer to him as “Espenhorst” in the main body of the text, while citing works published under his previous name as “Peters” in footnotes. See Morgan Alexander Golf-French, Contemplating the Revolution: Ethics, Culture, and History in German Political Thought, 1789–1815 (doctoral thesis, University College London, 19), 15n5. 23 Peters, Altes Reich und Europa, 44–45. 24 Christian von Schlözer, Schlözers öffentliches und Privatleben aus Originalurkunden,

2 vols. (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1828), vol. 1, 35. It is worth noting that according to a recent account by Josephine Quinn the Phoenicians never existed as a coherent people. Ancient sources indicate that they did not constitute a group with a shared identity, history, and

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Phoenicians to him, perhaps in the hope that he would also finance an expedition.25 In the General History of Trade he stated that the topic was useful not only for merchants but also for rulers,26 an emphasis that can be seen as part of his attempt to arouse the interest of merchants and other leading figures.27 Schlözer clearly recognised the emerging influence of commercial interests in politics.

The History of Trade as a History of Civilisations The General History of Trade was a product of Schlözer’s growing interest in commerce and its history. In the foreword he declared that he had been inspired by Montesquieu (1689–1755) and Voltaire (1694–1778) who in numerous publications had investigated how trade had helped Europe rise out of barbarism.28 He concluded that if trade had such a significant impact on the state of the world, then the history of it ought to be an essential part of the overall study of world history (Welt-Geschichte). The history of trade was bound to illuminate his thinking about ancient history, and in doing so to contribute to a better understanding of the Old Testament; in this we can discern a clear reference to Michaelis. Schlözer contended that the Holy Writ was to a great extent an extension of ancient history, and, in the footsteps of Michaelis, argued that the paucity of knowledge of ancient history was one of the main reasons the Bible was poorly understood. Since many parts of the Bible dealt with trade, knowing more about the history of that trade was necessary before one could explain the views of authors inspired by God.29 Michaelis had argued similarly that the analysis of history contributed to a more accurate interpretation of the Bible. Understanding the Holy Scriptures better would lead to a keener comprehension of ancient history, and vice versa. Schlözer moreover claimed that a clearer grasp of trade history would culture, and such a view of them was a creation of later historiography. See Josephine Quinn, In Search of the Phoenicians (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017). 25 August Ludwig Schlözer, August Ludwig Schlözer’s öffentliches und Privat-Leben, von ihm selbst beschrieben. Erste Fragment. Aufenhalt in Dienste in Russland, vom J. 1761 bis 1765 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1802), 136. 26 Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel, 3. 27 Peters, Altes Reich und Europa, 47. 28 Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel, foreword. 29 Ibid.

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throw light on the process of civilisation, and on the rise of trade to its current position as the idol of politics (Abgott der heutigen Staatskunst ). He emphasised that trade had in earlier times already demonstrated its impact on the moral and political revolutions of the human race (des menschlichen Geschlechts ).30 Schlözer openly admitted that he was building on Montesquieu when he claimed that it was trade that civilised Europe by bringing the barbarians out from the forests to embrace a more cultured life. Trade established connections and resulted in the foundation of the first states. The Phoenicians were responsible for civilising the Europeans, and therefore Schlözer justified making them the main focus of his book, explaining that they had been undeservedly neglected in the history of trade. PierreDaniel Huet (1630–1721) had written about them, but had not granted them the attention that their substantial contribution deserved.31 The Phoenicians were the first true trading nation and the greatest merchants of the ancient world, and few nations achieved the same level of commercial power and wealth as they did.32 Schlözer’s intention was to write a history of trade in the ancient world up to the era of Alexander the Great, and because he considered the Phoenicians to have been the only nation practising world trade (Welt-Handel ) during the period he studied, he believed it justified to focus on them.33 By taking this approach, he argued, the contents of the book were actually much broader than they might have seemed, and this justified the rather general title of his work, which nevertheless did not escape the criticism of reviewers.

30 (A)[ugust] (L)[udwig] (S)[chlözer], ed., Neueste Geschichte der Gelehrsamkeit in Schweden, 5 vols (Rostock: Berger & Boedner, 1757–1760), vol. 5, 839–854: 839. This is a review that Schlözer published in this own journal. I find it likely that he himself wrote it to promote his own book. See Helmut Keipert, “Schlözer und die slawischen Sprachen,” in August Ludwig (von) Schlözer in Europa, ed. Heinz Duchhardt and Martin Espenhorst (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 41–68: 42 n. 2. 31 It is worth noting that many well-known historians of trade start with the Egyptians and Phoenicians. See Pierre-Daniel Huet, Histoire du commerce et de la navigation des anciens (Paris: A. Urbain, 1716); William Perry, A Treatise on Trade: Or the Antiquity and Honour of Commerce: Shewing How Trade Was Esteemed by the Egyptians, Jews, and Romans, and on What Footing of Worship It Stands with Us (London: John Clarke, 1750); Johann Peter Schmidt Allgemeine Geschichte der Handlung und Schiffahrt (Breslau: Korn, 1751–1754). 32 Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel, foreword. 33 Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel, 25.

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Schlözer’s main source was the Bible, and the General History of Trade contained few references to other works. He explained that if he had named all the works he had consulted, there would have been so many citations that his book would have been twenty-five percent longer, and in any case the references would not have strengthened his arguments.34 He did, however, acknowledge his indebtedness to Michaelis, Montesquieu, Samuel Bochart (1599–1667), and Voltaire, in particular stating that he was building on Bochart’s Geographia Sacra seu Phaleg et Canaan (1648). Bochart was a Protestant biblical scholar with knowledge of oriental languages and an interest in Arabic naturalists. Pierre Daniel Huet, who had studied Hebrew with him, was subjected to rather negative treatment from Schlözer, who said that because of its brevity his Histoire du commerce et de la navigation des anciens (1716) had been of little use to him.35 Huet’s work was in fact fairly long, but it seems that the German was unhappy with Huet’s treatment of the Phoenicians. Schlözer’s failure to name his sources may partly account for the initial negative reviews of the General History of Trade published in Sweden. He had been afraid that the fact that he was a foreigner would have either limited or undermined the reception of his book, and so had published it anonymously, although he was soon identified as its author. The work would go on to receive other negative reviews: according to one Gothenburg journal, Schlözer had done little more than recompile the works of Michaelis and Bochart.36 In his father’s defence, Christian Schlözer argued that this accusation was too harsh since despite being an early work the General History of Trade still contained many of those elements for which his father later became famous, such as the study of colonial trade and of communication between nations.37 Other commentators suggested that Schlözer was merely displaying his gift for languages,

34 Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel, foreword. 35 Huet accompanied Bochart on his journey to Stockholm to study the Arabic

manuscripts in the possession of Queen Christina. On the relationship between Bochart and Huet see April G. Shelford, Transferring the Republic of Letters: Pierre Daniel Huet and European Intellectual Life 1650–1720 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2007), 28–29; and Chistopher Brooke, “Eighteenth-Century Carthage,” in Commerce and Peace in the Enlightenment, ed. Béla Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky and Richard Whatmore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 110–124: 112. 36 Peters, Altes Reich und Europa, 47. 37 Christian von Schlözer, Schlözers öffentliches und Privatleben, 35–36.

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showing off his command of Swedish, which he had gained remarkably quickly. Whatever the case, a review in Göttinger Gelehrten Anzeigen was more positive,38 but this may have to do with the fact that the publication was edited by Michaelis. In many ways, Schlözer’s General History of Trade is a history of civilisation inspired by Montesquieu, since it asserts that the progress of civilisations was consequent on man’s inherent desire to trade. According to Schlözer, trade was not the result of a divine command, and he used an anthropological argument to explain that it originated from man’s natural inclination to seek pleasure. In his account, necessities gave birth to trade, desires educated it and its final form was shaped by greed and luxury.39 Furthermore, trade created societies and enhanced communication, which then supported its expansion. It was trade, not science or art, that civilised nations; it directed politics and was the mother of the arts and sciences. At variance with Rousseau’s account of historical progress40 and in accordance with Montesquieu’s, Schlözer placed great emphasis on the positive effects of trade. Martin Espenhorst has suggested that his ideas of progress were most likely inspired by Turgot’s Plan de deux discourse sur l’histoire universelle (1751/1752), but they also made plenty of references to Montesquieu. Referring to De l’esprit des lois, livre 21, ch. 5, Schlözer stated that the history of trade was the history of intercourse or exchange (omgänge) with other nations,41 a central aspect of which was the direct interchange of knowledge between merchants. In his historical and political thought he stressed the connection created via concepts of unity, focusing on analysing how communities were bound together.42 Phoenicians and Dutchmen had been exemplary in this respect, and their contribution to the progress of civilisations had therefore been significant.

38 Göttinger Gelehrten Anzeigen, 35 Stück, 22 March 1760, 307–308. 39 Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel, 12; Peters, Altes Reich und Europa,

49. 40 Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel, 59. 41 Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel, 103: “Ty historien om handeln är

Historien om folkslags omgänge med hwarandra”; Schlözer, Versuch einer allgemeinen Geschichte der Handlung und Seefahrt, 155: “Die Geschichte der Handlung ist die Geschichte der Gemeinschaft der Völker mit einander”. 42 Golf-French, Contemplating the Revolution, 18–19; Peters, Altes Reich und Europa, 11–14.

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In Schlözer’s view, trade was an expression of the human longing for the original unity of mankind. It served not only the function of forming human societies but also fulfilled a theological function—God’s plan— by encouraging men to use the riches of the Earth and to come together. Trade was a medium for and the primary form of the human communication that induced people to rise out of barbarism and re-establish the unity of human beings. Schlözer’s General History of Trade was thus one of the first true histories of trade to see the buying and selling of goods as the motor of civilisation and conceived the progress of civilisation as a process defined by divine providence. Schlözer demonstrated that the agents of this progress were the flourishing Phoenicians, the civilised Greeks, the Romans and later the Venetians, the Genoans, and the Dutch. It is worth noting that according to him the Nordic nations had never played a role as such motive forces.43

The Rules of Trade: The Rise and Fall of the Phoenicians The General History of Trade is divided into two parts. The first is a thirty-six-page introduction comprising three chapters, the first of which provides a broad overview of the development of trade and its utility for merchants and people in power. The second delves into the origins of trade and the conditions that favour its growth, while the third explores the fortunes of trade through the ages and ends with reflections on the creation of wealth and power in the present time. Why was the first part so short? By way of an answer, Schlözer draws a parallel between the ancient Phoenicians and eighteenth-century Dutchmen, arguing that the principles according to which commercial states rise and fall do not change. As such, the introductory element of his book could be covered relatively briefly, given that the general rules and inclinations of human beings had remained the same throughout history. The notion of a division between the ancients and the moderns, which was debated so passionately by his contemporaries, was of no particular interest to Schlözer.44 The primary elements in the success of the

43 Bernd Roling, Odins Imperium: der Rudbeckianismus als Paradigma an den skandinavischen Universitäten (1680–1860) (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 745–747. 44 Peters, Altes Reich und Europa, 48.

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Phoenicians and Dutchmen were their sea trade, their colonies and the industrious character of their people. Schlözer stresses the need to learn from these points, but on the other hand explains how lessons could also be drawn from the defects of the two peoples: in this sense, the General History of Trade was a vehicle used to comment on the political and economic debates of his own time.45 The second and main part of the book consists of five chapters dealing with Phoenician trade, which Schlözer contends continued throughout ancient history until the time of Alexander the Great. He begins by discussing the Phoenicians’ remarkable achievements as merchants and by describing their merits. After the fall of the Tower of Babel, the Phoenicians were the first to create a community, they spread knowledge through the whole of the ancient world and built connections via trade, and they helped bring an end to barbarism in the continent of Europe by teaching the skills of writing and land cultivation, and by opening copper mines. Their accomplishments were facilitated by their knowledge of the then cultivated Orient, for instance by their familiarity with the native plants of Asia, which thanks to them could be grown elsewhere. Schlözer studies the origins of Phoenicians trade in the second chapter, before analysing its success further in the third. To begin with, the Phoenicians benefited from an advantageous geographical location: although their soil was poor, they were in possession of harbours and had trees suitable for shipbuilding. They were extremely innovative, being the first to produce glass, inventing the Tyrian purple dye and minting coins. They also mastered the art of navigating by the stars so that they could sail by night, and according to Schlözer were without doubt the most skilful navigators of their day: their maritime innovations helped them become the strongest sea power in the Mediterranean.46 Schlözer also maintains that the growth of Phoenician trade relied on political institutions and moral dispositions that were essential for commercial success. He states that the Phoenicians’ history of trade was the earliest verifying example of the maxim that trade flourishes under freedom. They did not live under an all-powerful king in a hereditary monarchy but rather in a country divided into several small states, each of

45 On the use of the histories of trade as instruments of critique, see the introduction to this volume. 46 Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel, 121–138.

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which had its own dedicated government. Furthermore, the Phoenicians did not suffer from “the spirit of conquest,” which according to Schlözer is incompatible with “the spirit of commerce.”47 In addition to the moral disposition of their rulers, Schlözer highlights the character of the Phoenicians as a whole, including their diligence and inclination to trade, but also their self-indulgence and greed. In this sense, Schlözer notes, the Phoenicians were the Dutchmen of their time,48 and Phoenician virtues and vices were the same as those of many merchants. In his opinion, other negative evaluations of the character of the Phoenicians and Dutchmen were not an accurate description of the nations in question but were really evidence of the jealousy of less successful commercial nations,49 something that he denounced on the basis that successful nations ought to be emulated rather than envied. On the whole Schlözer’s remarks concerning the Dutch are not very original, as discourses on the “Dutch miracle” went back as far as the seventeenth century.50 Chapter four of the second part of Schlözer’s book discusses Phoenician colonies and navigation. It was here that the civilisation showed its true greatness, which could be matched only by the English. The Phoenicians were masters of enlarging and maintaining their trade, which eventually reached the borders of the old world.51 Here it is worth noting that this chapter was to a great extent a compilation of Bochart’s Geographia Sacra seu Phaleg et Canaan with the addition of some new insights, as Schlözer readily admitted in a review of the book that he probably wrote himself.52 After all the praise of the Phoenicians, the final fifth chapter of the General History of Trade is dedicated to studying the decline of their

47 Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel, 138–139. On eighteenth-century justifications of unlimited power, see Hans Blom, John Christian Laursen, and Luisa Simonutti, eds., Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenment: Liberty, Patriotism and the Common Good (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2007). For further discussion of the spirit of conquest and commerce, see Aris Della Fontana’s chapter in this volume. 48 Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel, 140. 49 Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel, 140–142. On histories of trade

and the legitimacy of the Dutch Republic, see Koen Stapelbroek’s chapter in this volume. 50 On the Dutch miracle see Lars Magnusson, The Political Economy of Mercantilism (London: Routledge, 2015), 57–62. 51 Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel, 142–215. 52 (S)[chlözer], ed., Neueste Geschichte der Gelehrsamkeit, 852.

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trade, and in it Schlözer once again highlights the similarities between them and the Dutch. The trade of both had been built on a shaky foundations, with their commercial success depending on the laziness, ignorance, and barbarism of other nations. What then were the firm foundations of successful commercial nations according to Schlözer? What were the true lessons to be gleaned from the history of trade? To find an answer to this we need to return to the end of his introduction to the General History of Trade, where he states his most important precept: “Every country’s principal wealth and proper strength consists of the abundance of its inhabitants; who nourish themselves with domestic products.”53 Schlözer asserts that all successful routes to power and wealth are paved by these two conditions. In his opinion gold is not enough to make a nation rich and powerful if it simply flows to other nations without causing any motion in the nation itself, and success lays in the number of diligent lives nourished by domestic products. At first glance it seems puzzling that a book that speaks admiringly of the Phoenicians and their colonies and considers trade as the motor of civilisation comes to the conclusion that it is best for nations—even for commercial ones—to concentrate on their internal development: on populationism, domestic expansion and internal colonisation. Schlözer declares that “each and every state has an India within itself,”54 in an expression familiar to cameralism, which Sophus Reinert has called ersatz imperialism, the aim of which was not to learn from great empires how to conquer foreign lands territorially or economically, but rather “how to make the most of one’s natural resources in a world of ruthless international competition.”55 At the end of his introduction to the General History of Trade Schlözer shows himself to be an advocate of the discipline and practice of cameralism, known for its focus on the management of the state and its own resources and for prioritising the size of its population. To fully grasp Schlözer’s understanding of cameralism and how this

53 Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel, 36. 54 Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel, 36. 55 Sophus Reinert, Translating Empire: Emulation and the Origins of Political Economy

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 238–245; Reinert’s interpretation has been influenced by Istvan Hont’s influential account in Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).

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relates to the General History of Trade we need to analyse his conception of the relationship between commerce, natural history and natural philosophy, and economy.

The Political Economy of Cameralism and Natural Knowledge With the General History of Trade Schlözer sought to convince potential financiers of the importance of an expedition to the Orient, as well as to present his credentials as an expert qualified for such an endeavour. As Espenhorst has argued, Schlözer’s book was an exegetic, philological study with implications for natural history,56 and he wrote it in a context in which natural history was unthinkable without economy. This is seen in Schlözer’s description of Sweden as a stronghold of historiae naturalis et oeconomiae.57 The most significant proponent of the subject in Uppsala was beyond doubt Carl Linnaeus, whose botanical work was driven by his belief in economic utility and who quite seriously planned to recreate a colonial economy within Sweden, envisioning plantations of nutmeg, mace, and cinnamon in Swedish Lapland.58 Linnaeus believed in rather concrete terms in finding India within Sweden by emphasising plant acclimatisation and native substitution strategies. He assumed a relationship between human science (economy), and divine order (theology), and for him economy was both an eternal rule and a new human science.59 In expressing negative views on foreign trade he was largely building on an older economic doctrine familiar to the cameral sciences which suggested that states should respond to increasing international competition by becoming autarchies completely devoid of commercial bonds.

56 Peters, Altes Reich und Europa, 53. 57 Böning, “Vom Umgang mit Zeitungen,” 136, 144; Christian von Schlözer, Schlözers

öffentliches und Privatleben, vol. 1, 464. 58 Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, 80. 59 On Linnaeus’s providential economy and his synonymous usage of the concepts

of oeconomia naturae and oeconomia divina see Sophus A. Reinert, The Academy of Fisticuffs: Political Economy and Commercial Society in Enlightenment Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 278, see also pages 556–557, endnote 54. For further intellectual context for the physic-theologist economy see Lars Magnusson, Äran, korruptionen och den borgerliga ordningen: Essäer från svensk ekonomihistoria (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2001), 42–43.

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Linnaeus considered international trade superfluous. His objective was to make Sweden self-sufficient and wealthy through the sciences of natural history, through plant innovations, and by his “economic botany.” He would have been completely happy to isolate Sweden commercially, an idea that was often advocated enthusiastically by cameralists.60 However, as we are about to see, not all cameralists were in favour of isolationist foreign policies. When he wrote the General History of Trade Schlözer was well acquainted with Linnaeus’s scheme because he had studied with him. As early as 1758 Schlözer’s interest in nature was, like Linnaeus’s, linked to questions of wealth creation. In this conceptual framework, the central concepts of natural history, economy, and natural theology belonged to the whole science of man (Wissenschaft vom Menschen), which, in its broadest sense, meant that a human being was moulded by both nature and culture61 : language, physiology, politics, ethics, and literature all belonged to the science of man. In this context, one can talk of “an anthropological turn” in the Enlightenment, as human beings came to be seen simultaneously as both natural and historical. In the Linnaean terms with which Schlözer was so familiar, man was part of Systema naturae, the comprehension of which required an understanding of nature and of the culture created by human beings, as well as of the first and second natures of man. To put it anachronistically, the separation of “the natural sciences” from political and economic perspectives and interests was not something that Schlözer countenanced. Schlözer’s emphasis on the internal development of countries and his belief in the opportunities provided by internal colonialism accorded with Linneaus’s vision for Sweden. Lisbet Koerner has called Linneaus “an orthodox cameralist,” thus placing him in a rather conservative current of European economic thought.62 The aim was to promote domestic cultivation and prevent imports, and this kind of thinking was widespread—in fact, dominant—in Linnaeus’s Sweden. In keeping with this, the Commodity Act (Produktplakat ) of 1724 had been passed to 60 Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, 95–97. 61 On the science of man as an anthropological turn in the Enlightenment, see Hans

Erich Bödeker, Philippe Büttgen and Michel Espagne, eds., Die Wissenschaft vom Menschen in Göttingen um 1800: Wissenschaftliche Praktiken, institutionelle Geographie, europäische Netzwerke (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008). 62 Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, 2.

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promote Swedish shipping and shipbuilding, the goal being to replace imports. However, in the 1760s reform-oriented thinkers like Anders Chydenius (1729–1803) and Lars Salvius (1706–1773) started to question Swedish economic orthodoxy and demanded wide-ranging changes to the policy that the purpose of the state was to strengthen the domestic economy while preventing other states from taking a bigger share of existing economic exchanges.63 As suggested by Reinert, the cameralist ideas that Chydenius and Salvius criticised were a reaction to increasing international commercial competition. In fact, the dominant Swedish political and economic thought of the 1740s and 1750s still adhered to orthodox German and Swedish cameralism’s emphasis on the need to retain existing regulation, as well as to the discipline’s advocacy of a “dirigiste attitude to economic policy.”64 This was particularly true for what Reinert has described as ersatz imperialism: it was not the reforms of great empires, but those of small states that needed to be emulated.65 However, it is important to keep in mind that in one respect Swedish cameralism differed significantly from its German counterpart: unlike the Germans, the doctrine’s Swedish adherents strongly emphasised the importance of foreign trade, and Linnaeus’s lack of interest in this therefore made him an anomaly among his peers. When the first chair of economic subjects was established in Sweden in 1741, its first holder, Anders Berch (1711–1774), became a professor in Jurisprudentia, oeconomiae et commercium at Uppsala University. It was no coincidence that the professorship included commerce, since it responded to the increasingly clear desire of the Swedes to participate in foreign trade, a way of

63 Lars Magnusson, The Economic History of Sweden (London: Routledge 2000), 62; Patrik Winton, “Commercial Interests and Politics in Scandinavia, 1730–1815: Introduction,” in Scandinavia in the Age of Revolution: Nordic Political Cultures, 1740–1820, ed. Pasi Ihalainen, Michael Bregnsbo, Karin Sennefelt and Patrick Winton (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 207–216: 212; See also Patrik Winton, “The Politics of Commerce in Sweden 1730–1770,” in Scandinavia in the Age of Revolution: Nordic Political Cultures, 1740–1820, ed. Pasi Ihalainen, Michael Bregnsbo, Karin Sennefelt and Patrick Winton (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 217–228. 64 Lars Magnusson, “Comparing Cameralisms: The Case of Sweden and Prussia,” in Cameralism in Practice: State Administration and Economy in Early Modern Europe, ed. Marten Seppel and Keith Tribe (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2017), 17–38: 36. 65 Reinert, Translating Empire, 238–245.

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thinking that distinguished the Swedish cameralists from most of their German counterparts.66 This brings us back to Schlözer’s General History of Trade and its place in the development of political economy. How could Schlözer argue in a book written in praise of the civilising benefits of trade that every nation could find an India within its borders? How could he place such emphasis on domestic development? As I see it, Schlözer was to a great extent building on German and Swedish cameralist literature, although the cameralists’ economic and political conceptions were not immutable nor univocally in favour of isolationist views. In short, the cameral sciences were not a static unit of analysis but represented changing discourse and practice.67 Schlözer advocated views that went beyond the “orthodox cameralists,” for he was taking foreign trade seriously into account. In general, in the secondary literature cameralists, the cameral sciences and cameralism are held to favour the self-sufficiency of states that do not involve themselves in international trade. However, a short look at the literary production of the so-called late cameralists of the 1750s onwards, especially that of the leading cameralist Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi (1717–1771), gives us a more multifaceted picture of cameralist political and economic thought. Inspired by the broader European debates and works such as Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws, Justi argued that due to the already existing connections between the European states it would be impossible for anyone to step outside their commercial bonds. Late cameralism and its adherents believed that domestic development, internal colonisation and foreign trade formed a compatible policy,68 and that trade was in the service of the progress of civilisation. Justi even entertained ideas of turning Prussia into a trading nation. Fredrick II had expressed similar wishes in the 1750s and the commercial treaty signed 66 Magnusson, Comparing Cameralisms, 17 and 36–37. 67 Ere Nokkala and Nicholas B. Miller, “Introduction,” in Cameralism and the Enlight-

enment: Happiness, Governance and Reform in Transnational Perspective, ed. Ere Nokkala and Nicholas B. Miller (New York: Routledge, 2020), 1–20: 2. 68 Ere Nokkala, “A Transnational German: JHG von Justi on International Trade,” in Cameralism and the Enlightenment: Happiness, Governance and Reform in Transnational Perspective, ed. Ere Nokkala and Nicholas B. Miller (New York: Routledge, 2020), 80– 98; Ere Nokkala, From Natural Law to Political Economy: J.H.G von Justi on State, Commerce and International Order (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2019); Ere Nokkala, “From Fatherly Government to an Economic State: Late Cameralists on Natural Rights, Freedom and the Pursuit of Happiness,” History of Political Economy 53 (2021): 479–495.

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with France in 1753 was a step towards turning Prussia into a modern commercial monarchy.69 Not unlike their Swedish counterparts, German late cameralists also took foreign trade seriously. Schlözer’s views in favour of combining international trade with domestic development to increase the wealth of the nation places him among the Swedish cameralists or late cameralists rather than orthodox ones like Linnaeus or Justus Christoph Dithmar (1678–1737). His comments on the preconditions for economic success featured prominently in the works of late cameralists like von Justi or Johann Friedrich von Pfeiffer (1718–1787) who were of the conviction that the goal of the state was to bring about happiness. Late cameralists defined happiness in different ways, but most commonly believed it involved wealth and security. Their writings recognised three major paths to wealth and thereby to the happiness of the state: the establishment of foreign trade, the pursuit of mining, manufacturing and forestry, and the promotion of demographic growth. As we can see, Schlözer’s General History championed all three: it was in favour of foreign trade, its author’s admiration of Phoenicia’s mines and manufactures was beyond doubt, and his support for a large population was equally firm. The special emphasis that Schlözer placed on economic populationism was not exceptional at the time. As Justus Nipperdey has shown, in the 1750s the cameral sciences were characterised by Hoch-Populationismus , which argued that increasing the population ought to be the principal concern animating all the mechanisms of state.70 In this context it is worth bearing in mind that cameralism had developed in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), which had caused the Holy Roman Empire to lose about a third of its population. The success of cameralist practices and thought in Sweden and their prominent role in the General History of Trade can therefore be explained by similar worries in 69 Marco Cavarzere, “The Rise of a Trading Nation: Prussia and the Convention Préliminaire de commerce with France (1753),” in The Politics of Commercial Treatise in the Eighteenth-Century, ed. Antonella Alimento and Koen Stapelbroek (Chaim: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 295–320; Florian Schui, “Prussia’s ‘Tran-Oceanic Moment’: The Creation of the Prussian Asiatic Trade Company in 1750,” Historical Journal 49 (2006): 143–160; Ulrich Adam, The Political Economy of J.H.G Justi (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2006). 70 Justus Nipperdey, Die Erfingung der Bevölkerungspolitik: Staat, politische Theorie und Population in der Frühen Neuzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 421– 429.

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the Nordic country, where officials were concerned about severe underpopulation that had its roots in the Great Northern War (1700–1721). The Swedish Office of Tables (Tabellverket ) was established in 1749 to provide reliable population figures. Its responsibility was to collect and compare statistics,71 these being the key surveying instruments with which to support populationism. Schlözer’s knowledge about numerical data in Sweden later had a major impact on him as a statistician. In short, there is no denying that his early economic and political thought was influenced by elements of cameralism, and that his views were very much in line with the leading cameralists of his time. To understand the relationship between natural history, wealth, and commerce in Schlözer’s General History of Trade more fully it is useful to compare the book’s main points with the aims of the Royal Danish Arabian Expedition (1761–1767). The fact that the two were so in step with each other invites us to reflect on the motives for the journey and the relationship between nature and human sciences. Both Michaelis and Schlözer wanted to pursue natural historical and philological studies in the Orient and recent research on the expedition has shown that almost all of its activities were aimed at the elucidation of the Old Testament, which the participants saw as a historical source. Natural history was called upon to support biblical philology, the clarification of the Old Testament’s references to plants, animals, customs, and miracles in order to yield insights into the origins of ancient language and law. The primary point of interest was therefore biblical and sacred philology.72 Schlözer had all of this in mind when writing his book and shared this aspiration for the expedition. Another, more controversial point raised in more recent research on the Arabian expedition has been the claim that it was unique in so far as it had no colonial, commercial, or political interests.73 It has been argued that the observations on trade, land cultivation and uses of coffee and qat recorded by members of the expedition were academically neutral and as

71 See Lars Magnusson’s commentary on the Anders Chydenius Prize Essay “Causes of Emigration” (1765) https://chydenius.kootutteokset.fi/en/commentary-on-the-cau ses-of-emigration/. 72 Baack, Undying Curiosity, 7. 73 Han F. Vermeulen, Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the

German Enlightenment (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015), 266.

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such the whole Arabian journey itself was purely scientific.74 According to this line of interpretation, Peter Forsskål’s (1732–1763) and Carsten Niebuhr’s (1733–1815) observations on the Arabian coffee trade did not amount to espionage on behalf of European coffee traders. They observed the local population and kept records as neutral and objective observers, but never suggested that the Europeans should take over the coffee trade, and their views mainly reflected those of the local producers and consumers.75 As I see it, the Arabian journey, as well as the General History of Trade, had commercial and political interests, and both even supported colonial interests in the sense of an attempt to find India in the nations of the participants by uncovering knowledge about plants that might acclimatise to northern Europe. It is not possible to find a neat separation between purely scientific observations and economic observations aimed at enhancing trade when the interest in nature is economically motivated from the beginning. The aim of the expedition to the Orient, as framed by Michaelis and by Schlözer’s vision, was not to enable Europeans to take over the coffee trade, nor was it the pursuit of an ideological exercise in dominion. Instead, for eighteenth-century political economists—cameralists included—nature was a cornerstone in the formation of wealth, and thus understanding how nature worked was important to the aims of maximising the state’s resources.76 A key consideration was how to make natural history profitable. As argued earlier, Linnaeus’s plant innovations and “economic botany” were motivated by economic utility. Taking all this into account, it is difficult to imagine that when drinking coffee and chewing qat during the Arabian expedition, its members did not also have economic applications in mind. The aim of the expedition was to make as many scientific discoveries as possible, including discoveries in economy, which was considered the most useful science. This was all the more true because, for Michaelis, Linnaeus, and Schlözer, separating science

74 Ib Friis, “Coffee and Qat on the Royal Danish Expedition to Arabia—Botanical,

Ethnobotanical and Commercial Observations Made in Yemen 1762–1763,” Archives of Natural History 42 (2015):101–112, 101–102. 75 Ibid., 108–109. 76 Philip J. Stern and Carl Wennerlind, “Introduction,” in Mercantilism Reimagined:

Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire, ed. Philip J. Stern and Carl Wennerlind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 3–22: 11.

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(natural history/natural philosophy) from economic considerations made no sense.

Political Institutions and the History of Trade: ¨ Schlozer’s Early Critique of Oligarchy The General History of Trade ends with two appendices containing translations of Isaiah, chapter 23, and Ezekiel, chapter 27. Schlözer’s introduction to them contains ideas similar to those of Michaelis, since in it he underscored his belief that the Old Testament was historically accurate and could be used as a source. The appendices firstly served to show how, when writing his history of trade, he used the Scriptures as examples of the application of the historical critical method he had developed under the inspiration of Michaelis.77 Secondly, Schlözer considered Isaiah 23 to be an early critique of oligarchy, and his selection of this text can thus be interpreted as a comment on the political situation in Sweden in 1758. As I have contended, the General History of Trade is a political essay arguing that unlimited governments are an obstacle to the success of trade. The years that Schlözer spent in Sweden were politically turbulent. Some interpretations have hinted that he was either sympathetic towards the royalist coup that was attempted in 1756 while he was in the country, or that he took a neutral stance on the political happenings in the country,78 but neither of these claims bears examination. Schlözer clearly favoured the party of the opposition, the Cap Party, and disapproved of the rule of the Hat Party and its aristocratic members. During the so-called Age of Liberty (1719–1772) the Swedish realm was ruled by the Estates—the nobility, burghers, clergy, and peasants— which met at the Diet (riksdagar) triennially. The Council of the Realm functioned as the government of the country, and while King Adolf Fredrick was a member of it, he only had two votes out of the eighteen. The other sixteen members of the council were members of the Noble 77 Schlözer, Försök til en allmän historia om handel, 235–236. 78 Peters, Altes Reich und Europa, 43, 51; Persson, “Transferring Propaganda: Gusta-

vian Politics in Two Göttingen Journals,” in Eighteenth-Century Periodicals as Agents of Change: Perspectives on Northern Enlightenment, ed. Ellen Krefting, Aina Nøding and Mona Ringvej (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 93–109: 109; Böning, “Vom Umgang mit Zeitungen,” 141.

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Estate and power was therefore concentrated in their hands: nobility had the privilege of holding all the high offices, and the freedom of the Age of Freedom was generally understood to mean freedom from the sovereignty of the monarch, whose power had been stripped to the minimum. An attempt to reinstitute King Adolf Fredrick’s authority resulted in a failed coup in 1756, a pivotal moment in Schlözer’s life that informed his political convictions until his death.79 Schlözer’s clearly recognised that the Noble Estate was pulling the strings when he lived in Sweden. His political thought has been subject to different interpretations in previous research, which has seen him as a liberal, democratic or conservative thinker,80 although he is usually thought of as a proponent of a moderate constitutional monarchy open to gradual reforms.81 Other somewhat contradictory interpretations have considered him to be a supporter of the Prussian administration, of the confessional tolerance associated with Alsace, of the freedom of the press, and of Russian reforms under Catherine II. His views were well known throughout Europe,82 and a recurring theme in his political and economic writings is his critique of aristocratic forms of rule.83 Espenhorst has argued that Schlözer’s convictions were forged in the Sweden of his youth: on 23 July 1756, when he was aged twenty-one, he witnessed the public execution of Erik Brahe (1722–1756), one of the main conspirators in the royal coup attempt, and Espenhorst and Persson have argued that this experience had a lasting impact on his political thought and activities, showing him how cruel an aristocratic constitutional reality could be. After this episode he remained consistently critical of aristocratic and 79 Peters, Altes Reich und Europa, 43 and 51; Persson, “Transferring Propaganda,”

109. 80 Espenhorst, “Der ‘mobile’ Europäer,” 199; Wolfgang Burgdorf, “Schlözers Vorstellungen von der Verfassung des Heiligen Römischen Reiches Deutscher Nation,” in August Ludwig (von) Schlözer in Europa, ed. Heinz Duchhardt and Martin Espenhorst (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 111–129: 112. 81 Merio Scattola, “Schlözer und die Staatswissenschaften des 18. Jahrhunderts,” in August Ludwig (von) Schlözer in Europa, ed. Heinz Duchhardt and Martin Espenhorst (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 87–110; David F. Lindenfeld, The Practical Imagination: The German Sciences of State in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997), 44. 82 Burgdorf, “Schlözers Vorstellungen,” 112; Böning, “Vom Umgang mit Zeitungen,” 141; Martin Espenhorst, “Der ‘mobile’ Europäer,” 199. 83 Burgdorf, “Schlözers Vorstellungen von der Verfassung,” 112.

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democratic forms of government,84 something that was in keeping with his choice of appendices to the General History of Trade, as his choice of Bible passages testify to his early criticism of oligarchy and the misuse of aristocratic power. Schlözer covered the political events of 1756 for Altonaer Reichs-PostReiter, and Holger Böning has argued that his reporting was neutral.85 They have cast doubt on interpretations of Schlözer as an anti-aristocratic commentator of Swedish political events and pointed out that there is no direct evidence that he ever criticised the rule of the estates in Sweden. However, this observation is based on a misunderstanding, since in fact Schlözer did not oppose estate rule as a whole, but only rule by the Noble Estate. It was therefore possible for him to defend the Swedish constitution (1719/1720), while simultaneously criticising the dominant role of the nobility. In fact, Schlözer condemned the coup attempt on the basis that it undermined the constitution of the realm, or in other words did not approve of the actions of the royalists nor find Erik Brahe’s actions defensible. Moreover, he believed that a kingdom should not be subject to the arbitrary will of a monarch, a view he developed in reaction to King Adolf Fredrick’s attempts to expand his prerogatives on the grounds that he could not in all conscience ratify decisions of which he disapproved.86 Schlözer clearly opposed the king’s attempts to gain more power, since he considered living under arbitrary rule to be a state of unfreedom. He sided neither with the aristocratic Hat Party nor with the royalists, and in his political thought never went so far as to advocate overthrowing the existing regime.87 Sweden was no exception. He did not question the

84 Peters, Altes Reich und Europa, 43 and 51; Persson, “Transferring Propaganda‚”:

109. 85 Böning, “Vom Umgang mit Zeitungen,” 141, footnote. Friederike Fürst Had Already Suggested that Schlözer’s Anti-Aristocratic Sentiment Had Its Roots in Sweden, Friederike Fürst, August Ludwig von Schlözer, ein deutscher Aufklärer im 18. Jahrhundert (Heidelberg: Winter, 1928), 28. 86 Böning, “Vom Umgang mit Zeitungen,” 143; Charlotta Wolff, Noble Conceptions of Politics in Eighteenth Century Sweden (ca 1740–1790) (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2008), 60. 87 Lindenfeld, The Practical Imagination, 44. An exemplary case is Schlözer’s view on the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). In a debate with Jakob Mauvillon (1743–1794) Schlözer argued with Isaac de Pinto (1717–1787) that the English government had rightfully raised taxes in the colonies, and he believed that the revolution was unjustified. Schlözer had adopted the views of the English government, while Mauvilon

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constitution of the country, but rather its lived political reality. He told his son that his favourite pastime in Sweden was observing the political world in public houses,88 and he was acutely aware of what was happening in Sweden politically. In my opinion it was not only the execution of Erik Brahe that sowed the seeds of aversion to the aristocracy in Schlözer’s political thought. Rather it was the overall experience in the circles he frequented while in Sweden. His personal contacts were closely associated with the Cap Party, which explains his dislike of the oligarchic and aristocratic rule of the competing Hat Party and his opposition to the rule of the Noble Estate. Schlözer’s friend from Göttingen and from Uppsala, Peter Forsskål, argued that Sweden was turning into an aristocratic oligarchy in the hands of the Hats. Johan Ihre, Schlözer’s supervisor, was a known Cap who had had troubles with the Hats and who in 1750 was fined a year’s salary for having supervised dissertations expressing dangerous opinions, that is to say theories that did not correspond to the Hats’ interpretation of freedom and the constitution.89 Schlözer’s experience of the Swedish Hat Party made him an eager opponent of all aristocratic regimes. Publishing a critique of oligarchy as an appendix to the General History of Trade was a way of denouncing the political situation in Sweden, which his Swedish academic mentor also decried, as did Schlözer’s other major academic influence, Linnaeus.90 Furthermore, as Schlözer argued in the General History of Trade, an unlimited government was detrimental to trade and contrary to the progress of civilisation. With his appendices Schlözer sought to situate the present in his historical account in order to discredit the prevailing political circumstances. It is fair to say that he did so quite subtly, demanded the freedom and independence of the colonies. Peters, Altes Reich, 286. See also Jacob Mauvillon, “Anmerkungen über der Herren Pinto und Schlözer sophistische Vertheidigung des englischen Ministeriums gegen die Kolonien, im ersten Heft des neuen Schlözerschen Briefwechsel,” in Jacob Mauvillon, Sammlung von Aufsätzen über Gegenstände aus der Staatskunst, Staatswirthschaft und neuesten Geschichte (Leipzig: Erster Theil, 1776), 141–188. 88 Christian von Schlözer, Schlözers öffentliches und Privatleben, vol. 1, 40. 89 Ere Nokkala, Peter Forsskål: “The Freedom to Write and the Principle of Public

Access to Official Documents,” in Press Freedom 250 Years: Freedom of the Press and Public Access to Official Documents in Sweden and Finland, ed. Kristina Örtenhed and Bertil Wennberg (Stockholm: Sveriges Riksdag, 2017), 61–6: 69. 90 Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, 104.

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but this was necessary if he did not wish to jeopardise his chance of obtaining the censor’s imprimatur to publish his first book, particularly since the censor, Niclas Oelreich (1699–1770), was known for his close connections to the Hat Party.91

Conclusion August Ludwig Schlözer wrote a panegyric of trade as a primus motor of civilisation in the middle of the Seven Years’ War, which was basically caused by a clash of commercial interests. Although he recognised the benefits to civilisation and progress that trade brought, he was also aware of its potential dangers. The rising influence of commerce in politics was evident to him, and in many ways his General History of Trade was his answer to the question of how Sweden could best survive in a world of increasing international commercial competitiveness. His political and societal thought is best characterised by his search for unity through connection. For him, trade bound people together, and it led to peace. Indeed, it was the concept of peaceful trade that was often used in the Enlightenment as an answer to the bellicosity of the absolute rulers. Thus Schlözer was not in favour of Linnaean autarchy as a future prospect for Sweden. Instead, echoing Swedish cameralists such as Berch and German late cameralists such as Justi, he emphasised the importance of the domestic development of the country in terms of population and cultivation. He was not ready to cut commercial ties with other nations because they were an important source of wealth and the motor of the progress of civilisation towards the unity of humankind. However, Schlözer’s emphasis was on internal development, and not on conquests. As we can see from his case, ideas did not travel as blocks, but discourses circulated via the literary genre of histories of trade and were rather porous. And perhaps more importantly, people and ideas travelled, as indeed did Schlözer. His economic and political thought was informed by his transnational networks, by the political and academic milieux he frequented, and by his personal experiences and aims. His history of trade understood as a history of civilisation in Sweden was inspired by French, German, and Swedish forerunners and written in the entangled

91 Marie-Christine Skuncke, “Press Freedom in the Riksdag 1760–1762 and 1765– 1766,” in Örtenhed and Wennberg, Press Freedom 250 Years, 109–144: 111–112.

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contexts of Göttingen and Uppsala. Schlözer wrote a book that promoted a cameralism influenced by natural history and in favour of foreign trade. Acknowledgements The present chapter was conducted within the framework of an Academy of Finland’s research project “Cameralism as a European Political Sciences: A Reassessment,” carried out at the university of Helsinki. Special thanks are due to the director of the project, Kari Saastamoinen, and to Hans Erich Bödeker, Lars Magnusson‚ Benedek M. Varga and Håkon Evju, who commented on a draft of this chapter. In addition, I would like to thank the editors of this volume, Antonella Alimento and Aris Della Fontana.

CHAPTER 8

From Contemporary Models to the Glories of Antiquity: Power, Decline and National Virtues in the Neapolitan Histories of Trade Alida Clemente

Genovesi’s Naples and the Science of Commerce as History The intellectual production of eighteenth-century Naples has been fundamentally construed in terms of either rupture or continuity between the early decades of Bourbon reformism and the second half of the century, with the so-called “Genovesi turn” marking the passage from the one to the other.1 It is possible, however, to trace a unifying element running through the whole century, namely the search for structural weaknesses,

1 On this, see Anna Maria Rao, “Economia e morale nella scuola genovesiana,” in Modelli d’oltre confine. Prospettive economiche e sociali negli antichi Stati italiani, ed. Antonella Alimento (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2009), 179–188.

A. Clemente (B) Dipartimento di Economia, Management e Territorio (DEMeT), University of Foggia, Foggia, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Alimento and A. Della Fontana (eds.), Histories of Trade as Histories of Civilisation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80087-1_8

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and their causes, that threatened the kingdom’s reacquired autonomy.2 The new state, which was born with the rise of Charles of Bourbon to the throne in 1734 following more than two centuries of subordination to the Spanish monarchy and the Austrian empire, necessitated the construction of firm new foundations on which to build a lasting independence, and the economic element of this necessarily ended up occupying a central place in the minds of the intelligentsia and ruling classes. The global dimension of economic competition became an ever more present factor in the economic reflection—and the entire reformist project—which on the one hand was aimed at ruthlessly diagnosing the historical ills of southern society and on the other at creating the political conditions for its commercial renaissance, and was thus a vivid expression of the kingdom’s eagerness “to find a place under the already crowded sun.”3 When considering these contemporary analyses, historiography has placed great emphasis on the attention paid to the inherent weaknesses of the kingdom, including the damaging legacy of “Spanish misrule.”4 Moreover, the eighteenth-century analyses of the state of the Neapolitan economy, based on comparisons with the “more advanced” ultramontane examples, were responsible for cementing the notion of backwardness as a key to interpreting the economic weakness of the kingdom.5 However,

2 For a general picture, see Giuseppe Caridi, Essere re e non essere re. Carlo di Borbone a Napoli e le attese deluse (1734–1738) (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2006); Michelangelo Schipa, Il Regno di Napoli al tempo di Carlo di Borbone (Naples: Luigi Pierro e figlio, 1971); Anna Maria Rao, Il Regno di Napoli nel Settecento (Naples: Guida, 1984); Elvira Chiosi, “Il Regno dal 1734 al 1799,” in Storia del Mezzogiorno, ed. Giuseppe Galasso and Rosario Romeo, vol. 4, t. I (Naples: Edizioni del Sole, 1986), 384–396; Girolamo Imbruglia, ed., Naples in the Eighteenth Century: The Birth and Death of a Nation State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). For an overview of the Neapolitan Enlightenment, see Melissa Calaresu, “The Enlightenment in Naples,” in A Companion to Early Modern Naples, ed. Tommaso Astarita (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 405–426. 3 Sophus A. Reinert, Translating Empire: Emulation and the origins of Political Economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 72. 4 Eugenio Di Rienzo, “L’anti-spagnolismo a Napoli da Genovesi a Filangieri,” in Alle origini di una nazione. Antispagnolismo e identità italiana, ed. Aurelio Musi (Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2003), 113–133; Giuseppe Ricuperati, “L’immagine della Spagna a Napoli nel primo Settecento: Vico, Carafa, Doria e Giannone,” in Alle origini di una nazione, ed. Musi, 83–111. 5 Biagio Salvemini, “The Arrogance of the Market: The Economy of the Kingdom Between the Mediterranean and Europe,” in Naples, ed. Imbruglia, 44–45. Having

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the adoption of a line of analysis more attentive to the connected dimension of global relations and less conditioned by the theories of modernisation, makes us take heed of the second, far from negligible, element of these analyses, that of the contemporary intellectuals’ growing awareness of the global challenge, and the more or less distinct perception of the “dependency” of the Neapolitan economy as an outcome of the dynamics of distance trading,6 which produced asymmetries and divisions of labour that relegated the kingdom to a subordinate role in international trade.7 The intelligentsia and ruling classes essentially faced the problem of having to find a way out of the dominance of the “powers of industry and commerce,” which was seen not only as the result of a different level of development of productive forces, but also of the asymmetry of the politico-military and commercial power relations. Particularly in the Mediterranean region, which was characterised by a growing French hegemony in relations with the Levant, the possibility of opening up new commercial spheres was strongly conditioned by the ability of the state to cover the costs of protecting its country’s mercantile activities from the threat of privateers.8

affirmed itself in nineteenth-century thought, the notion of backwardness was wellrooted throughout post-war historiography. For a critique of this approach, see Biagio Salvemini, “Note sul concetto di Ottocento meridionale,” Società e storia 7 (1984): 917– 945; Salvemini, “Sulla nobile arte di cercare le peculiarità del Mezzogiorno,” Società e storia 68 (1995): 353–372. 6 I refer to the concept of dependency set out by the World System Analysis, which

is not the same as the concept of backwardness. On this I refer the reader to the considerations of Klemens Kaps and Andrea Komlosy, “Centers and Peripheries Revisited: Polycentric Connections or Entangled Hierarchies?” Review 36 (2013): 237–264. 7 See Alessandro Tuccillo, “La frontière de la civilisation. Royaume de Naples et Méditerranée dans les écrits des illuministi méridionaux,” Rives méditerranéennes 49 (2014): 159–173; Alida Clemente, Il lusso ‘cattivo’. Dinamiche del consumo nella Napoli del Settecento (Rome: Carocci, 2011). For an analysis of the role of international commerce in the development of the Italian South, see Piero Bevilacqua, “Il Mezzogiorno nel mercato internazionale (secoli 18–20),” Meridiana 1 (1987): 19–45. 8 On the power discrepancies in the Mediterranean and the Kingdom of Naples’s search for a commercial role in relations with the Levant, see Antonio Di Vittorio, Il commercio tra Levante ottomano e Napoli nel secolo XVIII (Naples: Giannini, 1979); Biagio Salvemini, “Crimini di mare, forme del diritto e conflitti mercantilistici nel Mediterraneo centrale,” in Napoli e il Mediterraneo nel Settecento. Scambi, immagini, istituzioni, ed. Anna Maria Rao (Bari: Edipuglia, 2017), in particular 43–52; Annastella Carrino, “Il Levante «que tenemos à la puerta». Progetti e pratiche del commercio mediterraneo,” in Napoli e il Mediterraneo nel Settecento, ed. Rao, 93–108. Alida Clemente, “Da Tripoli a Messina.

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The theories of Antonio Genovesi provided the driving force and cognitive and conceptual framework for this research, against which, in one way or the other, the entire Neapolitan intellectual realm ended up measuring itself in the second half of the eighteenth century.9 In the intellectual construction of this framework, a milestone of the Genovesian path, one that has attracted the attention of the historiography,10 was his 1757 translation of John Cary’s Essay on the State of England, or more precisely his translation of the French version of this text by Georges Marie Butel-Dumont, which significantly reworked the English original.11 Genovesi gave his work the title Storia del commercio della Gran Bretagna, and this unfaithful translation of the title in itself reveals the extent to which the start of a close comparison of Neapolitan culture with cosmopolitan models and languages12 occurred under the banner of an original reworking of British political economy. An integral part of the novelty of this work was Genovesi’s emphasis on history, which— already present in the French translation by Butel-Dumont—was applied in a specific way, at once epistemological, ethical-philosophical and political, that now makes Genovesi’s civil economy appear like an alternative

Spazi contesi nel Mediterraneo settecentesco, tra complementarità macroeconomiche e gelosia del commercio,” Storia Economica 1 (2018): 11–34. On the concept of protection costs, Frederic C. Lane, Profits from Power: Readings in Protection Rent and ViolenceControlling Entreprises (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1979). 9 Franco Venturi, “La Napoli di Genovesi,” in Settecento riformatore. Da Muratori a Beccaria, ed. Franco Venturi (Turin: Einaudi, 1969), 523–644. For a critical review of the vast historiographical production on Antonio Genovesi, see Anna Maria Rao, “Gli studi genovesiani,” in Antonio Genovesi. Economia e morale, ed. Rao (Naples: Giannini 2018), 9–34. An exception, due to his originality, is Ferdinando Galiani who has only recently found his place in the intellectual history of the Neapolitan Enlightenment. See Koen Stapelbroek, Love, Self-Deceit and Money: Commerce and Morality in the Early Neapolitan Enlightenment (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). 10 Sophus A. Reinert, “Genovesi’s Storia del commercio della Gran Brettagna,” in Translating Empire, ed. Reinert, 187–232. 11 The French version was actually a complete reworking. Butel-Dumont changed the title of Cary’s book, and included a “reconstruction of the English progress in commerce that took place in the half century that separated its translation from the first publication of Cary’s Essay,” Sophus A. Reinert, “Emulazione e traduzione: la genealogia occulta della storia del commercio,” in Genovesi economista, ed. Bruno Jossa, Rosario Patalano and Eugenio Zagari (Naples: Istituto Italiano per gli Studi filosofici, 2007), 155–192: 169. 12 See Alimento, Modelli d’oltreconfine.

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elaboration, rather than an imperfect emulation, of English political economy.13 Reinert has firmly underscored the originality of Genovesi’s “translation” of the British science of commerce. The Neapolitan’s interpretation transformed something that was an apotheosis of colonialism, an explicit theorisation of the science of commerce as the political art of “establishing and maintaining asymmetrical trade with the rest of the world,”14 into a way to defend against such dominance.15 Once it was recognised that the rise of Great Britain was the result of a reversal of fortune made possible by the British commitment to industrial development and active foreign trade, it was up to the weak states to rebalance international relationships of power and escape dependency. But how could the ensuing tension between the vision of trade as a vector of peace and as the glue of the human race—the doux commerce—be reconciled with the possibility of its degeneration into a source of competition and “jealousy of trade”?16 Genovesi ultimately escaped the second possibility by fixing his gaze on examples other than Great Britain’s aggressive mercantilism, such as the “Chinese” idea of the good governance based on agriculture,17 which was consistent with the Physiocratic inclination of his own ideas, and on a notion of “non-arrogant” commerce that was concerned with the surplus and built on a solid base of internal production.18

13 Luigino Bruni and Pier Luigi Porta, “‘Economia civile’ and ‘pubblica felicità’ in the Italian Enlightenment,” History of Political Economy 35 (2003): 361–385. 14 Sophus A. Reinert, “Emulazione e traduzione,” 162. 15 “Genovesi’s political economy envisaged an ideal path by which to achieve greatness

through commerce without conquest.” Reinert, “Genovesi’s Storia del commercio,” 204; Sophus A. Reinert, “Rivalry: Greatness in Early Modern Political Economy,” in Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire, ed. Philip J. Stern and Karl Wennerlind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 16 Reinert, “Genovesi’s Storia del commercio,” 226; Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). 17 See Francesco D’Onofrio, “La nazione meglio polita: buon governo e costituzione economica della Cina alla scuola di Genovesi,” Società e storia 161 (2018): 471–497, who affirms that the Chinese model of the good agricultural government was, according to Genovesi, an option better suited to the Kingdom of Naples. In this sense, his wholesale fascination with the British model appears reduced. 18 Salvemini, “The Arrogance of the Market”.

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In this search for alternative models, history constituted a central instrument as the epistemological basis for a science of commerce seen not as a science of pure calculation or an abstract game of supply and demand. A science, in other words, whose principles could be observed empirically through the experience of the commercial powers, and which history allowed to be reconstructed inductively within a coherent whole.19 At the same time, the observation of the experiences of different peoples provided Genovesi with ground on which to test his daring conciliation of the vision of commerce as a civilising force and his ethical and spiritual vision of society.20 His vision in fact incorporated, somewhat contradictorily, the legacy of Vico’s21 cyclical view of the history of civilisations, with its connection to the destructive power of the passions and of luxury.22 While recognising that the “search for comfort” had a civilising effect and encouraged social mobility within the modern commercial society23 —if moderated by virtue and therefore filtered by the wise political management of commerce—Genovesi rejected utilitarianism and Mandeville’s hedonism, and maintained a vision of history in which luxury did not lose its destructive power.24 The tensions in Genovesian thought—between cosmopolitanism and nationalism and between the cyclical destiny of civilisation and commercial progress—are both harmonised through the role that Genovesi attributed to Enlightened government, to the primacy of politics and of

19 Reinert, Genovesi’s Storia del commercio,” 203. 20 Rao, “Gli studi genovesiani,” 32. 21 On Vico’s influence on Genovesi, see Paola Zambelli, La formazione filosofica di Antonio Genovesi (Naples: Morano, 1972); Fabrizio Lomonaco, “Genovesi e Vico,” in Antonio Genovesi, ed. Rao, 99–112. 22 Reinert, “Genovesi’s Storia del commercio,” 211–216. 23 See Cecilia Carnino, Lusso e benessere nell’Italia del Settecento (Milan: Franco Angeli,

2014), 154–159. 24 Excessive luxury makes nations in commerce the prey of poor nations. Antonio

Genovesi, Lezioni di commercio o sia di economia civile (Bassano: A spese Remondini, 1769), 239. On this, see Enrico Nuzzo, “Natura umana e caratteri delle nazioni in Antonio Genovesi,” in Antonio Genovesi, ed. Rao, 147–174. On the apparent ambivalence of the non-moralist positions on luxury in Neapolitan economics, see Clemente, Il lusso ‘cattivo’.

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the ethical virtues, prudence and moderation, from which they arose.25 It was through politics, and through the science of commerce applied to it, that one could hope to escape mediocrity and commercial dependency and thus direct the cyclical nature of history and overturn the decline of the kingdom. And the observation of the facts and of historical change was aimed at showing how the wealth of nations was a construct: the “happiness of nations” could be pursued through the art of government illuminated by the science of commerce.26 This view of the science of commerce—which bore the clear imprint of Gournay’s circle27 —was reconciled with the strong ethical and Christian nature of Genovesi’s philosophy. Not being brutal but being moral, man and his destiny could be observed through the historical development of civilisations, which,28 while on the one hand demonstrating the destructive power of the passions through its cyclical progress, on the other showed sovereigns of the way of good governance and of the construction of public happiness. The Storia del commercio della Gran Bretagna therefore marked, in addition to the entrance of the literary genre of the history of trade into the Kingdom of Naples, the beginning of the Neapolitan intelligentsia 25 The conciliation between morality, commerce and wealth remains problematic. On this, see Koen Stapelbroek, “Preserving the Neapolitan State: Antonio Genovesi and Ferdinando Galiani on commercial society and planning economic growth,” History of European Ideas 32 (2006): 406–429. 26 In the preface to the Storia del commercio Genovesi outlined the aims of his transla-

tion of Cary: 1. To show that the real reason for British greatness was the “singular skill and diligence practised there to encourage the bases of commerce and navigation; 2. To show that every other nation, in proper proportion with the country it inhabits and those that surround it, will adopt the same economics and be able to have the same large and wealthy commerce that the English have.” Antonio Genovesi, Storia del commercio della Gran Brettagna, scritta da John Cary, mercante di Bristol (Naples: per Benedetto Gessari, 1757), II–III. 27 Genovesi knew the literature of the Cercle de Gournay and had read Véron de Forbonnais, whose ideas on the relationship between economic autonomy and national independence had much in common with his own. Antonella Alimento, “Translation, reception and Enlightened Reform: The Case of Forbonnais in Eighteenth-century Political Economy,” History of European Ideas 40 (2014): 1011–1025; Antonella Alimento, “Entre animosité national et rivalité d’émulation: la position de Veron de Forbonnais face à la compétition anglaise,” in Governare il mondo, L’economia come linguaggio della politica nell’Europa del Settecento, ed. Manuela Albertone (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2009), 125–148. 28 Rao, “Economia e morale,” 184: “Morality is therefore something that relates to history”.

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and ruling classes’ debate on foreign models and on their own history, in an original fusion of the stimuli of the science of commerce with those of their native culture. The result of this were analyses of national decadence29 which, making use of the topos of the cyclical nature of history, envisioned the resurgence of the kingdom as a sort of return to the past or as reclamation of a virtuous and powerful era that had in some way been usurped. The ways in which this relationship with the past were elaborated by followers of Genovesi were different, but all ultimately reflected arguments for the construction of a national identity that would be a component in the building of the state and a basis on which to create hopes of rebirth and incentivise reform projects. One might say, to paraphrase the famous expression of Filangieri used as the title of a classic intellectual history of Naples, that this was a “history in aid of governments,”30 not only because of the intellectual nature of the endeavour, oriented as it was towards demonstrating the historical possibility of rebirth, but also because of the particularly central role that historical knowledge seemed to have played in the kingdom, since the times of Antonio Serra, as a source of authority in the understanding of economic phenomena, that is as the element that legitimised the aspirations of individuals to enter the economic administration apparatus.31 It is no coincidence that the common feature of the two examples of the “histories of trade” that we will examine here—both of which were published in Naples following Genovesi’s translation of Cary—is above all the fact that they were written by two intellectuals with a legal background for the purpose of establishing themselves as experts, as advisors to the king, and thereby obtaining political-administrative positions.32 29 On decadence as a paradigm for interpreting Italy, and as a foundation for every

debate on its potential resurgence, see Marcello Verga, “«Nous ne sommes pas l’Italie, grâce à Dieu». Note sull’idea di decadenza nel discorso nazionale italiano,” Storica 43–45 (2009): 169–207. 30 Giuseppe Galasso, La filosofia in soccorso de’ governi. La cultura napoletana del Settecento (Naples: Guida, 1989). 31 Sophus A. Reinert, “Authority and Expertise at the Origins of Macro-economics,” in Antonio Serra and the Economics of Good Government, ed. Rosario Patalano and Sophus A. Reinert (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 112–142. 32 On the more general relationship between intellectuals and politics, I refer the reader to Anna Maria Rao, “Fra amministrazione e politica. Gli ambienti intellettuali napoletani,” in Naples, Rome, Florence. Une histoire comparée des milieux intellectuels italiens (XVII– XVIII siècles), ed. Jean Boutier, Brigitte Marin and Antonella Romano (Rome: École

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Albeit with very different results, the two authors—Nicola Fortunato and the much better known Michele de Jorio—are examples of intellectual careers closely linked to political and administrative ambitions and reform projects, as well as being evidence of the growing demand for expertise in the development of trade policies from the public bureaucracy.33 Despite their very different styles and degree of intellectual depth, Fortunato’s and de Jorio’s works nevertheless bear the very strong argumentative and philosophical imprint of Genovesi, as well as the more general tendency which, within the Neapolitan intelligentsia, seemed to spring from the very dynamics of the Enlightenment: from the dialectic, that is, between cosmopolitanism and nationalism, between admiration of the trading powers and the perception of the empirical link between the strength of others and one’s own weakness, between commercial hegemony and dependency, and between the emulation and adaptation of foreign models.

française de Rome, 2005), 35–88. On intellectual activity as the production of knowledge for economic governance, see Marten Seppel and Keith Tribe, eds., Cameralism in Practice: State Administration and Economy in Early Modern Europe (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2017). 33 On the link between the administrative construction of the government of commerce and the development of economic knowledge, see Arnault Skornicki, “L’état, l’expert et le négociant: le réseau de la «science du commerce» sous Louis XV,” Geneses 4 (2006): 4–26; Loïc Charles, “Le cercle de Gournay: usage culturels et pratiques savantes,” in Le cercle de Vincent de Gournay: savoirs économiques et pratiques administratives au milieu du XVIII e siècle, ed. Frédéric Lefebvre, Christine There and Loïc Charles (Paris: Ined, 2011); Antonella Alimento, “La concurrence comme politique moderne: la contribution de l’école de Gournay à la naissance d’une sphère publique dans la France des années 1750–1760,” in L’économie politique et la sphère publique dans le débat des Lumières, ed. Jesus Astigarraga and Javier Usoz (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2013), 213–228; Antonella Alimento, Translation, Reception and Enlightened Reform. In reference to the Kingdom of Naples, see Daniela Ciccolella, Alida Clemente and Biagio Salvemini, eds., Consulte, rappresentanze, progetti per l’economia del Regno di Napoli, vol. I (Rome: CNR, 2021), https://doi.org/10.48217/MNDNCL01, in particular the editors’ Presentation: VII-XXV.

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“Roma, Quod Eras Sum; Quae Modo Es, Quod Eram”: The Cyclical Nature of History and the Rediscovery of “Italic Virtues” We know very little about the life of Nicola Fortunato.34 He was born in 1720 in Giffoni Valle Piana in the province of Salerno (the same that Genovesi came from) to a textile merchant. A rather typical member of the petty bourgeoisie, which tended to invest in the education of particularly gifted children, Fortunato’s social ascent began with a law degree in Naples, where he became a lawyer and collaborated with important jurists in the capital. In 1754 he began to attend Genovesi’s lectures, and became his pupil and friend. In 1757 he completed his thesis, which was published in 1760 under the title Riflessioni sul commercio antico e moderno del Regno di Napoli. His second work, the Discoverta dell’antico Regno di Napoli col suo presente stato a pro della sovranità de’ suoi popoli,35 followed immediately after the publication of his master’s Lezioni di commercio (1765–1767). Historiography has discovered little or nothing of originality in Fortunato’s work, but his biography is interesting for being an example of an intellectual path imbued with the ambiguous relation between career ambitions and reformist concerns that permeated the political activism of the generation informed by Genovesi’s teachings.36 Fortunato held numerous posts in the city of Naples administration,37 and attempted to pursue a career in the service of the central government, but despite the fact that Genovesi endorsed his first work as “good and useful” he was not held in high enough esteem as an intellectual and failed to secure important positions in the administration of the kingdom. Nor did he manage to succeed his master, in 1769, as professor of commerce and

34 Toni Iermano, “Nicola Fortunato,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 49 (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1997). 35 Nicola Fortunato, Discoverta dell’Antico Regno di Napoli col suo presente stato a pro

della sovranità e de’ suoi popoli (Naples: Giuseppe Raimondi, 1767). 36 Franco Venturi, “1764: Napoli nell’anno della fame,” Rivista storica italiana 11 (1973): 394–472, 451–56. 37 He was a member, among other things, of the Deputazione del Donativo and of the Deputazione dell’Annona, two bodies that respectively oversaw the city’s voluntary contributions to the crown and the system managing the public procurement of grain.

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mechanics, a chair that was left unfilled for many years.38 Even his posthumous fame did not shine brightly. In the nineteenth century Corso di Economia Politica (1854) by Francesco Trinchera, he was contemptuously dismissed in a few words: “his writing was erudite, but completely devoid of linearity and good principles.”39 At first sight, then, Fortunato appears to be one of the many enthusiastic apologists of the commercial society, personified in the kingdom by the Neapolitan merchants who embodied the virtues of a new civilisation40 and who unhesitatingly showered praise upon his writings. Such admiration was also a rhetorical ploy used in the cultural operation of “ennobling” the figure of the merchant, which was inseparable from the aim of connecting the “forms, dimensions and logics of the mercantile sphere to those of the political sphere,”41 and which the Neapolitan Enlightenment had imported, not without difficulty, from French mercantilism. While certainly not an innovative thinker, Fortunato was nevertheless an expert on the economic situation of the provinces and a pragmatic researcher of solutions to the problems of the kingdom which, despite his civic engagement, he did not have the wherewithal to put into practice. But Fortunato was also acquainted with the works of Child, Uztáriz, Savary, Montesquieu and Huet, and the principal themes of his Riflessioni are a mix of elements drawn broadly from European literature: the extolment of doux commerce, of the internationalism of the market,42 38 Fortunato was one of fourteen scholars who entered the competition for the Cattedra di Commercio, e di Meccanica announced on 18 November 1769. On the highly contested management of this by Gian Battista Maria Iannucci, see Francesco Longano, “Autobiografia,” in Illuministi italiani, vol. V, “Riformatori napoletani,” ed. Franco Venturi (Milan and Naples: R. Ricciardi, 1962), 355–57. Longano named Fortunato, rather unkindly, as one of the entrants who were “known not for being experts in this science, but for aspiring to every position,” 357. Like Longano himself, Fortunato also petitioned the king, laying claim to skills in the “rough” science of commerce: Supplica dell’Avv. D. Nicola Fortunato toccante la cattedra di commercio ([Naples]: n.p., [1770]). 39 Francesco Trinchera, Corso di Economia politica, vol. II (Turin: Tipografia degli Artisti A. Pons e comp., 1854). 40 Fortunato, Riflessioni, 207n. 41 On this, see Biagio Salvemini, “Virtù, mercantilismi e mercanti dell’Europa sette-

centesca. Qualche considerazione introduttiva,” Storia economica 2 (2016): 369–384, 380. 42 Fortunato, Riflessioni, XLV: “commerce is the thing that forms a kind of universal republic among all trading nations”; “one should not regard each nation as independent,

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of commerce as a creator of “good faith,”43 and of the national power that emanated from it.44 In the very lengthy premise to his work—dedicated to the “wise lovers of commerce” and presented, in keeping with the fawning conventions of eighteenth-century literature, as a personal homage to a majority of the powerful exponents of the Regency (King Ferdinand IV, then still a minor, had not yet acceded to the throne)—the exaltation of monarchy as a political system superior to aristocracy and democracy is at one with that of commerce, of politesse, and of the desire for wellbeing and luxury. For Fortunato, the twin pillars of monarchy and commerce represented the most advanced stage of civilisation yet reached by humanity since its origins in the unhappy and wild condition of the “state of nature.” Here, the workings of the commercial society are represented with an effective anthropomorphic metaphor of Hobbesian extraction: commerce is like an “artificial man,” whose soul is the king, whose head is the economic government, whose reason is the laws and rules, whose arms are the companies and traders, whose nerves are the consuls and the banks, whose heart is the industries, and whose blood is money. This artificial man takes delight in justice and fairness, freedom and trust, and finally patriotic love.45 But this apotheosis of the commercial society contains two caveats: luxury is positive only if active, which is to say if it is directed towards domestic manufactures and national production, whereas it can lead to decline if passive, which is to say directed towards foreign production. The “particular” commerce that enriches individuals is distinct from the “general” one that enriches the nation. And for Fortunato the problem of the kingdom is, as for all the Mediterranean countries, the passivity of its commerce compared to the active one of the Dutch, English and French.46 This is the source of the weakness of the kingdom’s merchants, who had been savaged by the competition because “at the sight of the first insidious news from foreign markets […] they carelessly sell rich in fact as an enemy, to the other, as has sometimes been said, but one should see human beings as a totality living in friendship”. 43 Citing, on this, “the author of The Spirit of the Laws,” Ibid. XLV. 44 “In the end these and the other effects that Commerce produces contribute to the

opulence, to the greatness, to the glory of the sovereign, of the state, of the people and of the nation in general,” Ibid. 45 Ibid., X. 46 Ibid., 75.

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cargoes of their products […] without reflecting either on the pitfalls or on the monopolies with which they negotiate.”47 In the analysis of the concrete implications of this “passive” trade, it is possible to glimpse an explicit awareness of the mechanisms of “dependency”: “the profit from the sale of primary materials would produce an absolute income for its owners, and not for the state, since this is much more of an obvious path to ruin than a genuine loss.”48 Accordingly, Fortunato clearly embraces the industrialist vision, the effectiveness of which is confirmed by foreign examples, such as the France of Louis XIV and his minister Colbert and the Muscovy of Peter the Great, which had established good governance of commerce through the active involvement of the sovereignty in the promotion of industry.49 Thus Fortunato’s Riflessioni was above all a historical observation of the experience of others, of the examples of the foreign powers that confirmed the success of the political construction and the governance of commerce. The theorisation of the “historical” nature of the science of commerce is explicit: this is not about mechanics, for which man’s talent is given a vast and free space [...]; nor even is it something for which geometry would know how to use its infallible proofs; [...] and therefore it has nothing but a moral certainty worthy of reason, and of enlightened talents alone.50

Fortunato thus used history to illustrate a possibility that derived from politics and knowledge. However, in his Riflessioni, the lesson of contemporary models was rhetorically reinforced by the comparison between the current state and the “ancient” one of the Kingdom of Naples. The opening chapter was entirely aimed at describing, in what the author presents as a mere “digression,”51 a fabulous, remote period concealed in

47 Ibid., 208. 48 Ibid., 114. 49 Ibid., 238–248. He shared this admiration of Peter the Great with Genovesi, who, looking at the examples of absolute states capable of encouraging industry and breaking the asymmetry of trade with Great Britain, betrayed Cary’s beliefs as his translator. Reinert, La genesi occulta, 180. 50 Fortunato, Riflessioni, 270–271. 51 Ibid., 2.

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“dark antiquity,” when trade and civilisation flourished in the Kingdom of Naples. The goal was to show that: if we were once, we can be so again […] since it is a maxim that every nation can be what it was, or is another, when the natural forces are equal; or it can be great in proportion, where the natural forces of the climate of the land and the men are unequal, provided that these forces know each other and know how to use and raise themselves to the true greatness of the design.52

According to Fortunato’s plan it was necessary to make clear that the weakness of the kingdom was not the result of a natural poverty, nor of the moral and spiritual vices of its people, but rather of a history of slavery and of conquests by “barbarous and belligerent nations” that had brought about its fall from its ancient state of prosperity. His account is presented as a straightforward attempt to construct the identity of a nation which, in spite of having a king of its own, still had no selfrepresentation other than submission to foreign domination. Fortunato’s proto-national rhetoric overturns this history in the supreme evidence of the value of the Italic people, since it is in fact the natural and cultural wealth, the ability of a people, as much in trade as in letters and arms, that attracted foreign invaders. At the centre of this narrative is a sort of myth of homogeneity and of ethnic immutability. It is as if the same blood flowed in the veins of the inhabitants of Pozzuoli who in antiquity dominated trade in the Mediterranean after the decadence of Delos, in those of the merchants from Bari who dominated trade with the Levant, and in those of the Italic populations that later resisted the Roman invasion and then contributed to the greatness of the Republic by fighting in its armies. The Tyrrenians, Tarantines and Spinetans gifted their seafaring skills to the Roman Empire. Mythical facts, such as the invention of the compass by the Amalfitans, or the membership of Naples in the Hanseatic League during the

52 Ibid., 4.

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period of Norman rule,53 are raised up as pillars of a forceful narrative imbued with national pride that drew strength from the country’s past accomplishments.54 The kingdom bestowed its virtues on its foreign rulers. From Roger the Norman, with his victories in the Levant, to the Swabians, with their participation in the Crusades, or the Angevins and the Aragonese, with their powerful navies, to the first modern war against the Ottomans, Fortunato praises the consistently decisive contribution of the Neapolitan navy to Christian success in containing Ottoman expansion in the Mediterranean or in keeping the presumptions of the Venetians and French in check. Nonetheless, this endowment of virtue did not halt the kingdom’s decline, for it was used for many centuries by foreign princes, most recently the greedy Spanish viceregal government. The long parenthesis could therefore only end with the glorification of the “proper king,” of the new Bourbon government that would restore to the kingdom the fruit of its natural gifts of wealth. It is telling that the vision of history which emerges from this revolves entirely around the power relations between peoples, the succession of “empires” and dominions, and that the slavery of the kingdom was initiated, in Fortunato’s account, by the Roman conquest of the Italic peoples. His focus on the glorious pre-Roman past probably developed during the lessons by Genovesi that he attended between 1757 and 1760.55 In the final chapter of the first volume of the Lezioni di commercio the abbot had praised the wealth and the good government of the ancient Italic peoples: their societies had no “feuds or trusts, [were] without friars, 53 Fortunato’s narrative was supported by Savary’s authority. With reference to the invention of the compass, the Dictionnaire traced the attribution to “un Italien du Royaume de Naples, nommé Flavio de Melphe, ou Flavio Gioia,” among the various hypotheses in circulation. Jacques Savary des Bruslons, Dictionaire universel de Commerce, vol. I (Amsterdam: Chez les Jansons à Waesberge, 1726), 60. In reference to the “Villes Hanseatiques,” he listed the Italian cities allied to the Hanseatic League as Naples, Livorno and Messina. Ibid., vol. III, P–Z (Geneva: Cramer & Philibert, 1742), 1114. 54 The achievements of the Kingdom of Naples, the subject of vast historiographical discussion, were the focus of numerous seventeenth-century books (for example Gio Bernardino Tafuri, Delle scienze e delle arti inventate, illustrate ed accresciute nel Regno di Napoli [Naples: presso il Parrino, 1738]), as brought to light by Daniela Ciccolella, “Un’impresa a improbabilità infinita: Napoli e la prima nave a vapore del Mediterraneo,” in Il Mediterraneo come risorsa. Prospettive dall’Italia, ed. Salvatore Capasso, Gabriella Corona and Walter Palmieri (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2020), 445–76: 445. 55 Antonio Genovesi, Lezioni di commercio o sia d’economia civile (Bassano: Remondini, 1769).

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without celibate priests, and without regulated militia. [They had] no smallpox, no colonies and no trade outside of Europe.”56 It is significant that Genovesi numbers among the reasons for the wealth of the ancient Italic peoples, the absence of extra-European colonial trade: this is a clearly disapproving reminder of the asymmetrical power relations on which contemporary commerce was based. The end of the liberty and prosperity of these peoples signalled the start of their moral and political decadence, which resulted from their obedience, their superstition, and the deprivation of amour-propre. Genovesi’s “anti-Imperial” account of ancient history was also coherent with his aspiration for a peaceful and not “arrogant” form of commerce. In this sense, while in his account the ancient societies were an example of liberty and of uncorrupted civil virtues, Fortunato above all praises the ancient art of war in the service of commerce, recalling the primacy of the pre-Roman Neapolitan nation and challenging the powerful trading nations, and not, like the more refined Genovesi, contrasting them with a different, peaceful, anti-colonial path to commercial society. The idea of Roman dominion as a rupture of a virtuous history constitutes the premise of Fortunato’s second work, the Discoverta.57 In question was not so much the controversial interpretation of the nature of the Roman Empire and its relations with commerce,58 since Fortunato in fact praises its maritime strength,59 as well as, as regards its financial system, its excellent policy of tributes,60 albeit while never defining it as a trading empire. The issue here was instead the impact

56 Ibid., vol. I, 326. 57 The Discoverta was made up of three parts. The first traced the “genealogical-

chronological” history of the early Italic nations, their customs and “robustness,” “from the ancient civil liberty […] to the servile break of the Romans,” Ibid., 75. The second, analytical, part demonstrates the original riches, both natural and cultural, of the ancient Kingdom of Naples, which it depicts as an “earthly paradise,” and the “oriental star of the cultured world,” Ibid., 11. The third part, on the contemporary state of the kingdom, for the most part picked up, and at some points amplified, the arguments of the 1760 Ragionamento. 58 On the nature of Roman rule as a field of interpretative tensions in eighteenthcentury histories of trade, see the chapter by Della Fontana in this volume. 59 Quoting Huet’s testimony about its dominant forces compared to those of Carthage, in Discoverta, vol. II, 81n. 60 Discoverta, vol. III, 141.

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of a foreign dominion61 on systems of government, those of the Italic people and of the bygone Kingdom of Naples, that needed to be restored to dignity in order to serve as models to follow in the present. With the Discoverta Fortunato also added a contribution to the rediscovery of ancient Italian history that had already been inaugurated by Giambattista Vico’s De antiquissima Italorum sapientia.62 Although a pre-Roman scientific historiography would be launched in the first half of the nineteenth century,63 when the problem of the nation exploded into consciousness and pre-Roman antiquity came to play an important role in the formation of the nationalist movement,64 there is no doubt that in Fortunato’s intellectual development we see a sort of epistemic movement which, from the myth of a past necessary to attempts to reform the present, turned towards a more analytical account based on the documentary value of material, numismatic and literary sources.65 The narrative of fable aimed to become historical truth, and at the same time to construct an idea of nationhood that anticipated the Romantic rhetoric of the coming century and the rise of the proto-national history.66 In the Discoverta the historical narrative sketched out in the Riflessioni assumed in fact a more sober and extended form. The comparison between the ancient state of the kingdom and its present degradation took on a more philological character centred entirely on the ancient Italic

61 “The Romans, and then the Barbarians overturned every system, and every admiral ancient policy from our regions.” Ibid., 9. 62 Giambattista Vico, De antiquissima Italorum sapientia […] (Naples: Felice Mosca,

1710); Andrea Lamberti, “Genovesi lettore di Vico: tra storia delle nazioni e nuova antropologia,” Laboratorio dell’ISPF XV 6 (2018): 1–11. 63 Massimo Pallottino, “Sul concetto di storia italica,” in L’Italie préromaine et la Rome

républicaine. Mélanges offerts à Jacques Heurgon, vol. 1 (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1976), 771–789. 64 See Antonino De Francesco, “La nazione impossibile. Antiquaria e preromanità nella politica culturale delle due Sicilie,” Mediterranea 41 (2017): 479–498. The historiography of the Kingdom of Naples attributes the myth of a primitive liberty of the Italic peoples destroyed by the Romans to Vincenzo Cuoco. 65 Something that can be likened to Zwierlein’s idea on the “constructive power” of ignorance. Cornel Zwierlein, Imperial Unknowns: The French and the British in the Mediterranean, 1650–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 66 On the subject of the development of national identities I refer to Beatrice Alfonzetti and Marina Formica, eds., L’idea di nazione nel Settecento (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2013).

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peoples: “warlike and robust sovereignty, as well as traders together,” an epitome of perfect harmony between commerce and war, whose “true history” seems almost a “fairy tale.”67 The nationalist emphasis here appears to obscure the strength of contemporary models,68 substituting them with the teaching of antiquity: here the reconstruction of the main urbanised civilisations of ancient southern Italy was aimed at providing King Ferdinand IV, to whom the Discoverta was dedicated, with exemplars of both good governance and the cyclical destiny of nations. Naples, Paestum and Velia were powerful seafaring republics in that they were founded on military virtue in the service of commerce, a valid exemplification for the present as much as that of Great Britain of the maxim that “the navy provides security for commerce.”69 The rise and fall of Sybaris after its defeat by Kroton, and the later experience of Capua, were instances of the destructive power of luxury.70 The history of the Samnites was an example of how the rigorous application of sanctions and recognitions could make nations strong and able to resist imperial conquest.71 Civil virtue, good governance and military power, all united for the benefit of commerce, were the lessons of ancient history that rulers must learn in order to restore freedom to a population abruptly deprived of it by Rome’s lust for power. The tension between the cosmopolitan interest in contemporary models and the search for a national way of addressing “globalisation,” implicit in the “translation” of Genovesi, could therefore lead to a more rhetorical and less refined vision than that of the “merchant philosopher”. “Roma, quod eras sum; quae modo es, quod eram”72 : Fortunato developed a narrative of identity based on national self-celebration in which the memory of the ancient bore witness to the historical possibility of the success of emulating contemporary models, and the circular destiny of civilisations promised the kingdom a renewed role of primacy, equal to 67 Discoverta, vol. I, 26. 68 “To See if the Powers that Terrify Europe Today Could Overshadow Our Kingdom

If It were in Its Ancient Vigour, and in Its Ancient Luminous Empire.” Ibid., 27. 69 Ibid., 47–52. In the Discorso, Fortunato cites Savary and above all the Teoria, y pratica de Comercio by Jerónimo de Uztáriz as his source on the general regulations on commerce and in particular of this “fundamental maxim.” Discorso, 277. 70 Discoverta, vol. I, 53. 71 Ibid., 63–6. 72 Fortunato, Riflessioni, 286.

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that achieved in its remote pre-Roman past, based on military values in the service of commerce.

“I Would Like This Nation to Trade Like Carthage, and to Think Like Ancient Rome”: Commerce as Supremacy and the Rediscovery of Latin Identity The underlying idea of Fortunato’s reflections—that commerce was the new form in which relations of domination between states were historically expressed—found a more open and theoretically more refined formulation in the writings of a much better known and politically successful intellectual. We know quite a lot, albeit perhaps not enough, about Michele de Jorio (1738–1806). He, like Fortunato, was influenced by Genovesi, and in 1798 took over his chair in commerce, that to which Fortunato had aspired in vain. De Jorio is not, however, generally included among Genovesi’s direct students, and in fact distinguished himself from most of them by remaining a member of the Bourbon regime even after the reactionary turn that followed the French Revolution and the uprisings it inspired in Naples. That said, his administrative and intellectual activity flourished in a phase marked by the determined relaunch of reform projects, as well as by the involvement of reformist intellectuals in government policy. De Jorio’s fame is due, however, to the fact that in the history of the kingdom he perhaps represents the fullest affirmation of expertise as a source of the legitimation of the sovereign authority and of its right to regulate, by means of positive law, the question of commerce.73 In 1779 he had in fact been commissioned by the Naval Minister, John Acton, to carry out the most organic and complete codification project for the regulation of navigation and trade that had yet been undertaken by the sovereign authority since Charles of Bourbon’s first attempts in the 1740s.74 The emphasis on strengthening the kingdom’s economy within the framework of international power relations converged in an intellectual elaboration which, in the case of de Jorio, appears to have owed 73 Ciccolella, Clemente and Salvemini, Presentazione. 74 Moschetti, Il Codice Marittimo di Michele de Jorio.

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much to the new science of commerce, “the science of making the people happy,”75 and to his programme of “freedom and protection” and to those theorists, such as Emer de Vattel, who, in theorising a “political equilibrium” based on the balance of trade,76 envisaged a possible solution to the problem of the kingdom’s subordinate position in international relations. De Jorio was born on the island of Procida, in 1738, to a bourgeois family. He moved to Naples to pursue his legal studies and to begin a career in law.77 His monumental project of the Storia del commercio e della navigazione dal principio del mondo sino ai giorni nostri remained unfinished not only because as it took shape it seemed to escape his control,78 but also because of the numerous commitments that he took 75 He would provide a complete definition of this, evidently inspired by the new science of commerce, in the Istruzioni di commercio. The science of commerce is not the art of negotiation, “it soars higher: its object are the principles of general trade and the way to exact profit from the local situation of the country, from its natural and relative strengths, from the production of its territory, from the industry of its subjects. It understands the rights, privileges and concessions of each nation in relation to its trade; it makes us conclude treaties advantageous to our own, and through this knowledge it causes an increase in the wealth, power and happiness of the state. […] It receives from History, which is the messenger of antiquity, all those lights that can be taken from experience, which with the rules of the past is always the master of things.” Michele De Jorio, Istruzioni di commercio e suo stato antico, e moderno, 6 vols. (Naples: Stamperia Simoniana 1804), vol. I, XCIII–XCIV. 76 The balance of Europe, “that great discovery of politics is no longer to be found in relationship of force,” but in commerce. Ibid., XXXII. Emer de Vattel’s Droit de gens, which Genovesi already knew, was translated in Naples in 1781. On this, see Antonio Trampus, “The Circulation of Vattel’s Droit de gens in Italy: The Doctrinal and Practical Model of Government,” in War, Trade and Neutrality: Europe and the Mediterranean in the Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Antonella Alimento (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2011), 225. On the reception of Vattel in France in the context of the new science of commerce, see Antonella Alimento, “The French Reception of Vattel’s Droit des gens: Politics and Publishing Strategies,” in The Legacy of Vattel’s Droit des gens, ed. Koen Stapelbroek and Antonio Trampus (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). 77 The biographical information comes from Silvio de Majo, Biografie napoletane. Sovrani, ministri, funzionari pubblici, soldati, economisti, giuristi, rivoluzionari del Settecento e dell’Ottocento (Naples: Belle Epoque Edizioni, 2017), 217–223. A more detailed biography can be found in Giuseppe Maria Fusco, Della vita e delle opere del marchese Michele de Jorio, Presidente del Sacro Regio Consiglio (Naples: Stamperia del Fibreno, 1848). 78 The plan for the work detailed in the first volume stated that one volume would cover history from the origins of the world to Augustus, but this in fact expanded to occupy the whole of the four published volumes. Already at the end of the first volume

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on in the Bourbon administration. On the strength of the first volume of the work, published in 1778, he was appointed a member of the newly established Accademia di Scienze e Belle Lettere, symbol of the now organic alliance between intellectuals and the monarchy,79 as well being given the task of overseeing the systematisation of commercial and maritime law: the Ferdinand Code, completed in 1781, also remained a “mere project,”80 and interrupted his work on the Storia, the second volume of which was published four years after the first, in 1782. After only one more year, the third and fourth volumes of the work appeared, with the narrative ending in the age of Augustus. A year later de Jorio became directly involved in the magistratures of the kingdom—from the Tribunal of the Admiralty and Consulate of the Sea to the Supreme Magistracy of Commerce, of which he was councillor and then head (1786–1799), to the Sacred Royal Council and his appointment as viceprotonotary of the kingdom (1799),81 in addition to a plethora of minor appointments82 —and this forced him to cease working on the Storia forever. His appointment as professor, in December 1798, was, however, an opportunity to resume his activities as an essayist, though only with some difficulty given the demands of his court duties.83 In 1799, he published La giurisprudenza del commercio, and in 1804 the Istruzioni di commercio e suo stato antico, e moderno. In this final work, de Jorio de Jorio advised the reader that the plan set out in the introduction had fallen through: “the subject matter has instructed me to no longer follow the architecture of the work given in the beginning, and thus I now intend to remove myself from the obligation to the Reader regarding the number of tomes and parts. I see that in this I am not my own master, so I ask permission to take that justifiable liberty which the scarcity or the fruitfulness of the argument can grant me.” Michele De Jorio, Storia del commercio e della navigazione dal principio del mondo fino ai giorni nostri, vol. I (Naples: Stamperia Simoniana, 1778), 446. 79 Elvira Chiosi, “‘Humanitates’ e Scienze. La Reale Accademia Napoletana di Ferdinando IV: storia di un progetto,” Studi Storici 30: no. 2 (1989): 435–456. 80 The project ran aground, according to Moschetti, because of the lack of oversight by the commissioners in charge, and was finally overtaken by the introduction of the Napoleonic Code during the French occupation. Moschetti, Il Codice Marittimo, LI. 81 Fusco, Della vita, 37. 82 De Majo, Biografie, 220. 83 De Jorio was then called to fill the role of Consigliere di S. Chiara: “The duties in the Gymnasium, being directed towards a different subject and object, were certainly not in great agreement with the frantic empire of the Court.” De Jorio, Istruzioni di commercio, vol. I, V.

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reworked the threads of his Storia, setting out its philosophic aim once more and complementing it, albeit with a didactic and decidedly more concise approach, with his account of modern commerce, which at the time had been abandoned.84 It is necessary to go back to the first steps of de Jorio’s intellectual career to understand a relationship with history which, unlike Fortunato’s, did not stem from an interest in the economy. Having just turned thirtythree, he began his writing career as an enthusiastic interpreter of the theology of history, publishing the Discorso sopra la storia de’ Regni di Napoli, e di Sicilia,85 a declared transposition to the two kingdoms— similar “in the title, in the introduction, in the division of its parts,” in its style and in its aim “to demonstrate the truth of the Catholic Religion from the history of the world”—of J. B. Bossuet’s Discours sur l’histoire universelle. The young de Jorio saw his work as a revelation of the design of Providence, which makes and destroys empires and fortunes to remind those who govern that their power is only loaned,86 while on the other hand glorifying the advent of the Bourbons as the final “incarnation” of the Catholic religion and of the secret divine design: “the true science of History is to observe in each period the secret arrangements that have led to the great changes.”87 To Antonio Genovesi, who reviewed the work, it appeared to be the product of the brilliance of the “studious youth” on whom he staked the renewal of the kingdom, although he also hoped that the “young author” could “at a more mature age dispense more light on the history of these very happy kingdoms.”88 In his mature production, de Jorio would retain his youthful search for a rationality of history, though he no longer sought it in the 84 De Jorio, Istruzioni di commercio, vol. VI, 496–500. 85 Michele De Jorio, Discorso sopra la storia de’ Regni di Napoli, e di Sicilia, per

dilucidare le mutazioni avvenute dal principio della loro fondazione fino a’ nostri giorni, e la continuazione della religione (Naples: Stamperia Simoniana, 1761). 86 Ibid., 358–59. 87 Ibid, 143. 88 Ibid., in the para-text, the judgement of Antonio Genovesi, 22 September 1761. The “translation” of Bossuet, who among other things was known for having defended the autonomy of the French monarchy from the papacy, must have met with the approval of the “regalist” Genovesi. On Genovesi’s unexpressed relationship with the history of the Kingdom of Naples in the final period of his life, which makes no reference to de Jorio’s experiment, see Girolamo Imbruglia, “L’ultimo Genovesi. Giannone, il regalismo e la storia,” in Rao, Antonio Genovesi, 113–130.

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“secret arrangements” of Providence but in the “secret relations” between commerce and the wellbeing of the state; no longer in theology, but in the science of commerce.89 The Storia del commercio, published eighteen years later, acknowledged that Huet’s Histoire du commerce et de la navigation des anciens (1716) had, for its wealth of information and its universality, been its “guide,” although he considered the work to be both eminently descriptive and “a little obscure.”90 He declared that, as regards the Storia, he was particularly indebted to the French science of commerce, and the work indeed manifested a universal character in two senses: as a history of the ancient and the modern—or, rather, as an updating of Huet—and as an interpretation of the events surrounding the rise and fall of empires that was at once legislative, historical and philosophic, and not a “mere account of the facts.”91 The identification of the history of trade with the universal history of mankind was predicated on the idea of the naturalness and original presence of commerce, an “object […] necessary to the existence of every society,” ancient and modern: “whoever wants to go through all its ages will see that the history of the most warlike nations is no less the history of their commerce as of their conquests.”92 In this translation of the history of trade into universal history, the object of commerce is elevated to a foundational element of civilisations and human progress, and its history becomes a fully-fledged history of civilisation. 89 He provided an extensive critical review of the science of commerce in the introduction, identifying its origins in English political arithmetic, while in France it was “abandoned to business people,” to the practical knowledge of traders (Savary, Giradeau). De Jorio, Storia del commercio e della navigazione, vol. I, 27 and 31. He then attributed the paternity of the French science of commerce to Melon, and named Forbonnais’s Élémens du commerce as the “most enlightening, most precise, and most profound to have appeared on the subject of commerce.” Ibid., 35. He also underlined the science of commerce’s debt to Montesquieu, and cited, as far as Spanish literature was concerned, Uztáriz and Ulloa. Ibid., 38–39. In de Jorio’s account, the elaboration of the knowledge of commerce as a matter of government, and the conceptualisation of it as a political affair that transcends the interest of individual merchants, is quite developed. On this, see Philippe Steiner, “Commerce, Commerce Politique,” in Charles, Lefebvre and Théré, Le cercle de Vincent de Gournay, 179–200. 90 “Being unaccompanied by appropriate considerations […] Our rational century is not content with the simple story of things, but wants to penetrate its spirit.” De Jorio, Storia del commercio e della navigazione, vol. I, 44. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid., 3.

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De Jorio’s premise was that no empire had ever been governed by force alone, but only the considered use of the science of commerce, its political government, could serve as the foundation of lasting power. From this point of view the form of government was irrelevant: de Jorio debunked the notion that commerce flourished in republics because these were grounded on the “freedom of commerce”; trade is an instrument of public utility if regulated, otherwise it serves nothing but private interest.93 He constantly reviewed these axioms through the unfolding of historical events: all the ancient civilisations practised commerce to some extent, and those that based their existence on it, like the Phoenicians, by spreading “in every country of the world the surplus of others,” produced knowledge and unified worlds.94 The trading nations civilised the “barbarians”: the Greeks, initially barbarous and predatory, were civilised by the Egyptians (a commercial civilisation, as argued by Huet, well before Ptolemies95 ) and by the Phoenicians, and founded their own civilisation on thalassocracy. Even the longevity of empires built on conquest could be guaranteed only by commerce: the empire of Alexander the Great was so extensive because it united the East and West in exchange,96 and the Roman empire, as previously argued by Huet, had a commercial basis.97 It was not in fact the spirit of conquest that made it endure, but rather its ability to support and protect commerce when, after the destruction

93 De Jorio, Storia del commercio e della navigazione, vol. IV (Naples: Stamperia Simoniana, Napoli 1783), 300. The demarcation of the meaning of free trade, not to be understood as an absolute license for private individuals, had been important to Genovesi. Reinert, La genesi, 178–179. 94 De Jorio, Storia del commercio e della navigazione, vol. I, 70. 95 De Jorio, Storia del commercio e della navigazione, vol. II (Naples: Stamperia

Simoniana, 1782), 110–111. 96 The empire of Alexander the Great, although obtained by conquest, depended on trade: Alexandria unified the two worlds of the East and West, and the trade with the Indies “was the basis of the wealth of ancient Europe, of the Europe of the middle ages, and of contemporary Europe.” Ibid., 40. This view also came from Huet. On the figure of Alexander the Great in the Enlightenment, see Pierre Briant, Alexandre des Lumières. Fragments d’histoire européenne (Paris: Gallimard, 2012). 97 Montesquieu stood in clear opposition. On the comparison between the two visions, see Massimiliano Bravi, “Montesquieu e la storia del commercio del mondo antico,” Revue Montesquieu 10 (2018): Available online, https://montesquieu.unibo.it/aticle/ view/7587.

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of Carthage98 and Corinth, due to “jealousy for their commerce,” and after a phase of corsair anarchy, Pompey re-established the policing of the seas. Before then the Romans, “greedy for conquests, and always intent on war, neglected trade, and did not make it their capital”99 : “This was not the application of the consistently warrior state, and only individuals engaged in it. But when the commerce of some few is not supported by the strength of the state it gradually falls away, and the obstacles that stand in its way then lead to its complete loss.”100 The dominion of the seas and lands was therefore the basis of Augustus’s empire, which de Jorio glorified as the apogee of Mediterranean maritime integration.101 As already said, after arriving at Augustus de Jorio interrupted his Storia, and of the overall plan for its continuation there remains only the intellectual project outlined in the introduction: citing on several occasions the new science of commerce in the popular version by Honoré Lacombe de Prézel,102 de Jorio presented his universal history as the illustration of the “happy revolution” that had changed the rules of the rise and fall of civilisations and empires. The assumption of this metareading was the idea—borrowed from Forbonnais and already acquired by Genovesi103 —that if in the ancient world commerce weakened states by way of luxury, making them prey to warrior nations, in the modern

98 “Commerce attracted the hatred and the jealousy of this supreme city [Rome], which was not content except when it saw it in ashes.” Michele de Jorio, Storia del commercio e della navigazione, vol. III (Naples: Stamperia Simoniana, 1782), 531. 99 Ibid, 535. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid., 667. 102 Honoré Lacombe de Prézel, Les progrès du commerce (Amsterdam et Paris: Chez

Augustin-Martin Lottin, 1760). De Jorio referred to him as “The Author of the Progress of Commerce printed in Amsterdam in 1760.” Storia del commercio e della navigazione, vol. I, 8. Lacombe de Prézel was the author of a Dictionnaire du Citoyen, ou Abrégé historique, théorique et pratique du commerce(Amsterdam, Aux depens de la compagnie, 1762) which had broadly been inspired by Forbonnais’s British Merchant. In the 1760 work, intended to disseminate the science of commerce, the following definition of the history of trade was provided: “Le devoir de l’Historien est de présenter les circonstances principales, d’y ajouter les réflexions que des Nations éclairées ont faites sur ces circonstances, d’examiner la conduite qu’ils ont tenue en conséquence: examen que l’on a trop souvent néglige quand on a parlé de cette Science, & qui cependant en forme la théorie la plus naturelle, la plus sûre, ou du- moins la plus constante,” VII–VIII. 103 See above, note 24.

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world it becomes “the basis and the origin of the power of states.”104 The nucleus of this revolution resides in the discovery of the principles of its government, in the art of making commerce the source of the happiness of the state.105 The science of commerce imparts the awareness that commerce and not war is the most efficient instrument with which to achieve “political equilibrium,” and “its history [of commerce] began to be regarded as an essential part of that of the empires.”106 A meta-narrative plan was therefore envisaged that in hindsight explicitly reproduced the Genovesi impasse, in other words the conflict, illustrated above, between the cyclical reading of the history of civilisations and the progressive role of trade. It appears that de Jorio theorised the commercial revolution as a breaking of the cyclical law of history, which was split, so to speak, in two: a period dominated by anacyclosis, the cyclical path of nations, and another dominated by the one-way progress of a humanity finally brought together by commerce. But this was no simple proposition of the thesis of doux commerce: commerce is not in itself the vehicle of peace, as de Jorio made clear when retracing, in his later Istruzioni di commercio, the conflicts of the eighteenth century, whose commercial nature was hidden behind dynastic pretexts: “in the end these would not have happened but for commerce […] the heroes in fact did not fight except for the merchants.”107 But above all commerce could be configured as a different form of conquest, in so far as it 104 De Jorio, Storia del commercio e della navigazione, vol. I, 4–5. If in the past force was the means of conquering and the cause of the ruin of “rich nations,” in the modern world “Commerce has come to connect itself with the political system of the States, and has become, due to the wealth that it procures, the basis and the support of the Empires rather than as before bringing about their fall and destruction.” And also, “At the time of the ancients Commerce, after enriching, destroyed. […] In later times Luxury has learned to conform with the rules of Politics and of Government, and has not caused these changes, that once brought about the death of Nations.” De Jorio, Storia del commercio e della navigazione, vol. IV, 299. 105 “Today Commerce has taken on a new aspect: its principles have been discovered, it has been brought into the system of sciences, and has been able to direct wealth to the conservation, and strength of the State where it was previously preparing its fall.” Storia del commercio e della navigazione, vol. I., 17. 106 Storia del commercio e della navigazione, vol. I, 1. This was a near-verbatim quotation from Forbonnais’s Discours préliminaire, in Le Négociant anglois (Amsterdam: Chez Francois Changuion 175), V: “L’Histoire du commerce est heureusement devenue une partie essentielle de l’histoire des Empires.”. 107 De Jorio, Istruzioni di commercio, vol. I, XXXII.

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made trading nations the masters of the destinies of other peoples. Thus even in de Jorio we find an explicit formulation of the mechanism of “dependency”: The Nation, which aspires to universal Rule, first of all seeks to enrich itself with the riches of nature […] By taking to others its surplus it places them in a position of dependency, and by introducing them to new necessities it bit by bit persuades them that they cannot live without them, or at least that they cannot do so with the ease that our weak nature seeks. Here, then, arises, imperceptibly, a dominion that the more it pleases and entices, the more is to be feared because it has its roots in what is thought to be human needs, which willingly come to be seen as real. Thus the more a nation goes down this path, the more it becomes dominant, and though it seems that it goes to other places in the guise of a friend to bring support and the comforts of life, a Political and Philosophical eye would observe the coming of an enemy who wants to build for itself another sort of Empire.108

The solution to the dilemma of dependency lay in the role of politics: on the one hand governments had to know how to make commerce the source of the wealth of the state, promoting advantageous trade, that is, trade which stimulated internal production,109 and on the other hand there was a need for an alliance of dependent peoples, who had no choice but to “grow between them reciprocal trade” and to copy the dominant nation’s protectionist policies: “in a word, one must do to them what they do to others, and hence the always equal balance in Europe.”110 This was a solution that echoed the calls for the formation of commercial alliances against English aspirations to establish a “universal monarchy” that had circulated in the 1760s through Accarias de Sérionne’s Journal de Commerce,111 which de Jorio considered a source of the most “excellent”

108 De Jorio, Storia del commercio e della navigazione, vol. I, 21. 109 “Commerce, which exports the manufactured goods of the Country; Commerce,

which enables our surplus to be consumed; the importation of foreign materials to be manufactured by us […] and the importation of foodstuffs to later be exported, these are examples of an advantageous Commerce.” De Jorio, Istruzioni di commercio, vol. I, 151. 110 De Jorio, Storia del commercio e della navigazione, vol. I, 22. 111 On this figure and the political context, see Antonella Alimento, “Raynal, Accarias

de Sérionne et le Pacte de Famille,” in Autour de l’abbé Raynal: genèse et enjeux politiques

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contributions to the science of commerce. In this constructivist “solution” the balance between the cosmopolitan and the patriotic impulses of de Jorio’s thinking tipped more and more evidently towards the latter. In the Istruzioni di commercio published in 1804 as an educational text for the “scholarly youth,” the recounting of the history of trade carried on, with more didactic overtones, where the author had left off.112 Here de Jorio’s scheme becomes clearer: the revolution of the modern world, the reduction of the barbarian races to mere tributaries of the trading nations,113 is identified with the civilising mission of Europe. This began with the commercial revival of the middle centuries, with the escape from barbarism following the fall of the Roman Empire. The resurgence of trade had unified the world, made mankind the master of nature, enriched the princes and given the peoples the abundance that “made them love work.” It had modified the “moral world” and the “maxims of politics,” and finally demonstrated that “iron and fire with all the scourges of war do not make the enemy tremble as much as a commerce that extends too far into the rival nation would.”114 The importance of industry and commerce as new pillars of the balance of power could replace war with commercial competition: “thus, without acquiring territories, one can expand from one sea to another by means of navigation and commerce, making all nations tributary to one’s own, and extending the general prosperity of men. By these means, it is possible to raise the sphere of the largest and brightest planets and connect with the political system of the first powers of the earth.”115 But the keystone of this equilibrium was the

de l’“Histoire des deux Indes”, ed. Antonella Alimento and Gianluigi Goggi (FerneyVoltaire: Centre international d’étude du XXVIIIe siècle, 2018), 33–45. 112 In the third book de Jorio summarises the ancient prospect of trade up to the middle ages. Here one might glimpse the plan for the narrative that remained suspended in the Storia del commercio e della navigazione, broken off at Augustus. De Jorio, Istruzioni di Commercio, vol. II, 311–332. 113 “In from one will bring Istruzioni

some places man has left behind his barbaric and savage ways and has extended end of the world to the other the chain of union and beneficence which all civilised nations closer together. This is the chain that we call commerce.” di Commercio, vol. I, XXVI.

114 Ibid., XXX–XXXI. 115 Ibid., XVI–XVII.

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European political balance, a barrier to war, which could still spring from the jealousy of commerce itself.116 In this history of a trading Europe—a producer of civilisation—de Jorio ultimately asserted that Italy and the Mediterranean had played the primary role. While Holland had rediscovered the power of commerce, and Great Britain had made it a science based on the spirit of calculation and common sense,117 the true instigator had been Italy, with its commercial rebirth in the middle centuries, its navigators, the compass and Columbus. It was with a view to claiming membership in this revolutionary history, therefore, that de Jorio tackled the theme of history and homeland memory, establishing a relationship similar to yet different from that of Genovesi and Fortunato. The fact that commercial primacy had passed to the Nordic countries that had been given the least by nature and history was proof that “everything […] can be done when one really wants to,”118 especially in those kingdoms, like Naples and Sicily, where nature had been generous, and whose people in ancient times had shown excellence in law, in military virtues and, naturally, in commerce. Even here the pride of the ancient Italic peoples who were able to challenge the Romans returns as evidence of their value, and the abundance of the population as proof of their wealth.119 Yet after the bounties of the earth had come the “disorder of the body politic,” the fall of the kingdom into foreign hands, the “slavery” at the hands of trading nations, like the Genovese and Tuscans who had concentrated the royal legacy in their hands. The regained political independence and the natural wealth of the Neapolitan kingdom nevertheless changed its destiny, so that it could “return to the ancient state, in fact with greater vivacity and to a greater extent.”120 To the time, that is, of the dominance of Amalfi, or of the richness of the ancient port of Brindisi, of the circumstances that led

116 War would destroy commerce, particularly because a war in Europe, given its influence on the world, would be a global war. De Jorio, Istruzioni di Commercio, vol. II, 130–131. 117 De Jorio, Istruzioni di commercio, vol. I, LXX–LXXIII. 118 De Jorio, Istruzioni di commercio, vol. VI, 416–17. 119 Ibid., 399. 120 Ibid., 403.

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Strabo to imagine Italy dominating the Mediterranean. “Naples, Naples, that’s what you are and what you could be.”121 In de Jorio, as in Fortunato, the history of trade thus drifted towards the didactic and identity role required by patriotic history. History indeed serves to look at the unfolding of laws of human development, making their learning immediately comprehensible and satisfying, but in this case also works to revive the Kingdom of Naples, to arouse its “valiant indignation” when thinking about how the arts and manufactures—transplanted twice, from the East to Greece and from Greece to Italy, one in Roman times and the other in Norman times—were preserved in these provinces for a long time, and communicated very late to those beyond the mountains. I then felt a deep regret at seeing the opposite fate, or how we have remained behind those who had been our disciples. It is certain that the English, French and Dutch, […] barbarians when we were great men, then began to be our masters, and even this political metamorphosis makes us blush, shakes us and makes us come to our senses. Allow me, powerful and industrious nations, to offer my sighs to the love of my country.122

Here, therefore, is the meaning of the science of commerce when applied to the Kingdom of Naples: rediscovering one’s role in European commercial civilisation, re-founding the arts and industries, education and culture,123 and reviving “the great Latin name.” It is significant that de Jorio’s account contains no traces of the reference to the Roman dominion as the beginning of the decline of the Italic peoples and their virtues but is instead built on the claim of Latin identity. Although there are echoes of pride in being of Italic descent, the past that de Jorio rhetorically and instrumentally recalls is the Roman one: “I would like this nation to trade like Carthage, and to think like ancient Rome.”124 While this was an empire built on conquest, it was one that was not substantially different from the present-day “peaceful” empires of commerce.

121 Ibid., 421. 122 Ibid., 524. 123 Ibid., 525: “for today the nation that is left behind is the ignorant nation”. 124 De Jorio, Codice marittimo: vol. III, ch. II, § 9. In Moschetti, Il Codice Marittimo,

210.

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If the anti-imperialist Genovesi and his followers therefore clung to the pre-Roman past to establish, rhetorically, the plausibility of rebirth, de Jorio argued for Italy’s centrality in the history of empires, and for its historic right to resume its place in the new empire whose form (trade versus conquest) had changed, but not its substance. In de Jorio’s discourse there is no substitution of contemporary models with ancient ones: the history of the world has changed, and the science of commerce is the instrument of power and empires. It is founded not on the virtues of the ancients, but on those, refined by luxury and the arts, of the moderns.

Final Considerations The visions of history that took root in Neapolitan Enlightenment discourse undoubtedly owed much to a vast European literature that confronted the intellectuals of the periphery with the dilemma of what role the kingdom was destined to play in the new balance of powers, based on an empire that differed not in substance, but certainly in form, compared to those of the past. Recent history came to their aid as a source of examples to follow in order not to succumb to the new dominion of the trading nations, but the logic of emulation contained within it the irreconcilable contradiction of the relation between the dominant and the dominated: did the latter have a third way between “receiving the law” and “giving the law?” Was there a possibility of avoiding the dependency without having to imagine an impossible reversal of the relations of power? Neapolitan philosophy sought an ethical and political elaboration of the third way, albeit without resolving the starting contradiction. In their reworking of a history of the homeland based on the myth of the ancient prosperity of the Mediterranean peoples, Genovesi’s followers found a precarious way out from the contradiction, recognising the reality of commerce as a dominion/dependency and asserting rhetorically a past glory that the good governance of the Bourbon monarchy could restore to the kingdom. This past was, for Fortunato, that of the Italic peoples still free from the oppression of the Roman empire, while for de Jorio it was the pride of being Latin, the right of the kingdom to participate in the European commercial civilisation that was able to subjugate the “barbarians,” and of which Italy had been the initiator. In both, the emphasis on military power in the service of commerce ultimately reflected the perception of a weakness of the kingdom’s merchant navy as a result

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of insufficient military protection. In the two accounts, the fulcrum of the relations between nations remained military or commercial power, or rather a combination of the two: an unavoidable lesson, with all due respect to the utopias of doux commerce, of the history of trade as a history of civilisations.

CHAPTER 9

The City, War and Modern Civilisation from the Perspective of Raynal’s Histoire Des Deux Indes Jenny Mander

Introduction In Desert Screen: War at the Speed of Light, Paul Virilio argues that “The city, the polis, is constitutive of the form of conflict called war, just as war is itself constitutive of the political form called the city.”1 The political space of which the French cultural theorist speaks in this context is the fortified city of feudal society where the walls did not just protect but also modulated the circulation and momentum of the urban masses. The feudal city was, from Virilio’s perspective, “a political space

1 Paul Virilio, Desert Screen: War at the Speed of Light (London: Continuum, 2002), 5, original emphasis.

J. Mander (B) Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Alimento and A. Della Fontana (eds.), Histories of Trade as Histories of Civilisation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80087-1_9

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of habitable inertia.”2 With the advent of more transportable and accelerated weaponry, the unassailable feudal city became exposed to external forces. Siege warfare gave way to the war of movement, heralding the arrival of a new political space of “habitable circulation,” a political space that, we must add, is still very much under construction: we have yet to find global solutions to the perennial “crisis” of migration just as we still live under the threat of ever faster and more deadly methods of war. Notwithstanding the drama of “total war” that is at the core of his critical analysis of modernity, Virilio insists, however, that his theory is essentially optimistic, remaining true to the principle of hope “that makes sense of history even as it crashes headlong into the wall of real time.”3 In the chapter that follows it is not my intention to engage in further detail with Virilio or his critique of the “Enlightenment project.” I shall, however, use his attention to the varying speeds of modernity as a lens to bring into spatial and temporal relief the critique of civilisation that emerges, often between the lines, in the abbé Raynal’s Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, first published in 1770, revised and significantly augmented in the second and third editions that followed in 1774 and 1780.4 Very possibly originating as a government commission, perhaps even from the duc de Choiseul himself, to better understand the historical reasons behind the humiliating series of French defeats that had left Britain in a position of apparent global preponderance, Raynal’s monumental history of European expansion overseas was conceived in the wake of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), the first truly global war, or, to quote from the Histoire itself: “one of those that hath been the most distressful to the human race” occasioning “ravages in the four quarters of the globe.”5 The drama of “total war,” in other words, appeared no 2 John Armitage, “Beyond Postmodernism? Paul Virilio’s Hypermodern Cultural Theory,” CTheory, electronic journal: http://www.ctheory.com/article/a90.html. 3 John Armitage, “From Modernism to Hypermodernism and Beyond: An Interview with Paul Virilio,” in Paul Virilio: From Modernism to Hypermodernism and Beyond, ed. John Armitage, (London: Sage, 2000), 26. 4 All references will be to Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissemens et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, 9 vols. (Geneva: Pellet, 1781), more familiarly known as Histoire des deux Indes. English translations are from A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies , trans. J. O. Justamond, 6 vols. (Dublin: Exshaw, 1784). 5 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 571.

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less real, no more extravagant a vision to the abbé and his contemporaries as to Virilio writing about the world of today. In what follows, my aim is to explore how the eighteenth-century historian frames the question in post feudal times of transnational movement, at ever accelerating speed, both in relation to the city and to “total war.” When seen from this perspective, we can see how international movement emerges within the Histoire des deux Indes as one of the greatest ethical challenges defining modernity, demanding not only the urgent attention of those who govern or those who negotiate international treaties but also the general public, those who remain “at home” and who do not think of themselves as being “on the move.” I shall suggest that Raynal, like Virilio, offers hope within a “catastrophic, not catastrophist”6 vision of the future, by inviting the reader through rhetorical, even novelistic strategies, to engage imaginatively not only with the past but also with different possible futures and feel prompted to take action. That action: to rethink civility beyond the limits of the city walls of feudal society that have left a conceptual, if not physical legacy in the conception of the polis in modern society and to adapt anachronistic notions of patriotism to the global landscape of modernity, replacing hostility with hospitality. To reconnect the history of trade with the history of civilisation, the reader—I shall argue—is urged to rethink both time and space with reference to the ethical principles on which civil society depends: respect and openness to others.

The Eye of the Storm The Histoire des deux Indes is a lengthy and complex work. Not only was it revised and extended in the light of new information and changing historical circumstances, it also drew material from multiple and diverse sources, published and unpublished.7 Raynal had close connections within ministerial circles, as evident in the subtitle of his École militaire, published in 1762 in the middle of the Great War, which boasts that the work had been commissioned by the government with an 6 Armitage, “From Modernism to Hypermodernism and Beyond,” 26. 7 On the publishing history of the Histoire des deux Indes see Hans-Jürgen Lüse-

brink, “Introduction Générale,” in Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes: Édition Critique, ed. Anthony Strugnell, Andrew Brown, Cecil Patrick Courtney, Georges Duclac and Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (Ferney-Voltaire: Centre Internationale d’Étude du XVIIIe Siècle, 2010), xxvii–lii.

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express mission, as the author explains in his preface, to animate patriotic fervour.8 He also was well connected with those in the colonial administration, with foreign diplomats, merchants, philosophes and scientists, a number of whom supplied him with text at various points in the composition or revision of his history.9 The focus of my analysis will be on book 10, for which there is a reasoned and not only pragmatic motivation. While it is evident that book 10 is deeply informed by contemporary political and philosophical debate, its contribution is made predominately through the mode of narrative rather than theoretical analysis. Structurally located at the epicentre of the nineteen books that make up the third edition of 1780, the eighteen chapters comprise a sweeping historical panorama from the geological past through to the present day of Raynal and his readers. They do so through a story, or even parable of islands and their relation to the wider world, taking up, in the context of an empirical and political history, the epistemological strategies and stakes laid out by D’Alembert in his Discours préliminaire to the Encyclopédie: it is only through parts that we can try and build up an understanding of the bigger picture but the parts are inherently connected—in ways that we may not yet see or understand—to the greater whole.10 The islands in question in the case of book 10 are those forming the Antilles, “the great Archipelago of America.”11 Standing by way of introduction to the four subsequent books that detail the settlements and commerce in this region, and the heinous slave trade on which that commerce depended, book 10 situates the more detailed history of the

8 “Elever les esprits & les animer à la défense de la patrie,” Raynal, École militaire: Ouvrage composé par ordre du governement (Paris, Durand: 1762), v. On patriotic propaganda under the ministry of the duc de Choiseul, and on Raynal’s own role as a political propagandist, see Edmond Dziembowski, Un nouveau patriotisme français, 1750–1770: La France face à la puissance anglaise à l’époque de la guerre de Sept Ans (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2014), 444–453. 9 For further details on the sources and, in particular on the textual contributions of Diderot and the botanist Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, see Jenny Mander, “Présentation du livre X,” in Histoire philosophique et politique, ed. Strugnell et al., 11–19. 10 “L’univers n’est qu’un vaste Océan, sur la surface duquel nous appercevons quelques îles plus ou moins grandes, dont la liaison avec le continent nous est cachée,” Jean le Rond d’Alembert, “Discours préliminaire des Éditeurs,” in Front Matter. University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Autumn 2017 Edition), ed. Robert Morrissey and Glenn Roe, http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/. 11 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 453.

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Atlantic trade within a much broader, indeed “elemental,” drama of earth, wind, fire and water. It is a drama in which the islands are identified as the focal point of global conflict, negotiation and debate: “the origin of so many quarrels and negotiations […] and so many reflections.” Indeed, this once “peripheral” archipelago has become so central to the activities of the modern world, the historian feels that he can say, without exaggeration, that it is the prime mover of global agitation: “the first cause of all the great events that at present disturb the peace of the globe.”12 It is, we might say, at the eye of the storm. The overarching subject of book 10 is the settlement of the European nations in the Antilles and it is true that the narrative incorporates the arrival in 1625 of the French and English on Saint-Christophe (St Kitts), allegedly on the very same day, and the consequences of their progressive settlement of the islands for those already living on them, namely the Kalinago or Island Caribs and the small remnant of Spanish settlers, now forgotten by their country and living “in a state of indolence […] their slaves had no other employment but to swing them in their hammocks.”13 Essentially, however, book 10 presents a survey of modern European diplomacy that is narrated through the cycle of wars engulfing the eighteenth century, from that of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) to the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). This portrait of modern European war is prefaced by a natural history which describes the nature of the soil, flora and fauna, the challenges of the tropical climate, devastating storms and other “ordinary phenomena” that the historian associates with the torrential rain: earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes. This chorological survey begins, in turn, with a conjectural discussion as to the geological formation of the islands, both in this region and more generally, speculating in the original edition of 1770 that they had been detached from the continent by the relentless motion of the oceans, more violent at the equator “where the ocean seems, as it were, willing to break through all the boundaries [les digues ] nature opposes to it, and, opening to itself a free an uninterrupted course, forms the equinoctial line.”14 To this “Neptunian” explanation, the edition of 1774 adds the explosive force of newer “Plutonian” geological reasoning: “All the islands of the world

12 Ibid., 572. 13 Ibid., 486. 14 Ibid., 459.

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seem to have been detached from the continent by subterraneous fires, or earthquakes.”15 Resonating with Jean-François Melon’s famous island parable in the first chapter of his Essai politique sur le commerce (1734), the historian of the Histoire des deux Indes deploys the language of natural philosophy in this way to foreground what will emerge as the major “fault line” subtending modernity and from which cataclysmic eruptions are to be expected unless urgently addressed: the question of the nation state in global context. Positioned at the very centre of book 10, the hinge, as it were between the natural and modern political histories that are narrated in the chapters either side, is a lengthy chapter devoted to the extraordinary activity of the “freeboosters” [flibustiers ]—those “restless” “energetic” and “romantic” [romanseque] souls, who, for a variety of reasons, turned their back on family, friends and country to make a new “home” on the high seas, living each day as if it were their last, through plunder and pillage and then, through “all the excesses of debauchery and profusion,” dissipated their riches as quickly as they had gained them.16 To the emblematic function of these “banditti” [brigands ], driven by “an unbounded passion for liberty and independence” we shall return.17 The survey of modern European politics, presented as a devastating history of ever more expensive and extensive war over the course of the eighteenth century, is thus embedded within a broader history of natural “revolutionary” energy and piracy.18 Already in 1770 it was more than evident that Peace of Paris (1763), which marks the conclusion of book 10, would not leave Europe and the colonial world in a state of lasting tranquillity. By the time of the third edition in 1780, France was again at war against Britain, this time on the side of the thirteen rebel colonies in America. The inevitable splitting apart of the New World anticipated more obliquely in the conjectures relating to the formation of islands, seemed

15 Ibid., 457. 16 Ibid., 523. 17 Ibid., 520. 18 The historian frequently uses the term of “revolution” in the natural historical sense

of the period to refer to the upheavals wrought by nature which, it is to be noted, are attributed to the natural or scientific laws of motion: “Whatever may be the secret causes of these particular revolutions, the general cause of which results from the known and universal laws of motion, their effects, however, will be always sensible to every man, who hath the resolution and sagacity to perceive them,” Ibid., 459.

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now to have begun.19 What would this mean for Europe? Would political history follow the same pattern as nature, where the sedimentary layers of the earth seem to point to a cycle by which the oceans successively swallow up one or other continent such that “each hemisphere, alternately, becomes a prey to the devastations of the ocean”?20 Of the many revisions and additions to the 1780 edition of the Histoire, in the case of book 10 there are comparatively few variants that concern matters of substance. The most significant revisions, identifiable in nearly all cases as being made by Diderot, serve to clarify and foreground a political and philosophical thesis or “storyline” (to use a perhaps more appropriate word) that was already very much in place in 1770. Of these is the new exordium, one of a series added to each of the books in the third edition. This new introduction, I will suggest, helps foreground Raynal’s preoccupation with the potentially terminal challenge posed to European civilisation by unethical global movement.

Making Sense of History Even as It Crashes Headlong into the Wall of Real Time: The Space Between Catastrophe and Hope Before turning to the question of what the historian describes as the “metamorphosis” of the European ex-patriot that, as we shall see, is the focus of specific enquiry in book 10, it will be helpful to turn briefly to the new pages added at the very beginning of Raynal’s history, that is to say, to book 1. These will help to establish further the central philosophical, political and not simply structural place occupied by book 10 within the architecture of the Histoire des deux Indes as a whole, locating its catastrophic vision of European civilisation in a history of commerce that presents another possible future. Indeed, the new introductory pages at the beginning of the opening volume conclude with a confident and optimistic vision of commerce as a civilising force. It is a vision in which commerce has transformed the 19 A telling line is added to the third edition speaking of “that state to which the freedom of the New World, sooner or later accomplished, will bring all nations that have formed settlements there.” Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 557. Compare with Mirabeau, “Le nouveau Monde certainement secourera le joug de l’ancien,” L’Ami des Hommes: ou Traité de la population (Avignon: n.p., 1756), vol. III, 193. 20 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 459.

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landscape and has brought its occupants from the darkness of barbarism into a world in which the plains have been drained, the water rechannelled through canals that connect the people who have been gathered together in cities in which the arts and sciences flourish. It is a vision where all enlightened voices from across the globe concur with the historian that commerce is the answer to the question of civilisation. It is, however, a vision that is rhetorically conceived from a point that cannot be found on earth. A point that the historian has reached through a lifetime studying the evidence and through wide consultation. A point that humanity has not yet reached and perhaps never will. In short, a point that the historian has reached through a stratospheric leap of faith. The passage in question merits quoting at some length: The first duty that is incumbent on us, the first care we ought to attend to, when we treat of things important to the happiness of mankind, is to expel from our minds every idea of hope or fear. Raised above all human considerations, it is then we soar above the atmosphere, and behold the globe beneath us. From thence it is that we let fall our tears upon persecuted genius, upon talents neglected, and upon virtue in distress. From thence it is that we pour forth imprecations on those who deceive mankind, and those who oppress them and devote them to ignominy. From thence it is that we see the proud head of the tyrant humbled and covered with dust, while the modest front of the just man reaches to the vault of the skies. From thence it is, that I have been enabled to cry out, I am free, and feel myself upon a level with the subject I treat. It is from thence, in a word, that, viewing those beautiful regions, in which the arts and sciences flourish, and which have been for so long a time obscured by ignorance and barbarism, I have said to myself: Who is it that hath digged these canals? Who is it that hath dried up these plains? Who is it that hath founded these cities? Who is it that hath collected, clothed, and civilized these people? Then have I heard the voice of all the enlightened men among them, who have answered: This is the effect of commerce.21

The new opening pages inserted into the Histoire are, however, far from naive. If this grandiloquent vision of commerce as a civilising force 21 Ibid., vol. 1, 3–4. For a “eurocentric” critical discussion of this passage, see Ottmar Ette, “Passage: Eye, Ear and the Place of Writing,” in Literature on the Move, transl. Katharina Vester (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2003), 69–109. For a response see Jenny Mander, “Colonial connections: Authorship, Paternity, and Posterity in a Global Market,” Romanic Review 103 (2021): 347–365.

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provides a terminus ad quem for human history, the opening paragraphs begin by explicitly acknowledging that commerce is no straightforward answer to the question of modern civilisation, it is, rather, the central question. Indeed, we might even say that for Raynal, it is the very question, pace Foucault,22 that defines modernity, as heralded by the voyages of Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus at the end of the fifteenth century and their discovery of two new trade routes by which Europe could be joined to the East and West Indies. Connecting the world through oceanic trade inaugurated modernity by setting off a chain reaction of still-ongoing revolutions: It gave rise to a revolution in the commerce, and in the power of nations; as well as in the manners, industry, and government of the whole world. At this period, new connexions were formed by the inhabitants of the most distant regions, for the supply of wants they had never before experienced. The productions of climates situated under the equator, were consumed in countries bordering on the pole; the industry of the north was transplanted to the south; and the inhabitants of the west were clothed with the manufactures of the east; a general intercourse of opinions, laws and customs, diseases and remedies, virtues and vices, was established among men.23

The new opening of the Histoire thus underscores how the European conquest of the planetary ocean has not only transformed the context but also the fundamental dynamics through which historical change takes place in the modern era: global in scale, local in impact, commerce is continuously putting each part in motion through its interconnectivity with the whole. The world has not, and may never reach a state of dynamic equilibrium.24 The question that now explicitly frames the 22 “What is modern philosophy? Perhaps we could respond with an echo: modern philosophy is the philosophy that is attempting to answer the question raised so imprudently two centuries ago: Was ist Aufklärung?” Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” in The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 32. 23 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 1, 1–2. 24 A concept that would only begin to be scientifically understood through the chemical

experiments of Claude-Louis Berthollet (1748–1822). Meanwhile, Diderot and Raynal were continuously seeking that point in the context of human civilisation where humanity would be poised in a state of balance between infancy and old age, between rise and fall: “Dans tous les siècles à venir, l’homme sauvage s’avancera pas à pas vers l’état civilisé. L’homme civilisé reviendra vers son état primitif; d’où le philosophe conclura qu’il existe

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Histoire in its third edition is whether or not the dynamic change of modernity is conducive to civilisation. This is a question that is asked as much of the future as the past and one that identifies peace, pleasure and happiness as the criteria for evaluation measured against the scale of global humanity: “Everything has changed, and must change again. But it is a question, whether the revolutions that are past, or those which must hereafter take place, have been, or can be, of any utility to the human race. Will they ever add to the tranquillity, the happiness, and the pleasures of mankind? Can they improve our present state, or do they only change it?”25 It is—we should emphasise—in order to address the question of the future of civilisation that the historian turns to consider the past in the light of this question. In sharp distinction to the lofty vision of commerce and the civilising potential that is revealed to the historian while floating at a stratospheric height above the planet, the empirical history that he traces over the subsequent nineteen books is told from on the ground. Indeed, he will frequently refer to following those who have embarked from the ports of Europe “in their footsteps” and confess that the horrors he witnesses leave him repeatedly in tears, lamenting the historiographical mission that is his to undertake. From this “grounded” perspective modern European history emerges as one of regression not progression: regression not to a state that is anterior to civilisation such as is associated by Europeans with those that they encountered in the New World to whom they (and Raynal) gives the epithet of “savage” [sauvage]. In leaving Europe and travelling across the seas, Europeans have regressed to a state of barbarism—one that is actively hostile to the values of civilisation. Elsewhere in the Histoire they are likened to the Visigoths from whom, or from whose slaves, they are the descendants.26 As Pocock has argued, this is a self-consciously “eurocentric” history in so much as modern Europeans are measured against the standards of their own past history

dans l’intervalle qui les sépare un point où réside la félicité de l’espèce. Mais qui est-ce qui fixera ce point? Et s’il étoit fixé, quelle seroit l’autorité capable d’y diriger, d’y arrêter l’homme?” Histoire philosophique et politique, v. 14. 25 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 1, 2. 26 “The Spaniards, the descendants or slaves of the Visigoths […] The savage, proud,

and rapacious Spaniards,” Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 270.

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and very much found wanting.27 Just as in book 10 Raynal invites the reader to read the history of modern Europe and consider its future against the patterns of the geological past and the cyclical rhythms of nature, the rise and fall of the great civilisations of antiquity, a ubiquitous point of comparison, of course, in political thought of the period, is never far from mind. Modernity, in this regard, is presented by Raynal as the new “Migration Period” and Europeans the new Barbarians: will their depredations on other continents result in the destruction of European civilisation, or, as is thought to have been the case in Ancient Rome, is the barbaric behaviour of the “expatriate European” already a symptom and sign of Europe’s decline?

Time, Travel and the Metamorphosis of the Expatriate European This is the question that dominates the 1780 exordium to book 10 where we are invited to continue our journey “on foot” with the historian: Hitherto we have been only proceeding from one scene of horror to another; in following the steps of the Spaniards and of the Portuguese. Let us now see whether the English, French, Hollanders, and Danes, whom we are going to accompany into the islands, have shewn themselves less savage than those who took possession of the continent. Will the inhabitants of these limited spaces be exposed to the deplorable destiny of the Peruvians, of the Mexicans, and of the Brazilians?28

The reader, alas, already knows the answer to the rhetorical question posed by the historian. The Kalinago people or Caribs that were encountered by the French and English in the Lesser Antilles on their arrival had largely been exterminated in the genocide of 1626 and those still alive had been “concentrated” on the islands of Dominica and SaintVincent. Meanwhile the other islands had been divided between France and Britain and these arrangements “ratified” by a treaty in 1660 which

27 J. G. A. Pocock, “Commerce, Settlement and History: A Reading of the Histoire des Deux Indes,” in Articulating America: Fashioning a National Political Culture in Early America. Essays in Honor of J. R. Pole, ed. Rebecca Starr (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 15–44. 28 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 453.

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the Carib chiefs could do little other than sign. We can nonetheless note that the question is posed in terms of spatial asymmetry, inviting the reader to reflect on what happens to previously insular spaces when they get caught up in global exploration and commerce (an encounter that, of course, structures the critical analysis inherent in Diderot’s Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville, a text on which he was working in tandem with his contributions to Raynal’s project). If the fate of those living on the islands is now largely sealed, the question that remains live concerns what is happening to Europe as she drives these changes—there was still perhaps enough time for this perplexing issue to be addressed. The focus of the historian’s consternation is the curious phenomenon which he describes in terms of the “metamorphosis” of the “expatriate European” or in the English translation of Justamond: “This change of character in the European who quits his country.” How is it that on leaving their own continent, previously “civilised men” irrespective of their European nationality, invariably become “more barbarous than the savage” even though they had been brought up “in the midst of polished cities [villes policées ] in which a rigid exercise of justice must have accustomed them to respect their fellow creatures”?29 Here we reach the crux of my argument: the inadequate relationship that has arisen in modernity between patriotism and civility. Outside the limits of his home city, so Raynal’s underpinning argument goes, the respect of the European citizen for other human beings evaporates. Why? This is a question and not just a theme that runs prominently through the first edition of the Histoire and is posed yet more urgently and explicitly in the third edition, drawing attention to the emblematic function of the flibustiers whose portrait occupies the epicentre of this central book. The reflections that begin book 10 in this third edition on the perplexing metamorphosis of the expatriate European extend a thread that is also woven into the new opening pages of the preceding book in the context of an analysis of “national spirit” [l’esprit national ]: a concept, clearly owing much to Montesquieu and his Esprit des Lois (a considerable

29 Ibid., 453.

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influence on the Histoire des deux Indes ) and which, in the Germanspeaking world was beginning to be referred to as “nationalism.”30 A prosperous and happy nation, the historian declares at this earlier juncture, is one where its physical position, fixed by that part of the globe it inhabits, is in alignment with its more “speculative principles” [principes spéculatifs ] which are to be found by consulting its annals: “Then it is, that it advances rapidly towards that splendour, opulence and felicity to which it may be allowed to aspire from a free use of it’s local resources ” (my italics).31 It is to be noted here, as elsewhere, the extent to which Raynal’s “economics of happiness” (as they might only somewhat anachronistically be called) are locally grounded and expressed in the language of self-sufficiency. Although the Histoire does not, as we shall see, promote isolationism, its understanding of human and societal wellbeing entail a fundamental suspicion of he who is continuously “wandering” on the road or the high seas. As he puts it again in a later book in the Histoire where the introduction again focuses on the evaporation of patriotism when far from home: “Doth our real happiness require the enjoyment of the things which we go in search of at such a distance? Is it our fate for ever to persevere in such factitious inclinations? Is man born eternally to wander between the sky and the waters? Is he a bird of passage, or doth he resemble other animals, whose most distant excursions are exceedingly limited?”.32 Much of the philosophical reflections relating to the “immoral traveller” reflects thinking expressed by Diderot elsewhere. A passage, for example, in his Salon de 1767 in which he equates the state of the traveller with one of profound homelessness as experienced by those who have lost or have never had father, mother, children and friends is recycled almost verbatim in the Histoire where the traveller is likened to the libertin who is satiated by pleasures at home and rather than sit down

30 See Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2010), 499–504; Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 7. 31 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 310. 32 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 4, 312. The passage continues: “L’indi-

vidu, dont la vie se passe à voyager, a-t-il quelque esprit de patriotisme; & de tant de contrées qu’il parcourt, en est-il une qu’il continue à regarder comme la sienne?” Histoire philosophique et politique, vol. VII, 2.

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with his wife and children seeks new thrills elsewhere.33 In the context of his aesthetic writings Diderot identifies the ethical challenge presented by the immoral voyageur in terms of a surfeit of energy. Nature, he suggests, gives each of us a certain portion of energy for our conservation but this needs to be in balance with our inherent inertia—and rarely is.34 In the case of the new barbarian or expatriate European, their incivility is presented in the Histoire as a function of imbalanced energy: “Doth not the history of all societies prove to us, that those men on whom nature hath bestowed an extraordinary degree of energy, are most commonly villains [scélérats ]?”.35 In the context of book 9’s discussion of national sentiment, energy is introduced into the analysis of the unethical behaviour of the expatriate European not only in terms of human nature but also discourse. The national “spirit,” so necessary for the good of the nation as a whole, has little purchase on the behaviour of individuals, says the historian: “The capitals of empires are the center of the national spirit, that is to say, the places where it displays itself with the greatest energy in words, and where it is the most completely neglected in actions.” It is therefore not surprising that as this national sentiment is fostered by little more than metropolitan clamour, its influence steadily decreases with each step from the capital city, revealing it to be nothing more than a superficial mask that slips and then falls off on crossing the frontier: “In proportion as the distance from the capital increases, this mask detaches itself; it falls off on the frontiers; and, between one hemisphere and another, is totally

33 Oeuvres de Denis Diderot, ed. Laurent Versini (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1994–1997), v. 693. The passage is recycled in book 9 of the Histoire philosophique et politique: “Qu’il soit permis de le dire, il n’y a point d’état plus immoral que celui de voyageur. Le voyageur par état ressemble au possesseur d’une habitation immense qui, au lieu de s’asseoir à côté de sa femme, au milieu de ses enfans, emploieroit toute sa vie à visiter ses appartemens,” v. 16. On the widespread early modern suspicion of the traveller see also Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c.1500–c1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 156–177. 34 “Avec un fond d’inertie plus ou moins considérable, Nature qui veille à notre conservation nous a donné une portion d’énergie qui nous sollicite sans cesse au mouvement et à l’action. Il est rare que ces deux forces se tempèrent si également, qu’on ne prenne pas trop de repos et qu’on ne se donne pas trop de fatigue, l’homme périt engourdi de mollesse ou exténué de lassitude,” Oeuvres de Denis Diderot, v. 693. 35 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 454.

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lost.” Thus, overseas, the European becomes nothing—he loses all framework for ethical social interaction and behaves like a caged tiger when released into the forest: “When a man hath crossed the line, he is neither an Englishman, a Dutchman, a Frenchman, a Spaniard, or a Portuguese. He preserves nothing of his country, except the principles and prejudices which give a sanction to his conduct, or furnish him with an excuse for it […] he is a domestic tiger again let loose in the woods, and who is again seized with the thirst of blood.”36 When the historian reprises this topic in book 10 he indeed wonders “Whether a man who is freed, by whatsoever cause, from the restraint of the laws, be not more wicked than the man who hath never felt this restraint?”.37 As Raynal returns, again and again, to the immorality of the traveller— a veritable leitmotif of the Histoire—we find that expatriation exposes the superficiality of European civility. At home Europeans maintain a veneer of civilised behaviour but, on crossing the frontier, this is shown to have been a function of “police”—superficial politeness—lacking an ethical foundation. It is therefore unsurprising, as the historian observes in yet another context, that “the sentiments of humanity grow weaker, the most distant we are from our native country.”38 As the chevalier de Jaucourt explains in his Encyclopédie article on the subject, people should not want to leave their country because it is the source of their happiness.39 From this perspective, patriotism presupposes a love of those laws that safeguard freedoms and pleasures. Civility, on the other hand, if properly understood (as de Jaucourt puts it in another article) concerns the

36 Ibid., 310–311. 37 Ibid., 454. 38 Ibid., 269. 39 “La patrie, disoient-ils, est une terre que tous les habitans sont intéressés a conserver,

que personne ne veut quitter, parce qu’on n’abandonne pas son bonheur, et où les étrangers cherchent un asyle. C’est une nourrice qui donne son lait avec autant de plaisir qu’on le reçoit. C’est une mere qui chérit tous ses enfans, qui ne les distingue qu’autant qu’ils se distinguent eux-mêmes; qui veut bien qu’il y ait de l’opulence & de la médiocrité, mais point de pauvres; des grands & des petits, mais personne d’opprimé; qui même dans ce partage inégal, conserve une sorte d’égalité, en ouvrant à tous le chemin des premiers places; qui ne souffre aucun mal dans sa famille, que ceux qu’elle ne peut empêcher, la maladie & la mort; qui croiroit n’avoir rien fait en donnant l’être à ses enfans, si elle n’y ajoutoit le bien-être.” “Patrie” in University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Autumn 2017 Edition), ed. Robert Morrissey and Glenn Roe, http://encyclopedie.uch icago.edu/.

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respect of others and the exercise of natural law.40 Against these three measures of freedom, happiness and respect for others, European civilisation is brought into question by the metamorphosis of the expatriate European and his reversion to barbarism. Yet there is also a curious yet significant temporal dimension that informs the “patriotic” contours of freedom and pleasure that is foregrounded in book 9 and that merits brief discussion before considering the flibustiers in book 10 who are located at the core of Raynal’s critical analysis of modern European politics, commerce and its intersection with the history of civilisation. In discussing the process by which the European loses the mask of civility as he travels far from his country of origin, the historian emphasises the compression of time that also distorts his behaviour. Overseas the European is “eager [pressé] to acquire wealth, and to enjoy it: and capable of all the enormities which can contribute most speedily [le plus rapidement ] to the completion of his designs.”41 This is indeed also a point emphasised at the beginning of book 10 where the historian connects the devastation wrought by those “villains” [scélérats ] with too much energy to the length of the travel time and the need to return quickly which accelerate and intensify the violence of accumulating the riches needed to amortize the investment of time and capital in the expedition: “The danger of a long stay, and the necessity of a speedy return, added to the desire of justifying the expenses incurred in the enterprise, by a display of the riches of the lately discovered countries, must necessarily have occasioned and accelerated the violent steps taken to acquire the possession of them.”42 This compression of time, foregrounded here in relation to the unethical comportment of the expatriate European, underpins Raynal’s analysis of patriotism when later in book 9 he considers it from an anthropological rather than political perspective. From this perspective, patriotism

40 “La civilité, prise dans le sens qu’on doit lui donner, a un prix réel; regardée comme un empressement de porter du respect & des égards aux autres, par un sentiment intérieur conforme à la raison, c’est une pratique de droit naturel, d’autre plus loüable qu’elle est libre & bien fondée,” “Civilité, politesse, affabilité” in University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Autumn 2017 Edition), ed. Robert Morrissey and Glenn Roe, http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/. 41 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 311. 42 Ibid., 454.

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emerges as a form of nostalgia. The historian argues that “savages”— in this context the Brazilians, although book 10’s Caribs illustrate the same anthropological presuppositions—show no attachment for the places where they were born. They are equally at home wherever they are. The reason for this is that they are able to enjoy the pleasures brought to them by nature at every stage of their life and they do not sacrifice happiness in the present in the hope of a better future or against fears of old age: “the savage, who enjoys all the pleasures and advantages peculiar to every period of his life, and does not abstain from them in expectation of greater indulgence in old age [ne les sacrifie pas à l’espérance d’une vieillesse moins laborieuse] finds equally, in all places, objects suited to his desires, and feels that the source of his pleasures is in himself, and that his country is every where [sa patrie est par-tout ].” By contrast, as social man develops in mind and strength, “he loses sight of the present, and is wholly intent upon the future.” As he focuses speculatively on the years ahead, the historian says that he sacrifices the prime years of his life, deferring his enjoyment of life—effectively putting life itself on hold. As a result, he experiences the present as a compressed time of anxiety and resentment: “The heart denies itself what it wishes for, laments the indulgences it has allowed itself, and is equally tormented by it’s self-denials and it’s gratifications.” Patriotism emerges in this modern economy of deferred pleasure built upon the accumulation of wealth as a longing for the kind of lived immediacy—the freedom to enjoy life—that was once known as a child: “The civilized man incessantly deploring his liberty which he hath always sacrificed, looks back with regret on his earliest years, when a succession of new objects constantly awakened his curiosity, and kept his hopes alive. He recollects with pleasure the spot where he passed his infant days; the remembrance of his innocent delights endears them to his imagination, and forcibly attracts him to his native spot [sa patrie].” In this fascinating passage, “the love of our country, which is a ruling passion in civilized states […] is foregrounded as “a factitious sentiment arising from society, but unknown in the state of nature.”43 It appears therefore in this context that patriotism is also understood by the historian as an emotional response to what Lukács and others have described as the “transcendental homelessness” of the alienated state of being in modernity, exposing this homelessness as a function of modern

43 Ibid., 322.

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space-time.44 For the author(s) of the Histoire des deux Indes, what is at stake is happiness: where can it be found and how is a national and global economy of happiness to be structured in this modern era? In part, at least, this is informed by the natural laws relating to Newton’s laws of forces, motion and energy that can, as first proposed and tested by Émilie du Châtelet, never be destroyed or created but only ever transformed or transferred from one form to another—laws that underpin the natural historical “preface” of book 10.

Repression, Piracy and the Explosive Spirit of Freedom Epitomising the destructive energy, associated as we have seen with the expatriate European, are the seventeenth-century flibustiers, to whom Raynal devotes the very lengthy middle chapter of book 10, recycling pages that he had already published in the École militaire, which, we can recall, was dedicated to instilling patriotic courage not only among the military but also the wider public.45 While the tropical climate of the Antilles had reduced its indigenous population and the subsequent Spanish settlers to lethargy and indolence, the former spending much of the time smoking or sleeping in their hammocks, the latter “habitued to ease and dejection,” the flibustiers, having left the most temperate regions of the earth, seemed to “acquire powers unknown before.” The flibustiers conform, furthermore, to the portrait of the “homelessness” of the immoral traveller in their description as being “destitute of connections, of relations, of friends, of fellow citizens, of a country, and of an asylum.” Additional lines inserted in the conclusion in 1780 also make it very clear that they are brigands who committed outrages against humanity on a daily basis and, echoing the language of the exordium, insist: “Had they not gone to ravage those distant countries, they would have ransacked our provinces, and would have left behind them a name famous in the catalogue of our greatest villains [scélérats ].” Nevertheless, 44 Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel, trans. A. Bostock (London: Merlin, 1916), 40 and 60. 45 See Kenta Ojhi, “Raynal auto-compilateur. Le projet d’une histoire politique de l’Europe moderne, des Mémoires historiques à l’Histoire des deux Indes,” in Raynal’s Histoire philosophique et politique des deux Indes: Colonialism, Networks and Global Exchange, ed. Cecil Courtney and Jenny Mander (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2015), 121–136.

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the historian cannot conceal his fascination, even admiration for these men, who had “an unbounded passion for liberty and independence” which “excited and kept up in them that energy of soul that enables us to undertake and execute every thing.” He admires their redistributive justice, diving up their plunder and distributing it impartially by drawing lots, prioritising the injured and remembering those who had been killed. Above all, perhaps, he admires their probity and honour, emphasising this further through the inclusion of an anedcote taken from a picaresque novel by Alan-René Lesage, Les Aventures de Robert Chevalier, dit de Beauchêne (1732), that speaks of an occasion when the flibustiers, under the command of Montauban, had agreed to provide a safe escort to a heavily laden Spanish vessel. When one of their number proposed that the flibustiers themselves took control of the Spanish ship, the condemnation of his perfidy is said to have been unanimous. The traitor was cast out from their company and “they took an oath, that so dishonest a man should never be admitted in any expedition, in which any of the brave men present should be concerned, as they would think themselves dishonoured by such a connection.” We shall return to the very specific resonance that this anecdote has with modern European politics below. The Histoire sees both the best as well as the worst of European behaviour in the flibustiers, who provide the focal point for a more political explanation for the metamorphosis of the expatriate European from civility to barbarism. If we really want to understand the astonishing “revolution” undergone by the flibustiers under the heat of the tropical sun, the historian suggests that we need to look to shackles [les entraves ] of the European governments in which they had been raised. As Newton had shown: for each and every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and accordingly, the historian explains: “The spirit of liberty being repressed for so many ages [le ressort de la liberté comprimée dans les ames depuis des siècles ], exerted it’s power to a degree almost inconceivable, and occasioned the most terrible effects that were ever exhibited in the moral world.”46 If energies are restricted, then pressure will increase and the inevitable explosion will be all the more powerful. If the Histoire does not refer to Newton by name, the earlier chapters of book 10 have nonetheless illustrated this very point through the language of earthquakes and volcanos. Why, we might ask at this juncture, does Raynal associate these

46 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 520–23.

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violent phenomena in the Antilles with periods of heavy tropical rain? The answer is to be found in the baron d’Holbach’s entry on earthquakes in the Encyclopédie. He notes that earthquakes are often recorded after years of very heavy rain. From this, it is possible to conjecture that the rainwater, having soaked through the land, block the cracks and openings that allow the underground air and fire to circulate and find ways to escape. The accumulation of underground pressure is sometimes heard through sounds that are similar to thunder or (strengthening the connection to warfare) to gunfire. Earthquakes are thus to be attributed to the explosive force of trapped air that is expanding through the heat of underground fires and needs to find a path to freedom.47 The flibustiers, then, provide the same warning as nature herself: to obstruct the free flow of energy—in whatever form—will result in “revolutionary” upheaval.

The Drama of Modernity, Sympathetic Resonance and the British National Character The flibustiers are described as extraordinary in every respect—“a people wholly distinct in history; but a people whose duration was so transient, that it’s glory lasted, as it were, but a moment.”48 What is their bearing on the portrait of modern European politics that follows over the second half of Book 10? Their centrality within book 10 and the Histoire des deux Indes more generally invites this reflexion. In what way does this long novelistic chapter of disproportionate length function either as epigraph or even epitaph for the history of European civilisation? In the final part of this chapter I want to suggest that the drama of modernity that unfolds in the second half of book 10 is very evidently designed to be read in sympathetic resonance with all that prefaces it, namely the natural history of the Antilles and its more general conjectures regarding the formation of islands from the relentless energy of the oceans and by the explosive

47 “On peut conjecturer (…) que les eaux de la pluie, en détrempant les terres, bouchent les fentes & les ouvertures par lesquelles l’air & le feu qui sont sous terre, peuvent circuler & trouver des issues. (…) Ces efforts sont dus aux efforts que l’air dilaté par le feu, fait pour s’ouvrir un passage & se mettre en liberté.” “Tremblemens de Terre” in University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Autumn 2017 Edition), ed. Robert Morrissey and Glenn Roe, http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/. 48 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 522.

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reactions of underground fires and earthquakes, and also with the explosive and unrestrained energy of the flibustiers for whom the high seas became the battleground for freedom and independence and the stage for piracy, bloodshed and violence. Diderot’s Rêve de d’Alembert leaves us in no doubt that he, who played a major role in the composition of book 10, was familiar with the notion of “sympathetic resonance.” The authorial preface to the Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature (1754), addressed to the young reader wishing to study natural philosophy, also suggests how he used this theory of “vibration” between different strings as a pedagogic strategy, less to instruct than to exercise the reader and to engage their attention.49 In the light of Diderot’s scientific and pedagogic interest in the physics of harmonics it not so frivolous then to propose that book 10 aims to engage the reader in this manner. In the analysis of modern European politics that unfolds in chapters 11 to 18 of book 10, the historian does not step outside the modern political system of nation states as had been established in 1648, with their mutually agreed territorial boundaries. Indeed, these boundaries are implicitly and on one occasion explicitly endorsed. What he does do is explore the ramifications of modern “nationalism” with respect to war, peace and civilisation in a human drama in which public opinion is a major protagonist and the people of Britain and those of France are represented through national stereotypes, with the Caribs as minor but significant off-stage actors. As he relates the events of the modern Europe from the War of the Spanish Succession through to the Peace of Paris, the historian expresses unconcealed admiration for the British whom he considers, politically speaking, “the first people in the world.”50 It is observed elsewhere in the Histoire that island peoples tend to retain something of a primitive character, and audible resonances in book 10 between the profile of modern Britain and the earlier portrait of the Caribs, incorporated into the natural history of the opening chapters, serve to accentuate the primitive character of this modern island race and set it in both positive and negative

49 “Il m’importe peu que tu adoptes mes idées, ou que tu les rejettes, pourvu qu’elles emploient toute ton attention.” Denis Diderot, “Aux jeunes gens qui se disposent à l’étude de la Philosophie naturelle,” in Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature (Amsterdam: 1754). 50 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 533.

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relief.51 On the positive side are the “republican” civic virtues that Britain has embedded in its political constitution by translating the natural freedoms and equality enjoyed by the Caribs, where “each family formed within itself a republic” and with “no distinction of ranks among them, they were all on a footing of equality, and were extremely surprised to find degrees of subordination established among the Europeans.”52 For all the greatness of the British, the London “mob,” on the other hand, is held up as nothing less than “the most contemptible of any in the universe.” In the British metropolis Raynal identifies exactly the sort of discursive energy of which we have already spoken above in conjunction with his analysis of “national spirit” at the beginning of book 9. London is presented as a tumultuous hotbed of self-interested commercial and political lobbyists who whip up public sentiment and “beset the parliament house with clamours and threats and influence it’s deliberations.” Of particular consternation to the historian are the countless number of political pamphlets that spread false information, “fomenting a spirit of dissension and discontent” and having the effect of keeping the nation “constantly at war with it’s neighbours” by forcing the hand of those in government, as was the case, he says, in 1739 when Walpole was driven by public pressure to declare war on Spain, starting the so-called War of Jenkins’ Ear.53 Any ideas of censorship, however, are firmly quashed in the third edition of the Histoire. New text (prepared by Diderot) reworks this passage into nothing short of a panegyric in praise of the freedom of the press, arguing that for every subversive publication there will be another written by a more honourable author. Suggesting that the market place must be left to balance things out, he argues that censorship would hold a nation back in barbarism. The question for the historian is reduced to this: “Is it better that a people should be in a perpetual state of stupidity, than that they should be sometimes turbulent?”.54 Outside the capital city, however, the British people are characterised in conformity with eighteenth-century national stereotype as solitary and taciturn, again echoing the description of the Carib islanders who 51 Book 3, ch. 1: ‘Les insulaires de nos jours n’ont pas entiérement perdu leur caractere primitif; & peut-être qu’un observateur attentif en trouveroit quelques vestiges dans la Grande-Bretagne même,” vol. 2, 3. 52 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 478. 53 Ibid., 532–534. 54 Ibid., 533, original emphasis.

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according to the historian interacted little and rarely spoke. Indeed, the British are held up as distinct in this respect from their continental neighbours where “dissipation, pleasure, indolence, and often vice and a corruption of manners, occasion warm and frequent connections in most kingdoms of Europe.” At base, the British are considered a relatively unsociable nation—a point of no little significance in the anthropology that underpins the politics of the Histoire des deux Indes. The English, we are told, “have less intercourse and connection with each other; they have, perhaps, less taste for social life than other nations.” Solitary in character on a social basis, the English do, however, manifest remarkable public solidarity when it comes to questions of public utility: “the idea of any project that may be serviceable to the state, immediately unites them, and they seem, as it were, animated by one soul. All ranks, parties, and sects, contribute to insure it’s success, and with such liberality as cannot be paralleled in those places where the notion of a particular native country does not prevail.”55 Raynal thus returns to the question of patriotism through the lens of the British people and their national character. The spectacle of British patriotism such as displayed once Pitt came to power was truly remarkable in the eyes of French observers and this is reflected by Raynal in his detailed account of the charitable performances offered by the acting fraternity and the generous monetary contributions made by the rich donors, including the King and the Prince of Wales, to the Marine Society, founded by John Fielding and Jonas Hanway in the first year of the war. Yet Raynal also draws out a more terrifying and despotic dimension to the unitary spirit driving British patriotism, beginning with the court-martial of Admiral Byng, a topic of widespread commentary in the “patriotic” French press of the day where connections were drawn with the execution of Charles I.56 Raynal relates the story with paratactic brutality: “The admiral who had suffered Minorca to be taken, was arrested, thrown into prison, accused, tried, and sentenced to death.” Worthy of a Greek tragedy “it recalled the memory of the ancient republics.”57

55 Ibid., 548. 56 See, for example, Ange Goudar, Charles Premier, roi d’Angleterre, condamné à mort

par la nation angloise. Et Bing, amiral anglois, fusillé par ordre de la même nation (Amsterdam: Neaulne, 1757). 57 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 548.

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The text of book 10 thus not only expresses admiration for British liberties but also communicates the fears, widely shared within philosophical debate after Montesquieu, that necessity, as the ancient Roman republican maxim put it, had no law and modern economics appeared to have cleared a path for the revival of ancient politics. Without checks and balances, it was argued, there was little to stop a republic such as Britain, disguised as a monarchy, from defaulting into despotism if, in times of national emergency, all power were to be vested in one body.58 Under Pitt, this menace seemed particularly acute: “with the people he was a republican, with the nobles and the sovereign he was a despotic minister. To think different from him, was a mark of being an enemy to the common cause.” Pitt, from the historian’s perspective, had the British people under his thrall, manipulating their passion for the greater public good in ways that ultimately were self-serving: “In his eyes, the multitude was like a torrent, the course of which he knew how to direct which way he would.”59 In this context—that of Pitt’s demagogy—patriotism conceals nothing more than war-mongering hatred and again, echoes of the Caribs and their drunken festivals obliquely charge the rhetoric. Using the power of his position and his charisma, Pitt has the effect on the British public that collective festivals had on the Caribs: “so temperate when alone [they] grew drunk when assembled in companies, and their intoxication excited and revived those family dissensions, that were either only stifled, or not entirely extinguished: and thus these festivals terminated in massacres.”60 In the case of the modern British, however, their modern capabilities of making war enable them to take their patriotic sentiments of hatred much further and faster. And hatred, in Raynal’s opinion, is precisely what Pitt stirs up in the British people: a false patriotism that should have no place in the modern world and its global landscape. Pitt may have been a great leader but one who was all the more dangerous in the modern era because of his limited vision of what was ultimately in the national interest, being unable to glimpse the vision of civilising commerce that sustains the hope of the historian, as we have seen. In Pitt’s case, it is evident that he is “Little influenced by that species of philosophy, which, divesting itself of the prejudices of national glory,

58 Sonenscher, Before the Deluge, 41–44. 59 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 557–558. 60 Ibid., 480.

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to extend it’s views to the welfare of all mankind, tries every thing by the principles of universal reason; he kept up a violent and savage spirit of enthusiasm, which he called, and perhaps, believed to be a love of his country, but which was, in reality, nothing more than a strong aversion for the nation he wanted to oppress.”61 Pitt’s patriotism, as it is presented in book 10, becomes the crucible of the mutually destructive “jealousy of trade” which Raynal condemns, following Hume, whose famous essay on the subject was published during the Seven Years’ War, as the potentially terminal disease that is afflicting modern Europe. This was an anachronistic politics that had made commerce into a Machiavellian “reason of state.”62 If there is no mention in the portrait of the Caribs of the cannibalism with which they were so firmly associated, we might surmise that this is because it has been firmly displaced onto Britain and her efforts to engross Atlantic commerce. They have become the modern cannibal; and, as we can now explain, the modern pirate, ruling the high seas through a regime of barbarism. The landmark at this point in Raynal’s narrative is Boscawen’s unprovoked interception in 1755 (in peacetime) of the Alcide and the Lys off the coast of Newfoundland, which led to the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War. In chapter 27 of book 19 of De l’esprit des lois, Montesquieu had argued confidently that whereas Rome’s wealth was based on tributes and pillaging conquered nations, Britain’s was based on commerce and industry. This, he says, created a categorical distinction between republican Rome and modern Britain.63 However, in the light of Britain’s capture of French ships without a formal declaration of war, this distinction seemed to vanish, revealing the British as the modern avatars of the flibustiers, albeit ones who do not even adhere to a code of honour among thieves. Hence the significance of the novelistic anecdote relating to Montauban, related above.64 To begin hostilities without formal declaration of war is to break the more fundamental conventions of international law and to make war the state of everyday life:

61 Ibid., 558. 62 See Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 1–159. 63 See Sonenscher, Before the Deluge, 48. 64 On this anecdote and its source text see Jenny Mander, “Picaros, Pirates, and Colonial History,” Philological Quarterly 89 (2010): 55–74.

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Did the nation, which is reckoned so proud, so humane, and so prudent, reflect upon what [it] was doing? It reduced the most sacred conventions of nations among themselves, to the artifices of a perfidious policy; it freed them from the common tie that connects them, by discarding the chimerical idea of the right of nations. Did these people perceive, that they were fixing a constant state of war; that they were making peace a time of apprehension only; that they were introducing on the globe nothing but a false and deceitful security; that sovereigns were becoming so many wolves, ready to devour each other; that the empire of discord was becoming unbounded; that the most cruel and most just reprisals were authorized; and that arms were no longer to be laid aside?

In the rapacity and brigandage of modern Britain the historian thus sees the barbarism of the expatriate European translated into the basis of the modern nation, where trade became the perennial cause for war rather than peace, thereby overturning all notions of civilised behaviour. The historian cries out for a different international order, adding an impassioned intervention in the edition of 1780 (another passage attributable to Diderot). Likening the threat posed by rogue nations like Britain to that of the highwayman, the historian appeals to the nations of Europe to respond, like Montauban and his crew, with the emotive words: “LET US ALL UNITE AGAINST THE TRAITOR, AND LET HIM BE EXTERMINATED FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH.”65 It may therefore come as a surprise when the historian concludes book 10 by lamenting that Britain did not push her advantages when she could have and by wishing that the devastations of the war had been taken further. His logic, however, is to be heard in the echoes from the earlier natural history of the Antilles, in which the death and destruction wrought by hurricanes are said to be followed by better harvests, revealing what appears to be a general law of nature “which makes even dissolution itself instrumental to regeneration, but also the means of preserving the general system, the life and vigour of which is maintained by an internal fermentation.”66 The historian knew that the Treaty of Paris had not enabled the Seven Years’ War to complete the cycle of destruction that might prepare the path for a better future: “Since war hath been the cause of so much evil, why does it not run through every species of calamity,

65 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 542–43, original capitals. 66 Ibid., 473.

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that it may, at length, tend to procure some good?” The cause being, from the historian’s perspective, the unruly and unenlightened voices of the public who effectively dictated the terms of the Treaty of Paris, insisting that the British negotiators retained Canada in preference of Guadeloupe. Thus, the historian declares, Britain lost the opportunity, likely never to return, to take control over the Atlantic trade of all the Americas. Simultaneously, Europe lost the chance of repairing the damage that had been created by her oppression of the New World: “The whole face of America might, perhaps, have been entirely changed, and the English, more free and more equitable than other monarchial powers, could not but be benefited by rescuing the human race from the oppressions they suffered in the New World, and by removing the injuries this oppression hath brought on Europe in particular.”67 France had lost the war yet had been left with all the financial advantages of keeping her sugar colony and no longer needing to worry about the costly defence of Canada. Britain meanwhile had run up a prodigious public debt, which Raynal details in full in his penultimate paragraph. Resonating with the natural history of floods with which book 10 had opened, it is not difficult to associate this conclusion in terms of the warning underlying the phrase après moi le déluge used by Mirabeau to register his urgent concerns relating to the rising public debt being used to fund modern warfare: public debt, he warned, could, in the manner of the Biblical flood, destroy what in 1756 he had been the first to call “civilisation.”68

The Frivolity of the French and Their Modern Political Mission While the French may well have been humiliated in the Great War of 1756–63, Raynal’s narrative implicitly places the French nation in prime position to guide Europe towards a more peaceful and civilised future, not least on account of her developed instincts for sociability. Aligning with the anti-Machiavellian tradition of Montesquieu, Voltaire, d’Argenson, St. Pierre and, above all, Mirabeau, the implication of book 10, without this ever needing to become an explicit argument, is that the French might

67 Ibid., 570–571. 68 See Sonenscher, Before the Deluge, 3.

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become the arbiter of a sociable world given over to commercial reciprocity in a context of free trade, preventing the nations of the modern world from destroying each other in a futile quest for empire of the high seas.69 For this to be achieved, however, the subliminal message of book 10 is that the French must cure themselves of their national weakness, namely frivolity. The frivolity of the French, as much part of their national stereotype inside and outside their borders as melancholy and introversion were the caricatural traits of the British, is a leitmotif across the later chapters of book 10. The word first appears, in adjectival form, in relation to the ostentatious pursuit of pleasure by the court of Louis XIV, which diverted much-needed public funds from the navy without which—as the history shows—France proved unable to protect the freedom of Atlantic trade and her own colonial-commercial interests: “The frequent removals of the court, public buildings, that were either useless or too magnificent, objects of ostentation, or of mere pleasure, and various other causes, equally trifling [frivoles ], absorbed that part of the public revenue, which ought to have been employed in his maritime armaments.”70 From this juncture, frivolity is thus associated with not only extravagance but also the endangerment of national security. The Histoire establishes in this way exactly the sort of connection between frivolity and unpatriotic consumption that is described by Jaucourt in his article on “Luxe” in the Encyclopédie. Adopting a balanced position between “Sparta” and “Sybaris,” to use his terms, the chevalier summarises the efforts of thinkers such as Mirabeau to straddle the values of classical republicanism, looking back to ancient civic virtue, and those of economic growth, acknowledging luxury as integral to the dynamics of modern civilisation.71 Jaucourt advises that the use of wealth should be regulated by “patriotic spirit,” that is to say, consumption must become an ethical matter, not linked to personal interest and false and childish pleasures but subordinated to the interests of the community.72 69 Ibid., 111 and 197–198. 70 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 526. 71 Michael Kwas, “Consumption and the world of ideas: consumer revolution and

the moral economy of the marquis de Mirabeau,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 30, no. 2 (2004): 197–213. 72 “L’emploi des richesses dicté par l’esprit patriotique, ne se borne pas au vil intérêt personnel & à de fausses et puériles jouissances (…) enfin le luxe & les passions qui

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The danger to national security of a childish or immature national attitude to pleasure becomes apparent over the following chapters of Raynal’s Histoire, where frivolity is invoked critically in relation to the hostile reaction of the public to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle that concluded the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748. Why could the French public not see the enlightened objectives of the plenipotentiaries who, by giving back territories taken by the French during the war, were placing the country in a stronger rather than weaker position? The answer is that the nation “ever influenced by a spirit of chivalry, that hath so long been the dazzling folly of all Europe” is “too trifling and capricious to attend to political discussions [trop frivole, trop légère pour être politique].” The French remain obsessed by a “rage for conquest, excusable indeed in a barbarous age, but which more enlightened ones should never be reproached with.”73 Their frivolity, stemming from a childish economy of pleasure, keeps the nation in a backward state of political immaturity. This is a state that the historian associates with a limited vision, one that keeps the focus on local rather than global interests. Thus, as soon as the immediate danger is over after the conclusion of the peace, France again reverts to her traditional anxieties relating to continental rivalries: “She was not sensible [elle ne vit pas ] that her superiority on the continent was acknowledged […] a number of apprehensions, equally weak and trifling [toutes frivoles ], disturbed her tranquillity.”74 Too immature, too lazy, too unpatriotic to consider the wider picture, the French still fail to wake up to the danger posed to her by Britain and her need for a strong navy. This is indeed how Raynal characterises the nation on the eve of war breaking out again. France has become “seduced by a love of ease, pleasure, and tranquillity” and allows herself to be kept in a state of amusement and “insensibly fell a sacrifice to those arts employed to lull her into security [pour l’endormir].”75 The French, the historian says in the following chapter, emphasising the point, are “serious in trifles, and trifling in matters of importance; ever disposed to war, and ready to attack: in a word, mere children, suffering themselves, as the Athenians of menent au luxe doivent être subordonnés à l’esprit de communauté, aux biens de la communauté.” “Luxe” in University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Autumn 2017 Edition), ed. Robert Morrissey and Glenn Roe, http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/. 73 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 536. 74 Ibid., 539. 75 Ibid., 542.

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old, to be disquieted and moved to anger for real or imaginary interests; fond of enterprise and action, ready to follow any guide, and comforted in the greatest misfortunes with the most trifling success.”76 Even once at war, the French did not seem to have fully understood the situation and, “dazzled with some instances of success that were of no consequence,” revert to their stereotypical behaviour. In launching a new offensive in Germany that overcommitted their forces and finances “their levity [leur frivolité] made them forget” that the real war was overseas, and “this light and superficial nation” quickly reverted to the feudal politics of a bygone era.77 The French have everything going for them, the historian insists: nature has provided them with an excellent soil, chance has given them rich colonies, their sensibility has enabled them to multiply their pleasures through their arts and culture.78 The warning, however, that emerges between the lines of the history is that their love of pleasure is a threat to their national greatness and to the diplomatic role they now need to play to ensure their future prosperity, happiness and tranquillity, and to reconnect the hitherto barbaric history of modern commerce to the history of European civilisation through an enlightened patriotic and therefore ethical attitude towards pleasure and consumption. Book 10 can be read as a self-contained story; it is also part of a bigger whole: that of the Histoire des deux Indes, a history that remained for Raynal “a work in progress” over his whole life; that of the wider eighteenth-century intellectual and political debates in governmental, colonial, commercial and philosophical circles; and, indeed, ongoing debates that continue down to the present day concerning global modernity and its future. A good deal of the philosophical and political argument of book 10 is “underground” and, in the manner of the fires and gases that circulate in the subterranean passages of the earth, emerges

76 Ibid., 545. The reference here is to Plutarch’s story about the Athenians who were impatient to hear the end of a fable about the shadow of a donkey but did not want to talk about matters of political importance. 77 Ibid., 547. 78 “La nation qui devoit a la nature, un sol excdellent; au hasard, de riches colonies; à sa

sensibilité vive & souple, le goût de tous les arts qui varient & multiplient les jouissances; à ses conquêtes, à sa glorie littéraire, à la dispersion même des protetans qu’elle avoit eu le malheur de perdre, le désir qu’on avoit de l’imiter: cette nation qui seroit trop heureuse, si on lui permettoit de l’être (…).” Histoire philosophique et politique, v. 212.

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into view through more or less punctual “explosions.” These more explicit hints and nudges are, however, amplified through the harmonic process of sympathetic resonance between the various constituent parts of the book that connect the history of modern European politics to the patterns of natural history and geological time, and to the flibustiers, those pirates of the Caribbean whose story, then as now, was a source of international fascination. Contemporary readers would have been able to identify the multiple off-stage voices with which Raynal enters into dialogue or, indeed, ventriloquises. Of these, that of Mirabeau is perhaps particularly audible. The latter’s L’Ami des Hommes, published at the start of the Seven Years’ War and going on to become the most widely read work on political economy of the century, would have provided a widely shared framework that helped readers to “see” a good deal of the bigger picture. In focusing on public opinion, however, Raynal might be better understood to be exercising his readers, engaging them in the process of political reflexion itself. He does not, at least in book 10, offer a philosophical or political treatise but, we might say, creates a new parable of islands in a global age, reworking the work of Melon published earlier in the century in order to bring a more distinctly ethical spotlight to bear on international rivalry and commerce. In this context old notions of patriotism and emerging notions of national character and nationalism (or national spirit) are not so much answered as brought into critical scrutiny. Inertia remains an important principle within the historian’s view of civilised society, yet is understood in the context of global interdependencies in which the local is itself constantly evolving through interaction with the wider world. Reflecting on the figure of the immoral traveller in the context of book 9, the historian acknowledges that there has and will always be those who travel: “Tyranny, guilt, ambition, curiosity, a kind of restless spirit, the desire of acquiring knowledge, and of seeing things, tedium, and the disgust arising from exhausted felicity, have driven, and will at all times drive [ont expatrié & expatrieront ] men from their country.”79 However, in those centuries before there was “civilisation,” prior to commerce, the ancient code of hospitality provided the political and ethical framework for interactions between strangers from different nations. At this point in time, hospitality was, in his words, “almost the only thing that attached

79 Philosophical and Political History, vol. 3, 325.

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nations to each other” and the basis for “the most lasting, and the most respected friendship between families who were separated by immense regions.” Hospitality was “one of the most certain indications that man was intended for society [l’instinct & de la destination de l’homme pour la sociabilité].”80 This sociability, the historian observes elsewhere, also underpins the intention or “destination” of commerce: War and navigation have occasioned a mutual communication between different people and different colonies. Hence men became connected with each other by dependence or intercourse. The refuse of all nations, mixing together during the ravages of war, are improved and polished by commerce; the true spirit of which is, that all nations should consider themselves as one great society, whose members have all an equal right to partake of the conveniences of the rest. Commerce, in it’s object and in the means employed to carry it on, supposes an inclination and a liberty between all nations to make every exchange that can contribute to their mutual satisfaction. The inclination and the liberty of procuring enjoyments are the only two springs [ressorts ] of industry, and the only two principles of social intercourse among men.81

This vision of global society is predicated on reciprocal exchange that does not, we might note, require the erasure of the borders between self and other, one nation and another, but the inherently social and human practice of hospitality in which the freedom to enjoy life is brought into the political present. If the regressive modern history of European global movement is to reconnect with the history of civilisation, these are the human and humanitarian principles that the reader needs to ponder.

80 Ibid., 324. 81 Ibid., vol. 2, 361.

CHAPTER 10

In the Mirror of Rome: Commerce, Conquest and Civilisation Between Venice, Spain and France (1781–1800) Aris Della Fontana

Introduction In 1785, the Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres announced that it would award a prize to the person with the most illuminating answer to the following question: “quel fut l’état du commerce chez les Romains depuis la première guerre Punique jusqu’à l’avènement de Constantin à l’empire?” The result was not announced until November

A. Della Fontana (B) Faculty of Humanities, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] Faculty of Arts, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Alimento and A. Della Fontana (eds.), Histories of Trade as Histories of Civilisation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80087-1_10

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1786,1 and the winner was Count Francesco Mengotti (1749–1831), a native of Feltre, a town in the Republic of Venice.2 There is conflicting information about the language in which Mengotti wrote his work. Various eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources state that he sent it to the Académie in Italian,3 yet there is a 1787 Paduan edition, edited (and probably translated4 ) by Mengotti, whose title informs us that it was a “translation from French.”5 However, even this claim is problematic, since there is no trace of the French original and in fact the only French edition available, which was published in Marseille in 1800, is actually a translation from Italian.6 As long as this dilemma remains unresolved, it seems appropriate to focus on the Paduan edition, entitled Del commercio de’ romani dalla prima guerra punica a Costantino. It is clear, then, that far from remaining on the shelves of the Académie, Mengotti’s work had a very eventful life from the outset, and as time went on it would generate a wide-ranging and multifaceted debate. Between 1788 and 1791 the Memoria apologetica del commercio e coltura 1 Mémoirs secrets pour servir à L’Histoire de la République des Lettres en France […]

Tome Trente-Troisième (London: Adamson, 1788), 179–180; Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, avec les Mémoires de littérature tirés des Registres de cette Académie […]. Tome Quarante-Septième (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1809), 38. 2 On Mengotti, see Michele Gottardi, “Mengotti, Francesco,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani: http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/francesco-mengotti_(Dizionario-Bio grafico). 3 A. R., “Lettera di A. R. al Sig. C. Antonio Mistura sul commercio de’ Romani […]. 2 Novembre 1788,” Nuovo Giornale Letterario d’Italia per l’anno MDCCLXXXVIII , no. XLIV (Venice: Storti, 1788), 698; Francesco Bertagna, Elogio (…) del Conte Commendatore Francesco Mengotti (Feltre: Dalla tipografia del Seminario, 1830), 8; Il Vaglio. Giornale di Scienze, Lettere, Arti, 7 May 1842 (Venice: Alvisopoli, 1842), 148. 4 The frontispiece of the copy of the manuscript from which this edition was probably taken states: “Del Commercio de’ Romani dalla prima Guerra Punica a Costantino. […] Traduzione dal francese fatta dall’Autore.” See Francesco Mengotti, Del commercio dei Romani […]: Biblioteca Querini Stampalia, Venice, Cl. II, Cod. XIII (109), 1. 5 Francesco Mengotti, Del Commercio de’ Romani dalla prima guerra punica a Costantino […]. Traduzione dal francese (Padua: Stamperia del Seminario, 1787). On this edition, see also: L’Esprit des Journaux, François et Étrangers […] Août, 1788 (Paris: Valade, 1788), 422. In 1797 a new edition was published in Verona that was described as a “translation from French.” Francesco Mengotti, Del Commercio de’ Romani dalla prima guerra punica e Costantino […]. Traduzione dal francese (Verona: Giuliari, 1797). 6 On this, see the section “A French Mengotti: Commercial Civilisation and Its Ambivalences,” in this paper.

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dei romani came on the market, having been written by Antonio de Torres, an Andalusian ex-Jesuit who lived in exile in Venice, with the explicit intention to provide a real alternative to Mengotti’s text. Then, in 1798 Antonio Zacarias de Malcorra y Azanza, a member of the Real Sociedad Económica de Valladolid, published in Valencia his Del comercio de los romanos, desde la primera guerra de Cartágo, hasta Constantino el Magno, which in fact was nothing more than a fictitious translation of Del commercio de’ Romani. Finally, Jacques Gassier, a French exile in Italy, produced a French translation of this text, which was published in Marseille in 1800. Why analyse Mengotti’s work and its European diffusion? Certainly not to reconstruct a purely erudite historiographic dispute, since in fact one might say, perhaps exaggerating a little, that the protagonists of this adventure were not so much interested in the economy of Rome, but in the opportunity to use it as a point of comparison, and more precisely as a means through which to test, validate and develop their convictions on certain crucial issues that characterised eighteenth-century Europe. Consequently, as well as clarifying certain aspects of the dynamics of reception and cultural transfer,7 and of the peculiar relations between exiles and their motherland, this research allows us to exploit, in all its originality and vitality, the discursive potential of the histories of trade, and their deep relationship with the history of civilisation. These histories offer us a novel vantage point from which to observe, in their full course, and in close connection with their political and socio-geographical implications, their authors’ reflections on issues such as the relationship between the “spirit of commerce” and the “spirit of conquest,” the dynamics of international competition and the meaning and prospects of commercial civilisation.

7 On translation and Cultural Transfer, see Maria Tymoczko, “Ideology and the Position of the Translator: In What Sense is a Translator ‘In Between’?,” in Apropos of Ideology: Translation Studies on Ideology—Ideologies in Translation Studies, ed. Marìa Calzada Pérez (Manchester: St. Jerome, 2003), 196–198 and 200–201; Stefanie Stockhorst, “Introduction. Cultural Transfer Through Translation: A Current Perspective in Enlightenment Studies,” in Cultural Transfer Through Translation: The Circulation of Enlightened Thought in Europe by Means of Translation, ed. Stefanie Stockhorst (Amsterdam-New York: Brill-Rodopi, 2010), 7–26. See also Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation (London: Routledge, 2013), 6–9, 16, 28, 84–86, 108–109, 134, 142 and 145.

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Natural and Necessary Enemies: Commerce, Conquest and the “Terrible Lesson” of Rome The preface, signed by Mengotti, lucidly explained the aim of the research, which was to determine if, besides having been “feared,” “opulent” and “great,” the Romans had also had “the most flourishing and richest Commerce.” In close connection to this, Mengotti asked himself if the “most stable Empire is built on force, or on industry” and if, however “immense,” riches can be preserved by a state with a mediocre level of commercial activity. Such an investigation, Mengotti claimed, not only went beyond a purely scholarly study of ancient Rome, but could also provide valuable insights for “Politics, and Civil Economics.”8 According to Mengotti, Rome had an “obscure and ignoble origin” and the Romans “were born in war and grew through war.” Their “genius” and “character” consisted of an “excessive appetite for plunder” and thus an insatiable “spirit of conquest,” which was incompatible with the “spirit of commerce.” In fact, “it is extremely difficult, and perhaps impossible to combine in the same people the character of the soldier and the character of the merchant”: the former destroys, the latter preserves; one gains through “arms” and “force,” the other through “peace” and “industry.” Mengotti’s reading of Montesquieu,9 Melon10 and Ferguson is evident at this point.11 For this very reason, in the early centuries the Romans did not practise large-scale commerce, and they were unskilled 8 Francesco Mengotti, Del commercio de’ Romani, i–iii. 9 Eluggero Pii, “Montesquieu e l’esprit de commerce,” in Leggere l’Esprit des lois: Stato,

società e storia nel pensiero di Montesquieu, ed. Domenico Felice (Naples: Liguori, 1998), 165, 173–175 and 190–198; Umberto Roberto, “‘Del commercio dei romani’: politica e storia antica nelle riflessioni del Settecento,” in Mercanti e politica nel mondo antico, ed. Carlo Zaccagnini (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2003), 353–361; Catherine Larrère, “Montesquieu et l’histoire du commerce,” in Les temps de Montesquieu, ed. Michel Porret and Catherine Volpillac-Auguer (Geneva: Droz, 2000), 320–331 and 333–335; Umberto Roberto, “Roma e la storia economica e sociale del mondo antico nell’Esprit des lois,” in Politica, economia e diritto nell’ “Esprit des lois” di Montesquieu, ed. Domenico Felice (Bologna: Clueb, 2009), 121–145. 10 Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce: Globalization and the French Monarchy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 40. 11 On this, see also: Christopher Brooke, “Eighteenth-Century Carthage,” in “Introduction. Power, Prosperity, and Peace in Enlightenment thought,” Commerce and Peace in the Enlightenment, ed. Béla Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky, and Richard Whatmore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 111–120 and 123–124.

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in navigation and had a weak monetary circulation. Furthermore, their manufactured goods lacked “taste” or “finesse.” And in this sense, Mengotti states, citing Hume, it was not by chance that the Romans ignored the “liberal arts,” “Letters” and “Sciences”: the mechanical arts, liberal arts and sciences are, in fact, mutually supportive.12 Unknown to Rome, commerce was “where it had always been found in every century,” in other words among the “cultured” and “civil” nations, the “human,” “enlightened” and “industrious” ones: the Rodians, the Corinthians, the Egyptians, the Marseillais and, of course, the Carthaginians, all of whom were overwhelmed by the Romans’ thirst for plunder. In Mengotti’s opinion, the end of the Punic Wars constituted a decisive moment. Rome could at that point have become a “Commercial Republic,” but instead continued to be driven by the “spirit of conquest,” disparaging commerce as an “ignoble and plebeian profession.” Moreover, while it did learn the rudiments of navigation, it did so only to extend its dominions further. Mengotti presents Roman expansion as a ferocious undertaking that left a trail of destruction in its wake and— through raids, unsustainable tributes and the extortions of the Publicans and the Praetors—brought “immense riches” to the capital. Romans in fact believed that “all the riches of the Earth rightfully belonged to them.” Mengotti here cannot avoid associating this predatory dynamic with the exploits of Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro, who in the New World “raised gold mountains covered with human blood.”13 In this way, Rome became “the most opulent city in the Universe.” However, since it did not understand “the true and legitimate means to acquire wealth”—that is, “industry” and “Commerce”—it recklessly abused it, plunging headlong into “luxury.” This happened because a nation that suddenly acquires great wealth is “naturally” inclined to despise “hard work,” a rule that also applied to the Spanish who, after “the discovery of the rich treasures of America,” “gave way to pride and sloth.” In order to feed this “luxury,” which had turned into a necessity, Rome not only used war and extortion but also resorted to an increasingly consistent flow of imports from both the provinces of what had become an empire and from foreign countries. Mengotti has no doubt that this was “always” a form of “passive commerce” as Rome, and Italy in general,

12 Francesco Mengotti, Del commercio de’ Romani, iv–xi. 13 Ibid., xi–xxvi.

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did not excel in any sector. Its agriculture was in ruin due to insufficient population, the wars, and the allocation of land to retired soldiers with little experience of cultivation, but above all due to the large patrician properties, which were havens of sterility. “Who does not know?” Mengotti asks himself, echoing Jean Bertrand’s Esprit de la législation (1766), “that the earth is all the more fruitful, the more it is apportioned and divided?” Meanwhile, the demographic and agricultural crisis obviously impeded the development of the arts and manufactures, which also continued to be the object of discrimination even on the legislative level. Furthermore, commerce and industriousness were oppressed by invasive taxation, by monopolies and by the ban on the “nobles” and “the rich” engaging in mercantile activities. If this were not enough, “the sacred rights of property” were not respected, a point that Mengotti—as Montesquieu had done—highlights by stating that “despotism” accelerated the ruin of the Roman economy. In a country with a “military and tyrannical government,” where property and personal integrity were always at risk, and where men lived in “ignorance” and “degradation,” “industry cannot flourish.”14 Given these preconditions, ruin was inevitable, and the “Orient” was particularly able, “in a few centuries,” to consume the “immense” wealth of the Empire. This point, Mengotti argues, is extremely instructive, because it illustrates an iron law that “force” and “injustice” reduce “violently the fruits of industry,” while “industry” retakes possession of them “slowly.” As Melon and Montesquieu, and then Hume and Smith, had noted,15 the rule was also confirmed by the example of Spain, as the silver extracted from America reached the country but then steadily “spread to the most industrious peoples of Europe,” due to the fact that “money follows industry,” irrespective of any prohibition. Returning to this fact soon after, Mengotti once more targets Spain, an “idle” country “always filled, and always empty of gold” that, like Rome, “tried in vain to prevent its export.” Mengotti—who appears to have completely internalised the leyenda negra 16 —is therefore certain that: “if by accident the mines of the 14 Ibid., xxviii–xxxiii, xl–xliv and lxv–lxvi. 15 Frederick G. Whelan, The Political Thought of Hume and His Contemporaries:

Enlightenment Projects, Volume 2 (New York: Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), 193–211 (Chapter 6: Explaining Imperial Decline in Eighteenth-Century Scottish Thought). 16 On the leyenda negra see: R. García Cárcel, La leyenda negra. Historia y opinión (Madrid: Alianza, 1992), 130–143, 158–162 and 261–263; Antonio Sánchez Jiménez,

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New World that are not yet exhausted were to dry up, we would soon see the Spaniards rush to their ruin with the same speed and acceleration with which the Romans fell.”17 In short, according to Mengotti the history of Rome presented a “terrible lesson” for nations which, believing their wealth to be inexhaustible, abandoned themselves to “idleness” and “luxury” and “disdained Letters, the Arts, Manufactures, Navigation and Commerce.” The destiny of such places was “poverty,” which was accompanied by “barbarity,” just as had occurred in Rome where, in close connection with the decline of wealth and industry, the “elegance” and “beauty” of the “Letters,” “Sciences,” “Arts” and “Language” faded away.18 Among the harshest condemnations of ancient Rome to have been published in the eighteenth century,19 Mengotti’s work is in fact an excoriation of the Histoire du commerce et de la navigation des anciens (1716) by Pierre-Daniel Huet, whose positive bias towards the Romans, the Italian contends, led him to portray their commerce as “extensive, “La Leyenda Negra. Para un estado de la cuestión,” in España ante sus críticos: las claves de la leyenda negra, ed. Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez, Antonio Sánchez Jiménez and Harm den Boer (Madrid: Editorial Iberoamericana, 2015), 23–44. On anti-Hispanism in eighteenth-century Italy, see: Piero Del Negro, Il mito americano nella Venezia del ’700 (Padua: Liviana, 1986), 14, 58–69 and 81–111; Chiara Di Giorgio, L’antispagnolismo nella letteratura italiana. Storiografia e testi, Doctoral Thesis, Sapienza University of Rome (2001), 20–116; Aurelio Musi, ed., Alle origini di una nazione. Antispagnolismo e identità italiana (Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2003). 17 Francesco Mengotti, Del commercio de’ Romani, lxxii–c. See also: Anthony Pagden,

Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination: Studies in European and SpanishAmerican Social and Political Theory, 1513–1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 1–3, 9 and 69. 18 Francesco Mengotti, Del commercio de’ Romani, xlix and cix. On Mengotti’s Del commercio de’ Romani, see also: Mouza Raskolnikoff, “Volney et les Idéologues: le refus de Rome,” Revue Historique 267 (1982): 364–366; Mouza Raskolnikoff, Histoire romaine et critique historique dans l’Europe des Lumières (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1992), 248–49; Emilio Gabba, “Francesco Mengotti e la polemica sul commercio,” in Cultura classica e storiografica moderna, ed. Gabba (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1995), 63–69; Giulio Firpo, “Roma, Etruschi e Italici nel «secolo senza Roma»,” in Patria Diversis Gentibus Una? Unità politica e identità etniche nell’Italia antica, ed. Giampaolo Urso (Pisa: ETS, 2008), 296–298. 19 Franco Venturi, Settecento riformatore, V. L’Italia dei Lumi, Tomo II, La Repubblica di Venezia (Turin: Einaudi, 1990), 435; Arnaldo Marcone, “Le proposte di restaurazione del porto di Aquileia alla luce del dibattito sul commercio,” in La ricerca antiquaria nell’Italia nordorientale: dalla Repubblica veneta all’unità, ed. Maurizio Buora and Arnaldo Marcone (Trieste: Editreg, 2007), 97.

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rich and wonderful.”20 Alongside Huet, however, Mengotti also criticises Raynal’s Histoire des deux Indes (1770) and Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1789). The former, by accounting for the “greatness” and “richness” of the Empire in the light of its trade with Asia, “followed too faithfully the footsteps” of Huet. The second, on the other hand, attempted to prove that there had been more precious metals under Constantine than under Augustus, and in so doing overlooked the alarming scarcity of silver that afflicted Rome and became manifest during its time of “misery.”21 Yet Mengotti’s work is not simply a scholarly study aimed at confirming or denying the facts of the past, and in this sense the enthusiastic review that appeared in 1787 in the Nuovo Giornale Enciclopedico underlined how, in addition to its “erudition” and “vast knowledge,” Del commercio de’ Romani was also distinguished by the “appropriateness of its reflections” [“aggiustatezza de’ riflessi”].22 Rather, it is also, and perhaps principally, an attempt to identify laws and mechanisms that apply to the present. In other words, it argues that in the past, as in the present, the “most stable Empire” was not that of “force” but that of “industry,” that the “spirit of conquest” cannot in any way coexist with the “spirit of commerce,” and that, however immense the wealth of an empire may be, when it is obtained by “force” rather than “industry” it is destined to be exhausted. The background to this, of course, is the sixteenthto eighteenth-century history of colonial plunder, and the notion of commerce as an “Affair of State,” which gives rise to the Jealousy of Trade, national egotism, and the use of military means to attain economic objectives.23 Mengotti, however, does not condemn commercial competition out of hand, but simply tries to demonstrate that in the end aggression, force and parasitical exploitation are not effective, winning tools. He therefore praises work and industriousness, and the respect for treaties, loyalty 20 On Huet, see also Chapter 1 of this volume. 21 Mengotti, Del commercio de’ Romani, xcvi–xcvii and cii. 22 C. G. B. G., “Del Commercio de’ Romani […] Padova 1787 […],” Nuovo Giornale

Enciclopedico, November 1787 (Vicenza: 1787–1788), 7. 23 Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation State in Historical Perspective, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010). See also: Sophus A. Reinert, Translating Empire: Emulation and the Origins of Political Economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 7, 21 and 29.

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and fair play as the foundations of peaceful emulation.24 In short, either commerce is doux,25 or it is not. In this sense one of several differences between Mengotti and Raynal26 and Ferguson27 is that the former, following Hume,28 seems to deny that commerce conceals and contains a violent and overbearing dimension: in essence, violence is not an inherent feature of commerce, but is rather a corruption, a degeneration, of it.29 There is no doubt that rather than reasoning in abstract and general terms Mengotti also, and perhaps above all, framed and developed these convictions as a citizen of the Republic of Venice. Indeed, in the dedication, addressed to members of the magistracy superintending the University of Padua and all aspects of culture and higher education in the Veneto, he stressed that his text was neither a “literary curiosity” nor a “vain speculation.”30 At this time, of course, Venice was militarily vulnerable,31 and as such was naturally interested in separating trade 24 Sankar Muthu, “Conquest, commerce, and Cosmopolitanism in Enlightenment Political Thought,” in Empire and Modern Political Thought, ed. Muthu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 200, 205–214 and 231. 25 On doux commerce, see: Albert O. Hirschmann, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997 [1977]), 59–73 and 79–80; Laurence Dickey, “Doux-Commerce and Humanitarian Values: Free Trade, Sociability and Universal Benevolence in Eighteenth-Century Thinking,” Groatiana 22: No. 1 (2001): 272, 277–278, 283–300, 310–311 and 316; Catherine Larrère, “Montesquieu et le «doux commerce»: un paradigme du libéralisme,” Cahiers d’histoire. Revue d’histoire critique 123 (2014): 26–31 and 35. 26 Anoush Fraser Terjanian, Commerce and Its Discontents in Eighteenth-Century French Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 2, 11–23 and 186. 27 J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion: Volume Three, The First Decline and Fall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 373–375; Ian McDaniel, Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Roman Past and Europe’s Future (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 7–8, 94–95 and 144–145. 28 Richard Boyd, “Manners and Morals: David Hume on Civility, Commerce, and the Social Construction of Difference,” in David Hume’s Political Economy, ed. Margaret Schabas and Carl Wennerlind (New York: Routledge, 2008), 65–67 and 77. 29 On this, see also: Kapossy, Nakhimovsky and Whatmore, “Introduction. Power, Prosperity, and Peace in Enlightenment Thought,” 2–3, 6 and 13–14. 30 “Agli amplissimi Senatori Andrea Querini, Francesco Morosini 2°, Zaccaria Valaresso. Riformatori dello Studio di padova,” in Francesco Mengotti, Del commercio de’ Romani, 1. 31 Gino Benzoni, “Verso la fine? A proposito dell’ultimo secolo della Serenissima,” in Venezia. Itinerari per la storia della città, ed. Stefano Gasparri, Giovanni Levi and Pierandrea Moro (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997), 245–270.

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from conquest and in promoting an international division of labour that respected the independence and autonomy of each country, and in which the legitimate quest for national prosperity did not automatically translate into the pursuit of an economic-political empire.32 This is a view that Mengotti sharpened significantly in the following years, revealing a considerable intellectual debt to Physiocracy. In a Ragionamento, which was accorded a prize by the Accademia dei Georgofili in 1792, he mocked the “doctrine of the balance of trade,” based as it was on the need to “constantly sell and never buy” and on the idea that all industrious nations were “enemies and rivals” to be impoverished. Having been blinded by the notion of “jealousy,” the “Colbertist sect” had not understood that in the long run this strategy would cause widespread deprivation. It had not comprehended, in other words, that international commerce prospered only in conditions of “free competition” by generating reciprocal advantage and harmonious common growth.33

32 On this, see: Isaac Nakhimovsky, “Vattel’s theory of the international order: Commerce and the balance of power in the Law of Nations,” History of European Ideas 33: No. 2 (June 2007): 157–173; Koen Stapelbroek, “Universal Society, Commerce and the Rights of Neutral Trade: Martin Hübner, Emer de Vattel and Ferdinando Galiani,” COLLeGIUM: Studies Across Disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences 3 (2008): 63–89. 33 Francesco Mengotti, Ragionamento del Sig. Francesco Mengotti dell’Accademia di Padova presentato alla Real Società Economica Fiorentina […] (Florence: Pagani e Compagni, 1792), 155–159 and 169. On this work, see also: Oscar Nuccio, “Nota per una storia dell’industrialismo: il contributo di F. Mengotti (1749–1830),” Rivista di politica economica 10 (1979): 1146–149 and 1153; G. Gioli, “The Knowledge of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations in Italy in the Eighteenth Century,” in Adam Smith Across Nations: Translations and Receptions of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Cheng-Chung Lai (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 155–57; M. E. L. Guidi, E. Maccabelli and E. Morato, “Neo-Smithian Political Economy in Italy (1777–1848),” in L’économie politique néo-smithienne sur le continent: 1800–1848, ed. P. Steiner, special issue of Economies et sociétés, Série Oeconomia, Histoire de la pensée économique, PE, No. 34, No. 2 (2004), 224; Sophus A. Reinert, “Blaming the Medici: Footnotes, Falsification, and the Fate of the ‘English Model’ in Eighteenth-Century Italy,” History of European Ideas 32: No. 4 (2006): 447–450.

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“The Eternity of Empires”: Force and Industry Between Rome and Spain Not everyone, however, agreed with him. Between 1788 and 1791, again in the Republic of Venice, a work entitled Memoria apologetica del commercio e coltura dei romani was published, and its subtitle made clear that it contradicted Mengotti’s ideas.34 The author was the exJesuit Andalusian Antonio de Torres (1744–1819), a resident of Venice and member of the Padua Academy of Arts and Sciences, of the Udine Academy of Science, Letters and Arts, and of the Academy of Arcadia.35 In his work, Torres argues that Mengotti’s approach was epistemologically inadmissible, since it was founded on the “spirit of system” and on “flights of fantasy.” It was an ideological method that tended to manipulate and “violate” history in order to validate a preconceived thesis. Mengotti was “ruthlessly cruel” towards the Roman people and “disfigured” them by misrepresenting or omitting sources. Torres thus felt it his duty to refute this tendentious reconstruction, with its many “blunders,” in order to at least attempt to get closer to the “truth.”36 The result was a much less agile text than Mengotti’s: a “laborious and erudite” work that forced even the critics to acknowledge that his author was undeniably “learned in the matter.”37 Torres starts by rejecting the image of a Rome born out of poverty and ignorance. The kings were “philosophers,” “cultured” and “warriors,” and their subjects nurtured a strong interest in philosophy. There was an “innate” passion for jurisprudence, while “eloquence” was widespread and the practice of literature, architecture and painting remarkable. Furthermore, from the beginning there were “excellent farmers,” merchants, “capable artisans” and agents of exchange, and there 34 Antonio de Torres, Memoria apologetica del commercio e coltura dei Romani da Romolo a Costantino: In proposito delle asserzioni de I ch.mi ss.ri Mengotti e Andrés […], 2 vols. (Venice: Costantini, 1788–1791). 35 On Torres, see Borja Medina, “Jesuitas andaluces en el exilio (1767–1773). El aspecto humano. Notas para el estudio de una crisis,” in Sevilla y la expulsión de los jesuitas de 1767 , ed. Borja Medina Rojas and Wenceslao Soto Artunedo ˇ (Seville: Fundación Focus, 2014), 75. 36 Antonio de Torres, Memoria apologetica, vii–xii. 37 A. R., “Lettera di A. R. al Sig. C. Antonio Mistura sul commercio de’ Romani […],”

Nuovo Giornale Letterario d’Italia per l’anno MDCCLXXXVIII , no. L. (Venice: Storti, 1788), 786–787.

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could be no doubt that the practice of navigation was advanced significantly. There were sustained exports of both natural and manufactured products, to the extent that in fact Rome did not hesitate to take up arms to protect the “liberty” and “security” of its commerce. In short, in the early centuries of its history, Rome was a “literate,” “industrious” and “martial” nation.38 It was precisely this unusual mix of qualities that allowed Rome to expand and endure. This was because empire could not exist where there was “industry without some force,” or “force without some industry.” In the first case—as demonstrated by the Dutch “example”—it would not be possible to “defend oneself” and “earn respect,” while in the second it would be impossible to secure the means of subsistence. Colbert, Torres adds, sought “the eternity of empires” not in one of those “extremes” but in the balanced combination of “force” and “industry.” Moreover, the “spirit of conquest” is not to be interpreted in a generic sense: the “object” of conquest and the “means” of conquering determine its specific characteristics and correspond “to the level of culture of the conqueror.” The aim of the “proud” and “barbaric” conqueror is to “destroy” and sate a “passion,” while the one imbued with “reason” and “culture” conquers in order to “benefit” the conquered peoples. This—Torres notes, echoing Bossuet’s Discours sur l’Histoire universelle (1681)—was archetypally the case with Rome, which during its expansion exemplified “moderation” and “innate rectitude.” These qualities enabled it to reopen the seas to navigation and rid them of piracy, to construct roads, bridges, aqueducts and even cities, to propagate the “beautiful and useful arts,” and the “Sciences,” to enact “very prudent laws,” to bring together previously distant regions, to transform “beasts” into “men,” and, not least, moved by a genuine “spirit of observation,” to learn “from other nations” and spread the acquired knowledge throughout the Empire. In the wake of all of this, the Romans also erected a “stately building”—finely designed, harmoniously proportioned and expertly connected—in which the fruits of “peace,” “security” and a “broad” and “free” trade were enjoyed. In a word, Rome created a “unique” and “unrivalled” empire.39

38 Ibid., xix–xxx. 39 Ibid., xx–xxvi and xlii.

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To be sure, during the initial phases by “necessity,” and during the territorial expansion by priority, the “spirit of force” prevailed over the “spirit of commerce.” But this imbalance was merely transitory and, moreover, never excessive. This was because even at that stage the government never lost sight of the importance of commerce. It negotiated commercial alliances, promoted fairs and favoured Roman traders, to the point of fighting wars to protect their “freedom” and “security.” In any case, as soon as the “boiling of conquests” subsided, the “spirit of commerce” reacquired its “primitive vigour.” Torres describes Roman merchants as a “great” overflowing “river”: as an entrepreneurial people who no longer wished to limit their activities or their “domicile” to Rome and Italy, a people dedicated to all kinds of trade and able to cover enormous distances with “great ease” and “speed,” and a people that, “with equal assiduity” promoted both the “mechanical arts” and agriculture, which was a real “science of state.” Torres is convinced that from all this the Romans must surely have derived “tremendous dividends,” that is, the profits of a “large active trade, superior by far” to those of Holland and England.40 Given these conditions the Romans, an industrious and cultured people with a vast, rich and varied empire at their disposal, prospered greatly, even achieving self-sufficiency and thereby the means to manage without “external trade.” Torres underlines that the “Mother country,” apart from reaping the proceeds of its exports, also gained the substantial revenue of taxation. At some point, however, this formidable construct broke down. If it could have found a way to ensure that “all” the goods produced, worked or exchanged in the provinces could continue the circulation between them for their “reciprocal advantage,” and if, at the same time, it could have paid attention to the “internal discipline” of the Roman people and the neutralisation of “external enemies,” Rome could have “lasted for eternity.” Instead, it fatally neglected to uphold the law— primarily the sumptuary laws, “one of the most beautiful pieces of Roman legislation”—as well as the “defence of borders” and the “economic stewardship of the provinces.” And because of this it fell.41 Torres interprets the fall of Rome in the light of two lethal deficiencies intertwined within a vicious circle. On the one hand, the regression

40 Ibid., vol. 2, xxi–xxii, xxix, xxxvii and liv. 41 Ibid., vol. 1, xxv; vol. 2, xxxviii and lxxxiii.

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of its economic performance. On the other, its inability to use force to safeguard its own autonomy and interests. In short, Rome grew and established itself thanks to its ability to preserve and encourage interactivity between the “spirit of commerce” and “spirit of force.” It declined when these two linchpins corroded and disintegrated. In this regard, it is likely that Torres discussed and strengthened this conviction also in the light of his participation in the activities of the Accademia Donada,42 which was also frequented by Senator Giacomo Nani, author of Veneta Milizia Marittima, a monumental collection of writings—composed between the 1750s and the 1790s—that reconstructs the history and characteristics of the Venetian navy, an institution that vividly expressed the correlation between the commercial and military spheres.43 This paradigm of the necessary conjunction between industriousness and force had already been expressed by Torres in the Saggio di Riflessioni sulle Arti, e il Commercio Europeo dei nostri tempi, e degli antichi, published in Pesaro in 1781.44 In 1779 he proposed to the Minister of the Indies Gálvez a translation and apologetic reworking of Raynal’s Histoire, an editorial project which, after gaining initial approval, was shelved because Prime Minister Floridablanca chose to entrust the task to the Duke of Almodóvar. It is very likely that, at least in part, the Saggio di Riflessioni and the Memoria Apologetica resulted from the failure of this project.45 In the Saggio di Riflessioni, Torres praises the “transformation” that Russia, by then “prosperous” and “enlightened,” was accomplishing. The “vast Empire” had managed to “bring law to the sea,” not to carry out “acts of bullying” but to avoid those of others. It had also achieved certain

42 Michele Battaglia, Delle accademie veneziane. Dissertazione storica (Venice: Orlandelli, 1826), 105–106. 43 Piero Del Negro, “Introduzione a Giacomo Nani,” Giacomo Nani, Della Difesa di Venezia, ed. Guerrino Filippi (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1997), ix–xiv. 44 Antonio De Torres, Saggio di riflessioni sulle arti, e il commercio europeo dei nostri tempi, e degli antichi. Per illustrare alcuni passi dell’Istoria filosofica, e politica, 2 vols. (Pesaro: Gavelli, 1781). On this, see also: Enrique Giménez López and Jesús Pradells Nadal, “Los jesuitas expulsos en el viaje a Italia de Nicolás Rodríguez Lasso (1788– 1789),” Revista de historia moderna 15 (1996): 238. 45 Niccolò Guasti, L’esilio italiano dei gesuiti spagnoli. Identità, controllo sociale e pratiche culturali (1767–1798) (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2012), 439–440.

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“conquests” that allowed it not only to reinforce its position in the international arena but also to improve significantly its commercial prospects. Russia thus became the recipient of a “river of opulence” from the Levant that consolidated its “navigation,” the “arts” and “agriculture.” Its show of strength against the Ottoman Empire, after overcoming a “mountain of obstacles,” established a “most useful trade,” and therefore constituted nothing less than “the finest coup in politics and economics.” For this reason, Torres could not understand why Raynal described Russia’s trade in the Levant as “precarious.” If anything, the commerce of other European nations was “precarious,” since in the Levant this was not “authorised” nor “accompanied by a victory.” Moreover, those nations had shown that they were fully aware of the centrality of force: indeed, in America and Asia, where their colonies bordered on “strong” and fearsome states, they “defended them with vigour.” More generally, the performance of England could not be comprehended without taking into account its “spirit of conquest.” England in fact “intervened in all wars” and in the majority of cases derived benefit from them, becoming both “powerful” and “wealthy.” Holland, on the other hand, having abandoned its “spirit of conquest” owing to an “excessive peace,” “had got increasingly worse,” to the point of no longer being able to defend itself.46 Thus, the idea that the “spirit of conquest” alone was not sufficient had already been made equally clear in the Saggio. Spain, Torres’s own country, demonstrated this fact perfectly by means of its “indifference” to agriculture and manufacturing and the “passive commerce” it maintained with European countries and Asia. This “passive commerce” led to it losing an “immense quantity” of gold and silver because “the Spaniard has no other goods apart from metals” and he could not “keep them” since, Torres notes, they served to satisfy his “irresistible” needs. Thus he agrees with Mengotti on the fact that industriousness is the “first mine,” and a “magnet” for metals. Consequently, instead of enforcing a ban on exporting metals, the regeneration of Spain would come about only through the revival—through “regulations,” “privileges” and “prizes”— of “more real riches,” such as agriculture and the arts. This would be the only way to limit imports while increasing exports. But before this could take place, it would be necessary to “close forever all the

46 Antonio de Torres, Saggio di riflessioni, vol. 1, 79–86 and 122.

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mines in America,” in order to avoid any distraction, in other words to focus all attention on this “more inexhaustible and more fruitful” source of riches.47 But, as mentioned, Spain should also and above all have emulated Russia, a large state capable of looking after both trade and military strength. And in this sense, it is surely no coincidence that another of Mengotti’s critics, Vincenzo Formaleoni, chose to dedicate his Storia filosofica, e politica della navigazione, del commercio e delle colonie degli antichi nel Mar Nero (1788–1789), to Catherine the Great, who reigned over a “vast and powerful Empire” and who, in terms of conquests, equalled if not surpassed the emperor Trajan. An abbot from Piacenza who settled in Venice in the 1770s, Formaleoni affirmed that the Romans, despite being a people “more inclined to arms than to traffic,” did not neglect maritime and commercial affairs. Indeed, they saw in the subjugated territories “a precious source of riches” affirming that “a thousand proofs of this are given by history; and one would have to be biased not to see them.”48 In short, for both Torres and Formaleoni, rehabilitating the commercial performance of ancient Rome meant underlining that in the life of states economic power and military power were not only compatible but most importantly mutually necessary. In their own time, Russia was providing a new demonstration of this tenet. Despite his exile, Torres continued to maintain a very strong relationship with Spain, a situation that was not exceptional. The pension granted by Charles III to the expelled former Jesuits—which in fact was their only source of income—at least superficially became an instrument of disciplining and control. And, what is more, the government of Madrid often doubled the pension (or provided one-off payments)

47 Ibid., vol. 1, 22, 44, 52 and 71. On conquest and commerce in the Spanish context,

see Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c.1500–c.1800 (New Haven-London: Yale University Press, 1995), 31–37, 40– 52, 63–74, 101–102, 109–110 and 116–125. See also: Andrew Hamilton, Trade and Empire in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2009), 77–110. 48 Vincenzo Antonio Formaleoni, Storia filosofica, e politica della navigazione, del

commercio e delle colonie degli antichi nel Mar Nero (Venice: nella tipografia dell’Autore, 1788–1789), vol. I, v–vi [Dedication], 213–214 and 220–222. A French translation of this work was published in 1789: Vincenzo Formaleoni, Histoire philosophique & politique du commerce, de la navigation, et des colonies des anciens dans la Mer-noire […], trans. Étienne-Félix d’Hénin de Cuvillers (Venice: C. Palese, 1789).

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of those who, through their writings, either challenged the virulent reemergence of the leyenda negra, or praised the reformist “new Spain,” or else contributed some significant economic reflection.49 We know that in this particular way Torres benefited from two socorros extraordinarios: in 1782 because of illness and in 1789—that is, the year after the publication of the Memoria apologetica—for “literary merit.” We also know that in 1791, signing himself as an “obsequioso servidor,” he made an unsuccessful request for his Real pension to be doubled due to substantial literary activity on the basis that besides the Saggio and the Memoria he had published other scholarly works.50 It can therefore be affirmed that Torres was convinced that he had contributed—at least in the final analysis—to the interests of Spain, capturing the attention of its ruling class in particular. But his was not the work of a courtier or an uncritical celebration, because the incontrovertible truth that Spain was a “decadent Monarchy” had first to be recognised and then addressed.51 To escape this crisis, it was necessary to reactivate the connection and cooperation between military force and economic performance, and in this regard Roman history provided the ideal example. Who better than the people described by Torres had been able to defend its territory and put it to use? And, contrarily, who had been worse than the Spanish in being unable to manage and improve what they had? In short, any reformer who associated the regeneration of the nation with the creation of a commercial area that functionally connected the colonies to the motherland, and which would oust foreigners by combating smuggling, strengthening colonial

49 Niccolò Guasti, L’esilio italiano dei gesuiti spagnoli, 115–119, 151–153, 396–404 and 409–423. See also: Matthieu P. Raillard, “Not Necessarily Epic: Translatio imperii and studii in Eighteenth-Century Apologias for the Spanish Nation,” L’Érudit FrancoEspagnol: An Electronic Journal of French and Hispanic Literatures, 8 (2015): 58, 64–66 and 71; Jorge Canˇ izares-Esguerrain, “‘Enlightened Reform’ in the Spanish Empire: An Overview,” in Enlightened Reform in Southern Europe and Its Atlantic Colonies, c. 1750– 1830, ed. Gabriel Paquette (New York: Routledge, 2016), 33, 83–90 and 94–95. 50 Niccolò Guasti, L’esilio italiano dei gesuiti spagnoli, 404–405. 51 On political economy and reform in Spain and its empire, see: Jorge Canizares-

Esguerra, ed., Nature, Empire, and Nation: Explorations of the History of Science in the Iberian World, Chapter 5, Eighteenth-Century Spanish Political Economy: Epistemology and Decline (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 96–100; Gabriel Paquette, Enlightenment, Governance and Reform in Spain and Its Empire, 1759–1808 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

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ports and rigorously controlling borders, could not fail to admire the accomplishments of the Roman people. But was it necessary to retrace their footsteps exactly, in other words to seek at all costs a “rapid” and formidable territorial expansion so as to then pursue total economic self-sufficiency? Certainly not. On this point Torres’s Memoria apologetica could not be clearer: “Nowadays Europe is no more than a republic, jealous of its preservation.” Jealous, that is to say, of its “balance,” which was founded on the “power” of the “empires” of which it was composed, and more accurately on their reciprocal neutralisation. With the exception of the Roman Empire, Torres adds, no nation has ever been able to provide for its own livelihood with “internal commerce alone.”52 Torres therefore anticipates that the “spirit of conquest” would be directed outside of Europe. “As long as we are masters of the arts, and of weapons, and superior in inventiveness,” he writes in the Saggio, “we will build Empires, and we will demand in tribute the best that the earth produces.” In short, the glorious legacy of the Roman Empire belonged to all of Europe. It is important to underline how, by defending the European colonial system—indeed, advocating its reinforcement—Torres indirectly relativises one of the cardinal elements of the leyenda negra, the scandalous otherness of Spanish “conquest.” In doing so, he argues that all colonial experiences required the use of “force.”53 Nevertheless, within this imperial Europe Spain had to claim a central, if not pre-eminent, role. Its potential was indeed enormous. It was the only nation which, given the variety and “universal fertility” of its estates, could at least “get close” to autarchy. Furthermore, although momentarily weakened, its economic intelligence was historically indisputable: not only its inventions, but also its regulations had been “admired” and “imitated” by the other “commercial Nations.” In a word, Spain could not fail to be a leading player, and for this reason had the right to demand an authentic “rebalancing” between the European countries. “Desired by all but not respected by all,” this “balance” consisted in “equalising” the “extension of dominions,” the “power of armies,” trade networks and anything else that might have resulted in a “dangerous superiority” that was “contrary to the freedom of others.”

52 Antonio de Torres, Memoria apologetica, vol. 1, xxv–xvi. 53 Antonio de Torres, Saggio di riflessioni, vol. 1, 44–45.

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Thus, having been written at the height of the American War of Independence (1775–1783), the Saggio resolutely justified Spain’s intervention, which was aimed at defending the “freedom of commerce” of all “maritime Europe” and rejecting the “violent enlargement” of Great Britain. To ensure “the common security of the Europeans,” Great Britain’s position in the New World had to be “counterbalanced.” And it went without saying that “of all the nations that traded overseas, Spain was the one to carry out this task.” Torres did not, of course, advocate full freedom of trade. On the one hand, the colonies and surrounding lands were under the control of single powers. On the other, where there were (still) sovereign states—like Persia and the Mughal Empire—nobody could claim to exclude or penalise anyone else.54 The relationship between Mengotti and Spain has a curious final chapter. In Valencia in 1798 a work was published entitled Del comercio de los romanos, desde la primera guerra de Cartágo, hasta Constantino el Magno.55 The frontispiece bore the name of the author, Antonio Zacarias de Malcorra y Azanza, a member of the Real Sociedad Económica de Valladolid, as well as an assistant accounting officer for the Valencian army.56 Nevertheless, Zacarias was not the true author,57 since the book was in fact a translation of the Paduan edition (1787) of Mengotti’s work, as an assessment of the two texts makes unequivocally clear, and it is interesting to note that this false attribution was made even though Mengotti was considered “célebre” in Spain. Such a comparison also shows, however, that by omitting, modifying and adding parts of text the translator—probably Zacarias himself—performed a function that was

54 Ibid., vol. 1, 119–123. 55 Antonio Zacarias de Malcorra, Del comercio de los Romanos, desde la primera guerra

de Cartágo, hasta Constantino el magno (Valencia: Benito Monfort, 1798). 56 Joseph Señán y Velazquez, Guía o estado general de la Hacienda en España: Año de 1802 (Madrid: Imprenta de Vega y Compañía, 1802), 183. 57 On the attribution to Zacarias, see: Lorenzo Arrazola, Enciclopedia española de derecho y administración […], vol. X (Madrid: Imprenta de la Revista de Legislación y Jurisprudencia, 1858), 217; Pedro Estasén, Instituciones de derecho mercantil. Tomo I. Parte histórica (Madrid: Imprenta de la Revista de Legislación, 1890), 327n; Manuel Colmeiro, Biblioteca de los economistas españoles de los siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII (Madrid: Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Politicas, 1900), 100–101; Pedro Voltes Bous, Preliminares a una historia económica de Cataluña (Barcelona: Instituto Municipal de Historia, 1968), 54; Julio Caro Baroja, ed., Historia general del País Vasco. Vol. 8, Edad contemporánea (San Sebastián: Editorial La Gran Enciclopedia Vasca, 1981), 320.

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anything but passive. We therefore have before us a re-semanticisation that reveals and expresses the intellectual profile of the translator and conveys his arguments. To be clear, the Spanish work did not distort Mengotti’s main ideas, and Zacarias did not appear to have any intention to question their accuracy. Rather, he aimed to carry out a more subtle operation, namely that of adapting them to the Spanish context so that they would seem to have been written by a Spaniard for a Spanish audience. First of all, he omitted the passages in which Mengotti expressed political opinions that could have provoked the displeasure of the authorities. The Spanish version in fact does not translate the paragraph in which the Venetian author, criticising the “terrible maxim” according to which the sovereign “is unbound by all the laws,” contends that “industry cannot flourish in a military and tyrannical government.” And neither did he translate the one in which Mengotti argues that “the life of the sovereigns is less sure the more the government is despotic.” Furthermore, Zacarias removed the passages explicitly and heavily criticising the behaviour of Spain. As we know, Mengotti wrote about the “immense and prodigious riches” that the Romans forcibly took from other peoples, before adding that this reminded him of Cortés and Pizarro’s “brigades,” which “devastated” America by amassing mountains of gold “covered with human blood.” In the Spanish version, this mental association does not appear. Something very similar also occurs further on. On the one hand, Zacarias translated the passage in which it is stated that a nation, after suddenly becoming immensely wealthy, despises “hard work” and thinks only of “splendour.” On the other hand, he left out the contemporary example given by Mengotti, namely that of the Spaniards, who, after the discovery of the “rich treasures” of America, “gave way to pride and sloth.”58 Yet Zacarias removed only the strongest and most offensive aspects of the comparison between ancient Rome and modern Spain. Which is to say that he preserved the substance. And this he did because—like other compatriots engaged in the emulative translation of European political economy59 —he wanted to issue the warning of a patriot, that is, 58 Francesco Mengotti, Del commercio de’ Romani, xxvi and xliv; Antonio Zacarias de Malcorra, Del comercio de los Romanos, 32 and 54–55. 59 See for example: Jesús Astigarraga and Javier Usoz, “The Enlightenment in Translation: Antonio Genovesi’s Political Economy in Spain, 1778–1800,” Mediterranean Historical Review 28: 1 (2013), 24–45.

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a cautious but necessary criticism of the contemporary state of affairs: Spain was following in the footsteps of Rome but could still turn back. With regard to this, there is a fundamentally important passage in which the method of translation adopted by Zacarias emerges clearly. Mengotti, firmly convinced that “money follows industry, and will always follow it,” concludes that: “if by accident we were to dry up the mines of the New World so far not exhausted, we would soon see the Spaniards rush to their ruin with the same speed and acceleration with which the Romans fell.”60 Zacarias translates this as follows: “if, by accident, the mines of the New World that are not yet exhausted were to dry up, and the advancement and perfection of science, agriculture, commerce, and other arts and crafts were not sought in Spain, there would be a risk of seeing it [Spain] fall into ruin at the same speed and acceleration as the Romans fell.”61 Here two things come to our attention. Firstly, the addition of the words “and the advancement and perfection of science, agriculture, commerce, and other arts and crafts were not sought in Spain,”62 which indirectly explain how the fate foreseen by Mengotti might be averted, and thus constitute a call to action, to reform. Secondly, the fact that “the Spanish” did not become “los Españoles”: Zacarias, of course, was speaking with the Spanish as a Spaniard, so there was no point in translating literally an expression which conveys extraneousness to a danger that Zacarias experienced in a vividly patriotic way.

60 “Se venissero per accidente a diseccarsi le miniere finora inesauste del nuovo Mondo, noi vedressimo ben presto gli Spagnuoli correre alla loro rovina con quella stessa rapidità, ed accelerazione, con cui precipitarono i Romani,” Mengotti, Del commercio de’ Romani, c. 61 “Si viniesen por accidente à secarse las minas hasta ahora inexâustas del nuevo Mundo, y no se procurase en España el adelantamiento y perfección de las ciencias, agricultura, comercio, y demas artes y oficios, séria de temer que se viese bien presto correr à su ruina, con la misma rapidez y aceleración con que se precipitaron los Romanos.” de Malcorra, Del comercio de los Romanos, 132. 62 “Y no se procurase en España el adelantamiento y perfección de las ciencias, agricultura, comercio, y demas artes y oficios.” de Malcorra, Del comercio de los Romanos, 132.

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A French Mengotti: Commercial Civilisation and Its Ambivalences Whereas Zacarias adapted Mengotti’’s work to address the Spanish as a Spaniard, Jacques Gassier63 did so to address the French as a Frenchman. Born in Brignoles, avocat at the parliament of Aix, syndic perpétuel of the order of the nobility of Provence (he was ennobled in 1777), Knight of the Order of Malta, and secrétaire des commandements for the Provencal lands of Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, during the last decades of the ancien régime, he distinguished himself as a fervent defender of the privileges of the nobility. In the years following the Revolution, after taking refuge first in Aups and then in Marseille, he was proscribed and forced into exile in Italy: he lived in Pisa, Florence and Venice; having recently returned to France, he had to expatriate again to Pisa following the anti-royalist coup of 4 September 1797. Thanks to a letter of recommendation (3 November 1801) highlighting “his inestimable talents and qualities,” he was able to return permanently under the consulate of Napoleon Bonaparte.64 In 1800, shortly before Gassier left Pisa, his translation of Del commercio de’ Romani appeared in Marseille65 —where he would later settle and become a member of the local Académie des Sciences, Lettres et Arts. This is an episode which, together with the one concerning Torres, tells us a lot about the nature and role of political and religious exile in the eighteenth century, and in particular about the circulation of texts and ideas that it promoted. In both cases, the protagonists, so to speak, made a virtue of necessity, immersing themselves in the linguistic, cultural

63 Not to be confused with Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (1757–1810), a French writer and diplomat. 64 François Roux-Alphéran, Les rues d’Aix, ou Recherches historiques sur l’ancienne Capitale de la Provence, vol. 2 (Aix: Aubin, 1848), 288–89; M. Borel D’Hauterive, ed., Annuaire de la noblesse de France […] (Paris: Bureau de la publication, 1879), vol. 35, 151; Bulletin de la Société d’études scientifiques et archéologiques de la ville de Draguignan (Draguignan: Latil, Négro, 1923), 185; Marie-José Rosaz-Brulard, Les Brignolais au XIXe siècle (Brignoles: Les Alizés, 1987), 32. 65 [François] Mengoty, Commerce des Romains, Depuis la fondation de Rome jusques à Constantin […]. Traduite en français, avec des notes du Traducteur, Par le Citoyen Jacques Gassier (Marseille: Mossy, An IX [1800]). A comparison of the versions shows that Gassier did not work on the Veronese edition of 1797 but on the Paduan edition of 1787.

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and political context that welcomed them. Of far greater importance, however, is the fact that they did so primarily with a view to maintaining or reforging a link with the nation from which they had been driven out. The peculiar cultural mediation that these exiles implemented cannot be understood without considering its (instrumentally) patriotic function. Indeed, by providing original analyses and answers to the issues and problems on the agenda—original because they were drawn from a context to which only they had access—Torres and Gassier sought to be credible and useful interlocutors in the eyes of the rulers by whom they hoped to be welcomed back. Mengotti’s text, the Préface to the French translation argued not by chance, was not just an “academic dissertation” but a work which, for the “depth of its views,” the “strength of its evidence” and the “richness of its details,” “deserves the full attention of politicians and legislators”: “politicians can draw lessons from it for the organisation of empires, and legislators for governing them well.”66 And here we come to the other side of the question, already mentioned in relation to the Spanish translation of Mengotti’s work. In order to be useful and usable, what is “imported” must be adapted and interpreted— cultural mediation, at least in these cases, is therefore a critical activity. In this sense, while Torres confronted Mengotti and Raynal by elaborating a real antithesis of their texts—that is, by turning them upside down through a sort of productive contradiction—Gassier, and with him also Zacarias (who, although not an exile, was nevertheless a cultural mediator), chose the instrument of translation, which allowed them to interact creatively with Del commercio de’ Romani, shaping and developing its contents. Yet if, in the case of Zacarias, the modifications made, however decisive, are minimal with respect to the essence of the text, Gassier’s intervention is of cardinal intellectual importance as a sort of Aufhebung, which realises—by going beyond it—the further potential of Mengotti’s text. Indeed, through an apparatus of notes placed at the end of the text, a discourse takes shape that gradually acquires its own autonomy, with results that are as paradoxical as they are significant. Initially, in full coherence with Mengotti’s argument, Gassier celebrates the rise of commercial civilisation. And in this sense he identifies ancient Rome as the opponent par excellence of this fundamental historical process. The ancient

66 Ibid., iii–iv (preface).

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Italic peoples, Germans and Gauls were not, of course, traders either; nor, even in the eighteenth century, were “the savages of all parts of the world, who put theft and robbery above all means of acquisition, and who procure, by purchase or exchange, only that which they have not been able to steal by force.” Yet, in their defence, Gassier notes that “it is in the order of nature, and in the character of man, that rude and warlike peoples disdain trade of which they do not know the advantages.” The fault of the Romans, on the other hand, was that they demeaned it “in a time when they were enlightened on its advantages.” “This bent, which, among nascent and uncivilised peoples, is the product of instinct and ignorance, was the fruit of reflection and pride,” the expression of a conscious choice. And in this sense it is no coincidence that Roman legislation always degraded those who engaged in commerce: “in the comptoirs, factories and shops, there were only slaves, rarely freedmen.” After the invasions of the barbarians, “who brought to the empire the same principles and the same customs already consecrated by the mœurs and the laws of the Romans,” this “deplorable prejudice,” which elevated the lazy citizen dedicated to “unbridled luxury” above the merchant—“active, enlightened, hard-working”—was further consolidated and certainly neither changed nor weakened “by the frenzy, pride and superstitions of chivalry.” However, what was even worse in Gassier’s eyes was the fact that it gained new strength with the discovery of Roman law, which became the law of most of Europe. In short, this is a contemporary problem, a pernicious permanence that needs to be actively combated, for while in many countries trade remains an ignoble occupation, even in those where it is most widely practised, it does not receive the respect and recognition it deserves. And, as mentioned, it was important to promote not only the public image and honour of the great merchants engaged in “commerce en gros” but also that of the craftsmen and the shopkeepers: “manufacturing and retail resales are as many ramifications of commerce.”67 France, then, is called upon to reject Rome’s aversion to trade, and to develop and refine its commercial identity. In this respect it is first of all important that its rulers be aware that the promotion of agriculture is an integral and indispensable part of commercial civilisation. In this sense he emphasises, following Mengotti’s arguments, how in the

67 Ibid., 203–204.

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context of a nation’s economic life it is necessary to pursue and promote a virtuous connection between these two sides. Trade, indeed, through internal circulation and exportation, stimulates agriculture, and in turn the latter, by increasing and diversifying its products, offers merchants and the nation new opportunities for enrichment, to the point that Gassier has no doubt that “the conservation of this circulation ensures that of political societies.” This peculiar interaction is particularly evident and significant in trading cities, such as Marseille: “Agriculture deploys all its activity in their territories”: “there is not an inch of land without produce.” Moreover, thanks to the “beneficent and fruitful breath of commerce,” the same industriousness spreads to all neighbouring districts. Gassier was enthusiastic about this phenomenology and even went so far as to distance himself from Mengotti, who—faithful to the paradigm that saw smallholdings as the most successful way to organise land—considered excessively large plots of farmland to be very problematic. On the contrary, if “excessive subdivision” is a problem because it takes large portions of land away from cultivation—due to the “multiplicity of buildings it gives rise to” then “large fields,” especially after the abolition of the fideicommissum, are the most appropriate means through which to deploy the commercialisation of agriculture. As such, the “nonsense idea” of the “agrarian laws” needed to be abandoned, in order to “let property have the right to extend, freedom to expand, and emulation to preserve and acquire territorial wealth.”68 The path to be followed by France therefore seems clear and unequivocal. Yet, according to an ascending climax, a discourse takes shape that overturns the enthusiasm and certainties that dominated the previous lines. At first, Gassier merely mentions the potential negative consequences of commercial development. And the impression that emerges is that he sincerely believes in the possibility of neutralising luxury through the careful political governance of trade on the basis of principles that are fundamentally antithetical to those in vogue in ancient Rome. It was necessary to avoid “long and bloody” wars, “ruinous and passive” trade and urban panem et circenses, which depopulated the countryside and attracted a mass of idle people to the cities. As a consequence, it was equally important to promote a “taste for agriculture” and “love of work,” and, not least, to use taxation to combat luxury, in particular the

68 Ibid., 197–198.

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overuse of domestic servants (“persons more than useless”). The latter was “the most dangerous abuse that can have a state” since, as well as depopulating the countryside, “it sowed all the seeds of corruption in the homes of the great and the rich, and then it sowed them among the common people and in the countryside, which are the last refuge of morality and innocence.”69 However, in the last note, at the very end of Mengotti’s text, this cautious optimism gives way to a volcano of doubts and fears. It is as if luxury has now become an enemy too great and powerful to be prevented: “rest produces the commerce that provides wealth” and “luxury comes after them.” Gassier adds that “Luxury cannot and should not even be condemned in a wealthy and mercantile state,” and consequently must at least be adequately regulated by controlling its “excesses,” so that corruption, “the great dissolver of all political bodies,” does not take hold. In this sense, citing Mably’s Entretiens de Phocion (1763)70 and Jean-Baptiste Blanchard’s L’école des mœurs (1772),71 he emphasises that mœurs are “the only cement of the patriotic edifice,” the “foundation of society” and the “basis of the state.” From this point of view, it is clearly not so much the “economists” as the “moralists” who are to be expected to provide the necessary assistance for the preservation of political societies: “the economist increases the net product and the mass of wealth,” while “the moralist preserves the national spirit by livening the germ of virtues.” Mengotti is undoubtedly right when he identifies commerce as the source of happiness and prosperity of nations. Yet, Gassier adds, there is nothing to fear in Venice because the “abuses” and “evils” of commerce are averted by a “wise,” “enlightened” and “vigilant” government. In other words, because the “spirit of the ancient mœurs,” the “principles of morality” and the “laws of justice” are constantly respected, “commerce, and its most brilliant successes can only produce the emulation that animates them, the confidence that sustains them and the virtue that purifies them.” For Gassier, “it is in states thus constituted that commerce can be given incentives and distinctions without measure, because they are given without danger.” 69 Ibid., 197–198 and 209–210. 70 See [Gabriel Bonnot de Mably], Entretiens de Phocion, sur le rapport de la morale

avec la politique […] (The Hague: Aillaud, 1764), xiv–xxv (preface) and 242–251. 71 See Jean-Baptiste Xavier Duchesne Blanchard, L’école des mœurs ou réflexions morales et historiques sur les maximes de la sagesse (Liège: Bassompierre, 1782), vol. I, 6 (preface).

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The problem, then, concerns those “less careful” or “more relaxed” governments where moral corruption flourishes, corroding “all the good principles.” In these countries, as a result of a real “contagion,” citizens of all classes become “hommes d’argent,” and “the thirst for gold and selfishness take the place of love of the homeland.” And it is a “gangrene” which, by taking over the “mass of the nation,” can only lead to the death of its body. Although it is not clear whether Gassier believes that France is capable, as Venice is, of guaranteeing a “well regulated” and “well directed” commerce (he underlines that “no other governments are like it [Venice], by far”72 ), he is at least very clear about the alternatives at stake. “I would prefer a state without commerce than a commerce without morals and principles,” he declares. If “a state concentrated within narrow limits [concentré dans de bornes étroites ] can exist and vegetate without trade,” “who can answer for the duration of a corrupt nation?” Indeed, while “justice” and “honour” can sustain the duration of a government without commerce; the opposite is not the case. And to prove the truth of this thesis, he invokes none other than Sparta, although it is fascinating to think that, via Mably, he may also had in mind the traditional image of Bern as a viable modern republic, uniquely military and agrarian.73 Surrounded by ports, Sparta’s inhabitants seemed destined for navigation and maritime trade but Lycurgus, through his laws, made them “land men” [“hommes de terre”].74 “How could this state, so constituted, last more than seven hundred years?” Gassier asks. The answer, obviously, is to be found in the “probity,” and in the “opinion established throughout Greece in favour of this people”—a real “empire of trust”— which was tainted neither by the “ambition to dominate,” nor by the “thirst for riches.” Sparta, he concludes, survived for a long time without commerce; if it had kept the “esteem” and “veneration” of other nations, and above all “this rigidity of morals and principles to which he owed all his glory,” it would “probably” never have needed it.75 72 “Mais tous les régimes ne lui ressemblent pas à beaucoup près.” Mengoty, Commerce des Romains, 207–208. 73 Johnson Kent Wright, “Mably and Berne,” History of European Ideas 33 (2007):

434. 74 For the very similar mythologisation of Sparta and Lycurgus by Mably, see: Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, Observations sur les Grecs (Geneva: Par la Compagnie des Libraires, 1749), 23–29. 75 Mengoty, Commerce des Romains, 206–208 and 210–212.

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Sceptical of any historiographical schematism, Gassier insists on the need to understand, “how and by what ways barbarians become men, and how, having become men, they become barbarians again.” It is a dilemma which he considers to be fully contemporary, and which can only be resolved by abandoning an uncritically triumphalist view of commerce. Commerce, indeed, is not the supreme agent of civilisation since, “despite all its advantages,” it can in fact turn out to be a very dangerous factor of regression and destruction if it is “misdirected” and “misunderstood.”76 Gassier does not, of course, deny the central importance acquired by commerce for a modern polity, but—through Mengotti—he criticises aggressive and ruthless international competition, in which economic expansion overlaps and blurs with imperialist conquest, giving rise to a war economy.77 And above all, beyond Mengotti, and in the wake of Mably,78 whose influence is quite perceptible in his reasoning as a whole, Gassier fears a government that, becoming a victim of the commercial reason of state, subordinates any moral concern to the imperative of national enrichment and invests all its political energies into this goal. There can be no doubt that “evil can never become good because of the benefits it brings us.” If Rome, enlarged through conquests, fell because of its “unjust pride,” Carthage “fell by the immoderation of its ambition and the bad faith of the principles on which it wanted to establish and propagate its trade.” Thus commerce, like the thirst for military dominance, can erode “justice” and “morality.” Apart from ensnaring rulers, this danger also affects individuals. Indeed, the “mean rapacity” and “impertinent jealousy” of merchants and manufacturers—against whom Say railed in the same year that Mengotti’s translation appeared, calling for coercive laws, civic rituals and public 76 Ibid., 206–208 and 210–212. 77 Francis Demier, “Les ‘économiste de la nation’ contre l’économié monde’ du XVIIIe

siècle,” in La pensée économique pendant la Révolution française: 1789–1799, ed. Gilbert Faccarello and Philippe Steiner (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1991), 285– 299; Marc Belissa, “What Trade for a Republican People? French Revolutionary Debates About Commercial Treaties (1792–1799),” in The Politics of Commercial Treaties in the Eighteenth Century: Balance of Power, Balance of Trade, ed. Antonella Alimento and Koen Stapelbroek, (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 421–423 and 433–434. 78 Michael Sonenscher, Sans-Culottes: An Eighteenth-Century Emblem in the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 387–393; Julie Ferrand and Arnaud Orain, “Abbé de Mably on Commerce, Luxury, and ‘Classical Republicanism’,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 39: No. 2 (June 2017): 201–204 and 216.

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instruction79 —can only blind and pervert, poisoning the foundations of civil life. “The merchant is a useful citizen: he becomes dangerous if he is immoral.” Instead, Gassier adds, “the righteous and virtuous man is a valuable citizen in all times and in whatever condition he finds himself placed.”80 And here it is important to emphasise not only the stigma against the “immoral” merchant but also and above all the ontological superiority of the “righteous” and “virtuous” man lato sensu. Indeed, to preserve a commercial society—to protect it from itself—the privately oriented, that is soft and depoliticised virtue of the hardworking subject, although “useful,” is not enough (nor, therefore, is mere economic improvement). Political participation cannot be dissolved into economic citizenship and enlightened self-interest.81 What is needed—“valuable”— is an active, rigorous and disinterested patriotism, the same that according to Gassier distinguished the nobility during the ancien régime and justified their privilege,82 that is, a publicly oriented virtue that should animate the conduct of both merchants and the rest of the nation. It is not difficult here to see the self-portrait of Gassier himself. “There are still those who […] regard every man as their friend, and every citizen as a brother; these beings, either persecuted and suffering, or protected and peaceful, 79 Richard Whatmore, “The Political Economy of Jean-Baptiste Say’s Republicanism,” History of Political Thought 19: no. 3 (Autumn 1998): 444–445 and 454–456; Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge. Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 334–339. 80 Mengoty, Commerce des Romains, 187–190 and 207. 81 John Shovlin, The Political Economy of Virtue. Luxury, Patriotism, and the Origins

of the French Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 205–207 and 210– 214; Henry C. Clark, Compass of Society: Commerce and Absolutism in Old-Regime France (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007), 262–274, 285–287 and 316–333; Amalia D. Kessler, A Revolution in Commerce: The Parisian Merchant Court and the Rise of Commercial Society in Eighteenth-Century France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 286–287. See also: Shelley Burtt, Virtue Transformed: Political Argument in England, 1688–1740 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 82 “Il existe en Provence, comme ailleurs, un Ordre qui tient à tous les autres, un Ordre qui veille sans cesse pour conserver le feu sacré des maximes, qui renferme dans son sein le germe des vertus, le foyer des lumieres, et l’amour imperturbable de la vérité; un Ordre enfin dont les nobles fonctions sont toujours dirigées vers la défense des Citoyens, des Loix et de la Patrie. (…) Que deviendroit l’Ordre de la Noblesse, représenté par les Fiefs, si ces memes Fiefs tomboient en roture? Le second Ordre de la Nation cesseroit donc d’exister!” Jacques Gassier, Observations sur la véritable constitution de la Provence: au sujet de la contribution des trois ordres aux charges publiques & communes (Aix: B. Gibelin-David & T. Emeric-David, 1788), 273–274 and 368–384.

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are always citizens and never deserters. […] Happy the country which protects its virtuous and peaceful members, which brings them back to its bosom, and which thus preserves and propagates the conservative and restorative principles of republics and empires.”83 In sum, what really matters is not the commerce itself, but the spiritual attitude towards it, this being what allows us to grasp the most authentic and true identity of a nation, and consequently also its fate. “The commercial picture [le tableau du Commerce] of each nation embraces all the strings which sustain the existence of its Government,” that is, “the mœurs of the people” and “the maxims of those who govern them.” As a consequence, Gassier adds, “the history of commerce is, in a way, the philosophical history of each nation, which can only be sustained by morals and good principles.” And precisely in the light of this fundamental interlocking—in which only “morals” and “good principles” are the independent variable—it is clear that if commerce takes hold in a nation where there is no will and ability to govern its impacts, it will lead to its “inevitable fall.”84

Conclusion Why did Rome fall? In attempting to answer this question, Mengotti and the other protagonists of this adventure outlined a veritable field of interpretative tension. Issues that were crucial for eighteenth-century Europe were transported and set in ancient history, in order not only to demonstrate their truth but also to develop further their intellectual and political implications. For this reason, in their works it is very difficult

83 Mengoty, Commerce des Romains, 210. 84 Ibid., vii (preface), 206–208 and 210–212. Another history of trade that appeared

in France and underlined the ill effects of commercial civilisation was Philippe-Auguste de Sainte-Foix Chevalier d’Arcq’s Histoire du Commerce et de la Navigation des Peuples anciens et modernes […], 2 vols. (Amsterdam, Paris: Desaint & Saillant, Durand, Vincent and Duchesne, 1758). “The Chevalier saw commercial peoples as lacking in courage and in all of the martial arts necessary to procure the safety and glory of a nation. […] He warned of the dangers to societies—like eighteenth-century France—that turned to foreign trade, indulging in luxury and ease rather than sacrificing themselves in war and virtue,” Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce, 95–102. See also: Paul Cheney, “Les économistes français et l’image de l’Amérique. L’essor du commerce transatlantique et l’effondrement du «gouvernement féodal»,” Dix-huitième Siècle, 33 (2001): 238.

10

IN THE MIRROR OF ROME: COMMERCE, CONQUEST …

339

to distinguish and separate clearly and definitively the ideological dimension from the properly historiographic one. Perhaps it is also pointless, since their originality and richness derives precisely from this ambiguous combination. The image of Rome constructed and conveyed by these works could not therefore be the same. There is, first of all, Mengotti’s Rome, a true anti-exemplum. Indeed, his “terrible lesson” teaches that the “spirit of conquest,” as well as the tyranny of governments that do not respect private property and personal integrity, is not compatible with the “spirit of commerce.” In this sense, the fall of Rome demonstrates that the stability and prosperity of a nation is not based on the plundering of others’ resources and on commercial expansion supported by military means, but on fervent application to agriculture, manufacturing and maritime trade. Frightened by imperial projects in which commerce was symbiotically linked to war, Mengotti sought to promote a model of international relations that would protect the independence and autonomy of a militarily vulnerable state such as Venice, a model in which trade, however unbalanced it might be due to the faults of individual nations, was nothing more than a peaceful dynamic based on reciprocity and interdependence. We do not know whether Zacarias, who translated Del commercio de’ Romani into Spanish and then presented this text as his own work, also fully believed in this paradigm. What is certain, however, is the fact that he grasped perfectly, and in a vividly concerned manner, the analogy between ancient Rome and eighteenth-century Spain repeatedly evoked by Mengotti. To escape decadence and collapse, it was essential that Spain made economic development its main political priority, ceasing once and for all to rely on the mere mining of precious metals or the plundering of other people’s goods. Instead, the Rome described and celebrated by Torres, who not by chance wanted to polemicise with Mengotti, is of a very different kind. In other words, a state reached the peak of its prosperity when it was best able to combine its distinctive military genius with the industriousness of its merchants. Commerce supports the capacity for war, and vice versa: this firmly twofold law is the main lesson that, according to Torres, European nations, and Spain in particular, had to learn from Roman history. One could not otherwise explain the powerful affirmation of Russia, unsurprisingly also admired by another of Mengotti’s critics, Abbot Formaleoni. Underlying and closely linked to Torres’s rehabilitation of Rome’s commercial performance is a discourse inclined

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to delineate an imperial ideal which, rather than focusing on conquest as seizure and destruction, is based on the expansion of commercial networks and cultural achievements, and which identifies the functional valorisation of subject territories as an essential mechanism. This is the model that Spain needed to emulate if it did not wish to become irrelevant on the European and international stage.85 In the wake of Mengotti’s portrayal, the Rome of Gassier, who translated Del commercio de’ Romani into French, is also the conquering nation guilty of having hindered and delayed the establishment of commercial civilisation. And yet, Mengotti’s enthusiasm for this fundamental historical process undergoes a significant downsizing with Gassier. While the writer from Veneto had already stigmatised aggressive commercial competition, Gassier arrives at a more radical problematisation of economic development tout court. Indeed, the objective benefits generated by commerce ought not distract attention from its potentially catastrophic implications. And the distinctiveness of this concerned viewpoint lies in its intellectual debt to Mably. For both, commerce becomes pernicious when it engulfs all the spiritual energies of legislators and subjects, that is when the government adopts the commercial reason of state, and when the figure of the citizen, a generous and selfless patriot, fades into that of the merchant. This is fatal because the absolute priority of virtue, the very bedrock of societies, is lost. Otherwise, one cannot explain the tragic fate of Carthage, blinded by the desire to get rich. Tormented and necessarily ambivalent, Gassier’s reflection constitutes a heartfelt appeal for moral strength and political intelligence, enlightened by the terrible lessons of history, to make commerce a part and not the whole.

85 On the belief that the virtuous conqueror aspires to expand commercial networks, see Chapter 1 of this volume.

Index

A Academy of Arcadia, 319 Accarias de Sérionne, Jacques, 271 Acton, John, 263 Adolf Fredrick, King of Sweden, 239–241 Africa, African Company, African continent, 169, 170, 179 Ahn, Doohwan, 75, 77 Aix, Parliament of, 330 Alberti, Leon Battista, 214 Alexander the Great, King of Macedon, 14, 15, 16, 21, 75, 225, 229, 268. See also Duguet; Huet; Louis XIV; Rollin Alexandria, 14, 210, 268 Alighieri, Dante, 214 Alimento, Antonella, 40, 81, 219, 245, 248, 251, 253, 264, 271, 272 Almodóvar del Río, Pedro Francisco Jiménez de Góngora y Luján, 1st Duke of, 322 Altonaer Reichs-Post-Reiter, 222, 241

Altona, 222 Amalfi, 273 America, 159, 173, 195, 282, 289, 303, 314, 323, 324, 328 American colonies, 20, 101, 162, 169, 178 American Revolutionary War, 241 Bacon’s Rebellion, 162 discovery of, 4, 7, 123, 124, 313, 328 English north-east mainland, 153 imperialism, 167 new wants and luxury of, 124 North American, 169 South, 114, 173 Americas. See America Amour-propre. See Self-love Amsterdam, 124, 137, 139, 159 Bank of, 159 Anderson, Adam, precarious nature of economic wellbeing, 27, 28. See also De la Court; Histories of trade

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Alimento and A. Della Fontana (eds.), Histories of Trade as Histories of Civilisation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80087-1

341

342

INDEX

Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, Electress Palatine and Princess of Tuscany, 214 Antilles, 280, 281, 287, 294, 296, 302 Dominica, Lesser Antilles, Saint-Vincent, 287. See also Raynal Antiquarianism, 3. See also Erudition; Histoire philosophique Antwerp, 119, 120, 165 Arcq, Philippe-Auguste de Sainte-Foix, Chevalier d’, 338. See also Histories of trade Argenson, René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, marquis d’, 204, 303 Ashworth, John, 41 Asia, 149, 152, 173, 229, 316, 323 rise in long-distance commerce to the, 160 South, 154, 172 superior manufactures of, 151 Asiento, awarded to a Portuguese company, 171 Athens, 75, 81, 85, 101, 103, 105, 106, 119, 137 distance from pomp and pleasure, 75. See also Carthage; Rollin; Rome Atlantic, 151, 152, 167 frequent wars in, 151 Augustus, Roman emperor, 14, 265, 269, 316 Aups, 330 Austrian Empire, 246 Averani, Giuseppe, 194 B Babylon, 76 Baghdad, 191 Bajazet I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, 209

Balance of power, 13, 19, 42, 94, 112, 132, 272, 275. See also Balance of Trade; Jealousy of Trade Balance of Trade, 20, 93, 132, 159, 165, 168, 264, 272, 318. See also Balance of power; Jealousy of Trade Balearic Islands, 73 Balleri, Rita, 195 Baltic Sea, 15 Barbary Regencies, 194, 197 Bari, 258 Basra, 191 Batavian Republic, 148. See also Dutch Republic Baudeau, Nicolas, 34–36, 85, 99, 102, 114. See also Civilisation; Histories of trade; Physiocracy; Russia Belasyse, John, 13 Belloni, Girolamo, 188, 202–207, 210 active and passive trade, 203, 205 traditional conception of the origins of society, 206. See also Histories of trade Benedict XIV, Pope of the Catholic Church, 201 Bengal, 191 Berch, Anders, 234, 243 Bern, 335 Berthollet, Claude-Louis, 285 Bertrand, Jean, 314 Biagini, Fortunato, 195 Bigot de la Touanne, Claude-Pierre, 92. See also Histories of trade Binoche, Bertrand, 95 Black Sea, 15. See also Muscovy; Russia Blanchard, Jean-Baptiste, 334 Blanch, John, 178

INDEX

Bland, Giles, 162 Bland, John, 162 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 214 Bochart, Samuel, 226, 230 Bödeker, Hans Erich, 233 Boisguilbert, Pierre de, 58, 67 Böning, Holger, 239, 240 Bonrepos (or Bonrepaus), François d’Usson, Marquis de, 145, 146. See also Histories of trade Bordeaux, Académie des Sciences et Belles Lettres, 201 Boscawen, Edward, 301 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne, 266, 320 Bottari, Giovanni Gaetano, 188 Bougainville, Louis-Antoine, Comte de, 288 Brahe, Erik, 240–242 Brazil, Portuguese, 170 Briant, Pierre, 75, 268. See also Huet Brignoles, 330 Brindisi, 273 Bristol, 169, 207 Bristoliensis, A., 198, 207, 208. See also Histories of trade; Zanobetti Britain. See Great Britain Bruni, Leonardo, 214 Butel-Dumont, Georges-Marie, 7, 20, 83, 248 normative value of past, 7. See also Cary; Genovesi; Gournay’s circle; Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce); Histories of trade Byng, John, Admiral, 299. See also Raynal C Calvinism, 136 Calvinist ethics, 59 Puritans, 66 Cameralism, 232, 235–237, 244

343

as ersatz imperialism, 231, 234 Swedish, 219, 234, 243 variations of, 218. See also Schlözer, August Ludwig Camerino, Da Varano lords of, 201 Canada, 303 Cape of Good Hope, rounding of, 4, 7, 31 Capua, 262 Capurri, Sebastiano Domenico, 194 Caracciolo, Alberto, 188, 205 Caribbean, 169, 170, 195, 307 Carletti, Francesco, 215 Carlier, Claude, thriving trade of Gauls and Franks, 18. See also Histories of trade Cartagena, 72 Carthage, 9, 72, 74, 77, 78, 81, 107, 108, 119, 120, 131, 210, 269, 274, 336 archetypal trading republic, 137 New Carthage, 72, 110 tragic fate of, 340 vice-fuelled triumphs, 73. See also Athens; Dutch Republic; Tyre; Zanobetti Carvalho, Thérence, 87 Cary, John, 169, 172, 173, 248, 251, 252, 257 “hegemony rather than harmony”, 169. See also Butel-Dumont; Civilisation(s); Genovesi; Histories of trade; Pollexfen Casaregi, Giuseppe Lorenzo Maria, 194 Casentino, county of Urbech, 192 Caspian Sea, 15. See also Muscovy; Russia Catherine II (the Great), Empress of Russia, 34, 240, 324. See also Civilisation; Diderot; Peter I (the Great); Russia

344

INDEX

Cecina, 192 Cellini, Benvenuto, 215 Cercle de Gournay. See Gournay’s circle Charles I, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 299 Charles II, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, 153, 160 Charles III, King of Spain, and King of Naples and Sicily, 185, 214, 246, 263, 324 Charles VII, King of France, 209 Charles Emmanuel III, King of Sardinia, 193, 211 Chastellux, François Jean de Beauvoir de, 103, 105 Cheney, Paul, 84–86. See also Histories of trade; Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce) Child, Josiah, 27, 175, 176, 255 on bullion argument, 174, 175 China, 98, 102, 172 Choiseul, Étienne-François, Duke of, 110, 278, 280. See also Raynal Christina, Queen of Sweden, 226 Christopher Columbus, 273, 285 Chydenius, Anders, 234, 237 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 13, 89 Civilisation(s), 4, 5, 8, 11, 18, 30, 34–40, 42, 58, 68, 69, 76, 79, 94, 117, 151, 155, 165, 166, 183, 216, 230, 256, 278, 284, 296, 303, 306 agrarian, 81, 114 ancient, 268 and Florentine Renaissance, 187 and global history, 86 and Neapolitan merchants, 255 and net product, 113 apparent, 101 as a spontaneous process, 5

British, 152 catastrophic vision of European, 283 circular destiny, 262 city, 101 commerce as agent, 201, 336 commerce foundational element, 267 commercial, 5, 23, 39, 42, 154, 158, 159, 172, 268, 274, 275, 311, 331, 332, 338, 340 counter-history, 95 cyclical reading, 270 Europeans above other, 220 false, 33, 37, 100 frugal, 81 future, 283, 286 growth, 169 historical development, 93, 251 history of trade as a history, 83, 134, 218, 224, 243, 276, 279, 311 Israelite, 221 modern, 285, 304 most perfect, 97 new conceptualisation, 120 progress, 33, 220, 227, 228, 235, 242, 243 rise, 152, 269, 287, 331 rise and fall, 217 successful, 166 theories of, 220 trade as a primus motor, 243 true, 101 urban, 88 urbanised, 262 values of, 286. See also Dutch Republic; Fortunato; Histories of trade; Medici (House of); Mirabeau; Physiocracy; Russia; Véron de Forbonnais Clemente, Alida, 24, 40

INDEX

Clement XII, Pope of the Catholic Church, 188, 201 Clicquot de Blervache, Simon, on commerce in French history, 18. See also Histories of trade Cocchi, Antonio, 185, 200 Cœur, Jacques, 209 Colbert de Torcy, Jean-Baptiste, 145. See also Huet Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 10, 11, 15–17, 21, 26, 27, 110, 147, 159, 163, 166, 182, 211, 257, 320 Colbertism, 41, 151, 152 “Colbertist sect”, 318. See also Huet; Rothkrug Colonialism, apotheosis, 249 Commelin, Isaac, 139. See also Histories of trade Commercial humanism, 33. See also Civilisation(s); Commercial society; Hume Commercial society, 33, 37, 122, 130, 255, 256, 260 apotheosis, 256. See also Civilisation(s); Commercial humanism; Hume Como, 25, 26 Constantine I, Roman emperor, 309, 316 Corinth, destruction of, 269 Corsini, Bartolomeo, 188 Corsini, Elisabetta, 188 Corsini, Lorenzo. See Clement XII Corsini, Neri Maria, 188 Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, Hernán, 313, 328 Cortona, Etruscan Academy of, 213 Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici, Lord of Florence, 209 Cosimo III de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, 215

345

Crevier, Jean-Baptiste-Louis, 72, 79, 81 Cromwell, Oliver, 153 Cunningham, William, 163 Cuoco, Vincenzo, 261 Cyrus, King of Persia, 75, 76 D Da Gama, Vasco, 285. See also Raynal D’Alembert, Jean-Baptiste le Rond, 280 D’Arco, Giambattista Gherardo, influence of commerce on morals, 38. See also Civilisation(s); Histories of trade; Physiocracy D’Asfeld, Jacques Vincent, 39, 68, 70. See also Figurism; Jansenism; Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce) Davenant, Charles, 20, 157 Defoe, Daniel, 21, 22, 158, 166, 178 on trade and power, 22. See also Histories of trade De Jorio, Michele, 40, 253, 263–275 history of trade as patriotic history, 274. See also Civilisation; Dependency; Fortunato; Genovesi; Histories of trade; Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce) De la Court, Pieter, 9, 10, 21, 147 De la Court brothers, 143 symbiosis between freedom and commercial prosperity, 9. See also Gee; Histories of trade; Huet De Lacy Mann, Julia, 179 Della Fontana, Aris, 42, 221, 230, 260 Delos, 258 De Malynes, Gerard, 165 Denmark, 211

346

INDEX

Dependency avoiding, 275 commercial hegemony, 253 dominion, 275 mechanisms, 257, 271 Neapolitan economy, 247 solution to, 271. See also World System Analysis D’Étemare, Abbé Jean-Baptiste, 71. See also Figurism; Jansenism; Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce) De Witt, Johan, 143, 146 methodical commercial realpolitik, 143. See also De la Court D’Holbach, Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron, 296 Diderot, Denis, 34, 280, 283, 285, 288–290, 297, 298, 302. See also Catherine II (the Great); Civilisation(s); Raynal; Russia Di Martino, Giovanni, 191 Dithmar, Justus Christoph, 236 Doccia, manufacture, 192, 213, 214 Domat, Jean, 58, 65, 67. See also Jansenism Donati, Donato, 194 Dormans-Beauvais, College of, 59. See also Jansenism Doux commerce extolment, 255 thesis, 270 utopias, 276. See also Civilisation(s); Jealousy of Trade Downing, George, 153, 155, 162 fiscal credibility and commercial plenty as power, 153 Dublin, Trinity College, 161 Du Châtelet, Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise, 294. See also Raynal

Duguet, Jacques-Joseph, 39, 59–65, 67–71, 75–82 history heralds future events, 62 material prosperity is a sign of divine election, 68. See also Figurism; Histories of trade; Jansenism; Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce) Dumont, Jean, 194 Du Pont de Nemours, Pierre-Samuel, 86, 90, 92, 102, 103, 105, 106, 108, 112. See also Physiocracy Dupré de Saint-Maur, Nicolas-François, 92 Dutch Kingdom. See Dutch Republic Dutch Republic, 10, 12, 16, 19, 21, 25, 31, 41, 121, 122, 127, 129, 132–134, 136, 138, 145, 146, 148, 149, 153, 159–162, 164, 165, 175, 182, 183, 208, 210, 211, 273, 321 colonialism, 135, 137 commercial power, 130 commercial primacy, 130 “company-republic”, 133 Disaster Year of 1672 (Rampjaar), 143 Dutch East Indies, 139, 140 Dutch massacre (1623), 147 (Dutch) Revolt (1566–1648), 122, 131–133, 136, 138 East India Company (Dutch), 133, 144 harmless small state, 131 legitimacy, 130, 131 shipper of the world’s trade, 130. See also Melon; Pinto

E Eacott, Jonathan, 178

INDEX

East, 14, 33, 161, 174, 211, 223, 229, 232, 237, 268, 274, 285, 314 Egypt, 11, 14, 108 Eighty Years’ War, 133 Elba, Island of, 206 Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Ireland, 12, 13, 208, 211 England, 12, 19–22, 25, 30, 31, 35, 41, 90, 101, 111, 112, 119, 133, 145, 152–154, 160, 161, 163, 167, 169–173, 176, 178, 182, 193, 204–205, 211, 212, 321, 323, 327 Bank of, 20, 159 Board of Trade and Plantations, 167, 171, 172, 176, 177 Calico Act (1701, 1721), 174, 177, 178 Canterbury, 176 Civil War, 152 commercial and industrial innovation, 167 Commonwealth, 160 East India Company, 166, 167, 172, 173, 175, 176, 178 Elizabethan era, 163 English colonies, 167 English commercial Empire, 19 English Constitution, 85 English Revolution, 154 Exchequer, 155 Excise, 152, 158–160, 162 Glorious Revolution, 156 Gloucestershire, 176 Industrial Revolution, 152, 179 Inspector General of Exports and Imports, 168 Interregnum, 160 Lancashire, 179 military conflict with France, 157 modern English State, 154

347

Navigation Act, 122, 161, 162, 205 Norfolk, 176 Parliament, 157 plantation imports, 167 republican era, 152, 154 republicanism, 153 Restoration, 153, 167 Royal Customs, 162 Royal Navy, 152, 174 silk industry, 175 Suffolk, 176 Tory/Tories, 111, 130, 155, 171 Treasury Board, 156, 159 Whig/Whigs, 111, 171. See also Great Britain Enlightenment, 87, 89, 106, 268, 278 “anthropological turn”, 233 Neapolitan, 253, 255, 275 peaceful trade, 243 Tuscan, 214 Éphémérides du Citoyen, 84, 86, 103 Erudition, 2, 3, 6, 316. See also Antiquarianism; Histoire philosophique España. See Spain Espenhorst, Martin, 217, 223, 227, 232 Ethiopia, 14 Europe, 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 19, 20, 24, 28, 31, 37, 71, 119, 121–123, 131, 139, 145, 148, 151, 154, 179, 220, 221, 224, 229, 238, 240, 260, 264, 268, 271, 273, 282, 283, 285–288, 297, 299, 301–303, 305, 311, 314, 326, 332, 338 northern Europe, 23, 25 balance of, 264 civilised, 225 civilising mission, 272 commerce d’oeconomie, 132 growing wealth, 124

348

INDEX

imperial, 326 maritime, 327 nations of central and northern, 23 Evju, Håkon, 244 Ezekiel, 22, 239 F Fantechi, Giovanni Paolo, 181, 185–188, 199, 202, 206 Feltre, 310 Fénelon, François de Salignac de La Mothe, 75, 77, 79–81 Feodor III Alekséyevich, Tsar of Russia, 15. See also Huet Ferdinand IV, King of Naples, 256, 262. See also Fortunato Ferguson, Adam, 175, 312, 317. See also Civilisation(s); Mengotti Ferguson, Robert, 175 Fielding, John, 299 Figurism, 60, 71, 78. See also D’Asfeld; D’Étemare; Duguet; Histories of trade; Jansenism; Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce) Finland, Academy of, 244 Finocchietti, House of, 185, 186, 198–200, 202 Filangieri, Gaetano, 252 Finocchietti, Giovan Pietro, 185 Finocchietti, Iacopino, 185, 199 Finocchietti, Ranieri, 188 Flanders, 163 Fleury, Claude, 77, 79–81. See also Jansenism Florence, 9, 24, 25, 119, 120, 183, 186–188, 190, 194, 210, 330 Accademia dei Georgofili, 318 Florentine Studium, 186 Mediceo Palatina library, 215, 216 Società Colombaria Fiorentina, 186, 210

Uffizi gallery, 214 Floridablanca, José Moñino y Redondo, 1st Count of, Prime Minister of Spain, 322 Forbonnais. See Véron de Forbonnais Formaleoni, Vincenzo, 324. See also Histories of trade Forsskål, Peter, 238, 242 Fortrey, Samuel, 163 Fortrey, Samuel (Jr.), 163 Fortunato, Nicola, 253–263, 273–275 identity and national self-celebration, 262. See also Civilisation(s); Genovesi; Histories of trade; Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce) Foucault, Michel, 285. See also Raynal Fouquet, Nicolas, 10 France, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16–19, 21, 25–27, 31, 36, 41, 59, 71, 84, 87, 90, 93, 98, 100, 101, 110–112, 119, 133, 143, 154, 156, 163, 164, 168, 178, 179, 182, 202, 208, 211, 282, 287, 297, 303–305, 330, 332, 333, 335, 338 Anti-royalist coup of 4 September 1797, 330 French colonies, 167 French East India Company, 16 French Empire, 35, 87, 114 French Protectionism, 168 French Revolution, 263, 330 Regency (1715–1723), 16 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 146 Francis I, King of France, 212 Francis Stephen (Francis I), Grand Duke of Tuscany, 182, 186, 189, 191, 192, 194, 197, 214 Frederick, Prince of Wales, 299

INDEX

Frederick II, King of Prussia, 148, 211 Fruin, Robert, 127, 128, 148

G Gadebusch, Thomas Heinrich, 218 Galiani, Ferdinando, 90 Galilei, Galileo, 186, 215 Gálvez y Gallardo, José de, 322 Gassier, Jacques, 311, 330–338, 340. See also Histories of trade; Mably; Mengotti Gaul, 73 Gee, Joshua, 21, 193, 194, 196, 204, 206 rehabilitation of the figure of the merchant, 21. See also De la Court, Pieter; Histories of trade Geneva, 206, 259, 278, 335 Genoa, Republic of, 119, 193, 197, 210 Genovesi, Antonio, 40, 248–254, 257, 259, 262–264, 266, 268, 270, 273, 275 “anti-Imperial” account of ancient history, 260 civil economy, 248 Enlightened government, 250 extra-European colonial trade, 260 followers, 40, 252, 275 Genovesi school, 24 “Genovesi turn”, 245 rejected utilitarianism and Mandeville’s hedonism, 250. See also Butel-Dumont; Cary; De Jorio; Fortunato; Histories of trade; Vico Gentili, Giovanni, 185, 194, 199–202, 207, 212 Germany, 66, 217, 306

349

Gian Gastone de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, 182, 214 Gibbon, Edward, 316. See also Antiquarianism; civilisation; Erudition; Histoire philosophique Ginori, Carlo, 185, 186, 188–198, 201, 202, 205, 206, 212, 213 against legislative measures that hindered enterprise, 192 combined law with new political economy, 194. See also Belloni; Forbonnais; Gee; Histories of trade; Montesquieu; Richecourt Ginori, Lorenzo, 187, 191, 194, 215 Gioia, Flavio (or Flavio de Melphe), 259 Gori, Anton Francesco, 186, 187, 201, 210 Göttingen, 217, 218, 220–223, 242, 244 Göttingen School of academic history, 218 University of, 217, 221 Göttinger Gelehrten Anzeigen, 227 Gournay’s circle, 7, 19, 83, 251. See also Butel-Dumont; Civilisation(s); France; Histories of trade; Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce); Véron de Forbonnais; Vincent de Gournay Grasset de Saint-Sauveur, Jacques, 330 Great Britain, 27, 111, 112, 122, 143, 152, 159, 178, 179, 183, 192, 208, 249, 262, 273, 278, 282, 287, 297, 298, 300–303, 305 Britannic Empire, 27 City, 112. See also England Great Northern War, 237 Great War. See Seven Years’ War Greece, 102, 223, 273, 335

350

INDEX

ancient, 74, 77, 103 Grotius, Hugo, 137, 140, 141, 146, 150 Grotian tradition, 150. See also Dutch Republic Guadeloupe, 303 Guidotti, Carlo, 187 H Habsburg, 38, 130 Empire, 213 provinces, 130 Habsburg-Lorraine, House of, 40, 186, 212, 214 as the heirs of the Medici in economic matters, 214. See also Lorraine (House of) Hanseatic League, the membership of Naples, 258, 259 Hanway, Jonas, 299 Harley, Robert, Tory leader, 155 Harvard, University, 153 Haynes, John, 178 Hebrew Republic, Hebrew people, 137 Helsinki, University of, 244 Henry IV, King of France, 8, 181 Henry VII, King of England, 204 Hesiod, 11 Hinton, John, 198. See also Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure Hippocrates, 11 Histoire philosophique, 2, 278, 280, 286, 290. See also Antiquarinism; Erudition; Histories of trade; Voltaire Histories of trade, 2–8, 18, 23, 33, 34, 38–40, 42, 60, 71, 77, 78, 81–84, 87, 93, 94, 114, 117– 121, 125, 126, 132, 137, 140, 142–144, 149, 150, 165, 166,

184, 185, 187, 198, 201, 208, 211–214, 218, 223–225, 227– 229, 231, 239, 243, 251, 252, 260, 267, 269, 272, 274, 311, 338 and anti-dogmatism, 28 and classical antiquity, 19 and contemporary history, 18, 23 and emulation, 36, 41 and international trade, 32 and its critics, 114 and political constitution, 298 and politics of time, 23 and reform plans, 182 and true and false civilisation, 33. See also Antiquarianism; Civilisation; Erudition; Histoire Philosophique; Jansenism; Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce); Physiocracy; Political economy; Universal history History of trade. See Histories of trade Hobbes, Thomas, 67 Hogendorp, Gijsbert Karel van, 129 Hohenlohe, House of, 217 Holland. See Dutch Republic Holy Roman Empire, 236 Hont, Istvan, 118, 289. See also Jealousy of trade Hoppit, Julian, 158 Huet, Pierre-Daniel, 11–17, 21, 38, 145, 146, 166, 167, 182, 225, 226, 255, 260, 267, 268, 315, 316. See also Alexander the Great, Briant; Civilisation(s); Colbert; Colbert de Torcy; Histories of trade; Montesquieu; Peter I (the Great); Rome Hugh Capet, 18 Hume, David, 33, 35, 36, 119, 301, 313, 314, 317. See also

INDEX

Commercial humanism; Commercial society; Histories of trade; Raynal; Scottish School Huygens, Filippo Guglielmo, 185, 188, 200–202, 207 Huygens, Margherita, 199 Huygens, Orietta, 199 I Iannucci, Gian Battista Maria, 255 Ihre, Johann, 222, 242 Incas, 98, 115 India, 123, 161, 172, 173, 176–179, 192, 231, 232, 238 Indies, 7, 144, 179, 203, 211, 278, 285 East, 7, 14, 132, 136, 144, 161, 203, 268 West, 179, 204, 322 Industrial Revolution, 159 Ireland, 161 Isaiah, 60, 76, 239 Italy, 273, 274, 313, 321, 330 ancient Italian states, 23, 182 ancient Italic peoples, 259, 262 ancient southern, 262 her centrality in the history of empires, 275 Italian south, 247 Ithobal, King of Tyre, 69 J Jamaica English planters, 170 entrepôt for English goods in the Caribbean, 170 source for slaves, 170 James Francis Edward Stuart (Jacobite Pretender), 188 James II, King of England and Ireland [James VII, King of Scotland], 66

351

Jansen, Cornelius, 66 Jansenism, 4, 65, 67 ethics of capitalism, 82 second, 39 Unigenitus (1713), 59, 71. See also D’Étemare; Duguet; Histories of trade; Nicole; Port-Royal, destruction of the abbey (1711) Jaucourt, Louis de, 291, 304. See also Raynal Jealousy of Trade, 23, 30, 142, 166, 249, 301, 316. See also Balance of power; Balance of trade; Cary, John; Histories of trade; Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce) Jerusalem, 62, 69, 70, 76 Journal des Savants , 84 Judah, 76 Judea, 66 Jussieu, Antoine-Laurent de, 280 Justamond, John Obadiah, 278, 288. See also Raynal Justi, Johann Heinrich Gottlob von, 235, 236, 243. See also Cameralism; Civilisation(s); Schlözer, August Ludwig

K King, Charles, fearsome progress made by France, 19–21. See also Histories of trade; Véron de Forbonnais Koerner, Lisbet, 219 Koselleck, Reinhart, 89 Kroton, 262

L Lacedaemon. See Sparta

352

INDEX

Lacombe de Prézel, Honoré, 269. See also Histories of trade Laffemas, Barthélemy de, 8 Laffemas, Isaac de, 9, 18. See also Histories of trade Lami, Giovanni, 184, 187 Law, John, 16 Le Blanc, Jean-Bernard, 111 Lemercier de la Rivière, Pierre-Paul, 86, 90, 91, 106 unlimited freedom of wheat trade, 90. See also Physiocracy Lesage, Alain-René, 295 Le Trosne, Guillaume-François, 86, 91, 99 on writing history, 91. See also Physiocracy Levant, 185, 189, 192, 209, 211, 247, 258, 259, 323 French hegemony, 247. See also Roger the Norman Linnaeus, Carl, 222, 232–234, 236, 238, 242. See also Cameralism; natural history Lisbon, 191 Livorno, 40, 181–199, 201, 202, 204–206, 208, 212, 213 free port of, 23, 195 Livorno Deputation of Health, 185 Livorno section of the Società Colombaria Fiorentina, 186, 198, 210 suburb of San Jacopo, 192, 196, 197. See also Ginori, Carlo Locke, John, 166, 168, 187. See also Civilisation(s); Histories of trade London, 158, 161, 163, 298 hub of English colonial trade, 167 London Spitalfields, 176 Longano, Francesco, 255 Lorenzo di Giovanni de’ Medici, the Elder, 209

Lorraine, House of, 182, 186. See also Habsburg-Lorraine (House of) Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, 330 Louis XIV, King of France, 15, 16, 18, 71, 77, 110, 146, 182, 193, 257, 304. See also Alexander the Great; Colbert; Huet Louis XV, King of France, 17, 29, 109, 182. See also Huet; Peter I (the Great); Savary Des Bruslons Lübeck, 217 Lucca, 187, 194, 199, 202. See also Tuscany Lukács, György, 293, 294 Lunéville, 215 Luzac, Eli, 131, 132 historical myth about Batavian seafaring traders, 132. See also Dutch Republic; Histories of trade; Raynal Lycurgus, 74, 335 M Mably, Gabriel Bonnot de, 103, 104, 105, 334–336, 340 controversy with the Economists, 103 praised the Spartan model, 104. See also Gassier; Vauvilliers Machiavelli, Niccolò di Bernardo dei, 106, 215 Madrid, 195, 196, 324 Magazzino italiano di istruzione e di piacere, 200 Magnusson, Lars, 230, 232, 237 Mander, Jenny, 42, 280, 284 Mandeville, Bernard, 250. See also Genovesi, Antonio Marcello, Gabriel, on commercial treaties, 31. See also Histories of trade; Venice

INDEX

Maremma, depopulation of the, 205. See also Tuscany Maria Theresa, Holy Roman Empress and Grand Duchess of Tuscany, 31, 214 Marius, John, 165 Marseille, 11, 12, 193, 310, 330 Académie des Sciences, Lettres et Arts, 330 Martyn, Henry, 175 Marx, Karl, 84 Massa, 192. See also Tuscany Mauvillon, Jakob, 242 Medici, House of, 40, 182–185, 191, 209, 212 civilising role, 209, 211, 212 civil society created by, 201 exaltation, 188, 198, 202 institutionalising the memory, 183, 214–216 nostalgia, 187 pragmatic approach to economics, 186, 213 subordinated the fiscality to economic development, 193. See also Civilisation(s); Savary Des Bruslons; Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure Mediterranean, 184, 259 Italy dominating, 274 Mediterranean peoples, 275 Phoenicians as the strongest sea power, 229 Meek, Ronald Lindley, 84, 96 Meissen, 213 Melon, Jean-François, 17, 28–30, 33, 78, 80, 81, 122, 124, 125, 144, 282, 307, 312, 314 symbiosis between peace and commerce, 30. See also Dutch Republic; Histories of trade;

353

Peter I (the Great); Spirit of commerce; Spirit of conquest Mémoires de Trévoux, 84 Mengotti, Francesco, 42, 310–319, 323, 327–331, 333, 334, 336, 338, 339 violence not an inherent feature of commerce, 317 Mercantilism, 249, 255 Britain’s aggressive, 249. See also Cameralism; Jealousy of trade; Political economy Mercury, 198, 214. See also Tuscany Messina, 259. See also Sicily Mexico, 123. See also America Michaelis, Johann David, 221–224, 226, 227, 237–239 Milan, 10, 25, 26 Supreme Council of Economics of the State of, 25 Millar, John, 95 Minerva, 198. See also Tuscany Mirabeau, Victor de Riqueti Marquis de, 4, 36, 37, 84–86, 88–90, 96, 98, 100, 303, 304, 307 hypothetical history of mankind, 95 not condemn the principle of colonisation as such, 101 on merchant societies, 24 theory of stages, 96 “Tuesdays”, 85. See also Civilisation(s); Peter I (the Great); Physiocracy; Raynal; Stewart Modernisation, theories of, 247. See also Civilisation(s) Molloy, Charles, 165. See also Histories of trade Momigliano, Arnaldo, 3. See also Antiquarianism; Erudition; Histoire philosophique

354

INDEX

Montauban, Etienne de, 295, 301, 302 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de, 4, 14, 105, 106, 109, 186, 197, 201, 213, 224–227, 235, 255, 288, 300, 301, 303, 312, 314 softening of relations between states, 29. See also Civilisation(s); Histories of trade; Huet; Science des moeurs; Vauvilliers Morellet, André, 6. See also Histories of trade Moschetti, Cesare Maria, 265 Mughal Empire, 327 Mun, Thomas, 175 Murray, Andreas, 220 Muscovy, 15, 208, 257. See also Russia N Nani, Giacomo, 322 Naples, 252, 254, 263, 274 Accademia di Scienze e Belle Lettere, 265 Cattedra di Commercio e di Meccanica, 255 Consulate of the Sea, 265 Deputazione del Donativo, 254 Ferdinand Code, 265 Giffoni Valle Piana, 254 Kingdom of, 40, 197, 245, 251, 257–261, 266, 274 Neapolitan economy, 246 Sacred Royal Council, 265 Supreme Magistracy of Commerce, 265 Tribunal of the Admiralty, 265. See also Enlightenment Napoleon Bonaparte consulate of, 330

Napoleonic Code, 265 Natural history, 95, 102, 106, 218, 219, 221, 222, 232, 233, 237, 238, 244, 281, 296, 297, 302, 303, 307 unthinkable without economy, 232. See also Cameralism; Histories of trade; Sweden Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, 69 Netherlands. See Dutch Republic “New science of commerce”. See Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce) Newton, Isaac, 294, 295 New World, 42, 101, 122, 167, 282, 283, 286, 303, 327 discovery of, 122. See also Civilisation(s), Raynal Niccolini, Antonio, 200 Nice, 193 Nicole, Pierre, 58, 66, 67. See also D’Asfeld; D’Étemare; Duguet; Jansenism; Self-love Niebuhr, Carsten, 238 Nipperdey, Justus, 236 Noah, 22, 166 Nokkala, Ere, 30, 41 North Sea, 131, 211 Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce), 7, 19–20, 33, 40, 63, 250, 252, 255, 268, 270, 272, 274, 275 new, 186 Numa Pompilius, King of Rome, 107 Numidia, 73 Nuovo Giornale Enciclopedico, 316 O Oelreich, Niclas, 243 Oldmixon, John, 171 Orain, Arnaud, 39, 78, 336 Order of Malta, 330

INDEX

Orient. See East Osterhammel, Jürgen, 220 Ottoman Empire, 189, 191, 209, 323. See also Levant

P Padua Academy of Arts and Sciences, 319 University of, 317. See also Venice Paestum, 262. See also Naples Pagliarini (Roman publishers), 188 Pagnini, Giovanni Francesco, 24, 25, 187 great prosperity of late medieval Florence, 24. See also Histories of trade; Richecourt; Tuscany Papal States, 197, 205 Paris, 309 Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 309, 310 Collège Royal, 103 Parthasarathi, Prasannan, 177 Pavesi, Angelo, success of the economic centres of northern Europe, 25. See also Histories of trade; Milan Peace of Paris (1763), 282, 297 Peace of Utrecht (1713), 147 Anglo-French commercial treaty, 171 Franco-Dutch commercial treaty, 148 Perrot, Jean-Claude, 65, 66, 67, 82. See also Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce); Political economy Persia, 14, 76, 327 Persian Empire, 14 Persson, Mathias, 240 Peru, 101, 114, 123. See also America Pesaro, 322

355

Peter I (the Great), Tsar of Russia, 33, 34, 37, 182, 209, 211, 257 paradigmatic value, 33. See also Diderot; Huet; Louis XV; Savary Des Bruslons; Voltaire Peter Leopold I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, 181 Petrarch, 214 Petty, William, 26, 27 political arithmetic, 26. See also Davenant; Political economy Petyt, William, nurture domestic manufactures, 160 Pfeiffer, Johann Friedrich von, 236 Philip II of Macedon, King of Macedon, 14 Phoenicia, 236 Physiocracy, 36–38, 40, 83, 84, 86, 87, 89, 95–97, 100, 221 as philosophy of history, 84, 86. See also Civilisation(s); Mirabeau; Quesnay; Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce); Political economy Piacenza, 324 Piedmont, 21 Pinto, Isaac de, 123, 125, 126 on global economic development, 123. See also Dutch Republic Pisa, 9, 194, 330 University of, 194. See also Tuscany Pitt, William (the Elder), 299–301 Pizarro González, Francisco, 313, 328 Plato, 11 Plumard de Dangeul, Louis-Joseph, 196. See also Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce) Plutarch, 11, 74, 306 Pocock, John Greville Agard, 286, 287 Poland, 101

356

INDEX

Political economy, 1, 7, 28, 58, 84, 86, 91, 119, 127, 149, 150, 191, 194, 211, 213, 218–220, 235, 248, 307, 328. See also Cameralism; Civilisation(s); Histories of trade; Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce); Physiocracy Pollexfen, John, 169, 172, 173, 176 nemesis of the East India Company, 169. See also Cary Polybius, 74 Pompey, 269 Pope, Alexander, 199 Pope, Hambly, 199. See also Livorno; Zanobetti Populationism, 231, 236, 237. See also Cameralism; Political economy; Schlözer, August Ludwig Port-Royal, 65, 71 destruction of the abbey (1711), 71 solitaires, 65 Portugal, 28 Pozzuoli, 258. See also Naples Probus, Roman emperor, 14 Procida, 264. See also Naples Provence, order of the nobility, 330 Prussia, 236 Ptolemies, 268 Pufendorf, Samuel von, 194, 199 Punic Wars, 74, 109, 110, 309, 313 Q Quesnay, François, 84–86, 88, 96, 98–101, 106–109, 111, 114 history as an “art” rather than a real science, 88. See also Civilisation(s); Physiocracy; Political economy Quesnel, Pasquier, 65, 66, 71. See also Duguet; Jansenism; Nicole; Rollin

Quinn, Josephine, 223, 224

R Ramsay, Andrew Michael, 75, 77 Raynal, Guillaume-Thomas François, abbé de, 30, 42, 106, 131, 186, 187, 189, 190, 192, 193, 195, 202, 203, 206, 212, 278–280, 285, 286, 288, 300, 301, 305–307, 316, 322, 323, 331, 487 British patriotism, 299 commerce as a civilising force, 283, 284 commercial reciprocity, 304 compression of time, 292 Europeans the new barbarians, 287 frivolity of the French, 303, 304 global humanity, 286 hospitality, 42, 279 modern “nationalism”, 289 patriotism as a form of nostalgia, 293 rapacity and brigandage of modern Britain, 302 superficiality of European civility, 291 unethical behaviour of the expatriate European, 290 unethical global movement, 283. See also Catherine II (the Great); Civilisation(s); Diderot; Histories of trade; Mirabeau; Peter I (the Great); Russia Red Sea, 14 Reinert, Sophus, 231, 234. See also Cameralism; Political economy Renaissance, 110, 118–120, 187, 214, 246 eighteenth-century rediscovery, 214 Florentine, 187, 214

INDEX

Reynel, Carew, England’s lack of productive self-sufficiency, 164. See also Colbert; Savary Des Bruslons Richecourt, Dieudonné Emmanuel Nay count of, 186, 187, 189–193, 199, 202, 205, 206, 212 dirigiste economic view, 191 Richelieu, Armand-Jean du Plessis Duc de, bellicose policy, 92 Riello, Giorgio, 178 Robertson, William, on irregularities and exceptional cases in history, 7 Robinson, Henry, 160, 161 restricting trade with the colonies to English vessels, 161 Roger the Norman, Duke of Apulia and Calabria, 259 Rollin, Charles, 39, 59–81 history as a science of causes, 63. See also Figurism; Histories of trade; Jansenism; Melon Rome, 85, 10, 106–110, 137, 188, 312–316, 319–322, 332, 336, 338–340 ancient, 13, 28, 42, 74, 75, 77, 78, 81, 166, 210, 274, 287, 312, 315, 324, 328, 331, 333, 339 Dattiloteca Palatina, 201 economy of, 311 harshest condemnations, 315 image of, 30, 319, 339 lust for power, 262 new, 110 opponent par excellence of commercial civilisation, 331 republican, 301 Roman Empire, 14, 114, 131, 258, 260, 268, 272, 275, 326 Vatican library, 188 Rommelse, Gijs, 156

357

Rothkrug, Lionel, 10. See also Colbert Roubaud, Pierre-Joseph-André, 85, 86. See also Histories of trade; Physiocracy Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 34, 106–108, 113, 227. See also Civilisation(s); Peter I (the Great); Russia Royal Danish Arabian Expedition (1761–1767), 223, 237. See also Cameralism; Michaelis; natural history; Schlözer, August Ludwig Russia, 16, 18, 34, 37, 208, 322–324, 339 as a case study, 17 Russian Empire, 37 true and false civilisation, 33. See also Baudeau; Diderot; Melon; Muscovy; Savary Des Bruslons; Torres; Voltaire

S Saastamoinen, Kari, 244 Saint Augustine, 57, 61. See also Jansenism Saint-Christophe (St Kitts), 281. See also Raynal Saint-Cyran, Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, the Abbé of, 66. See also Jansenism Saint Eustace (Sint Eustatius), 195. See also Ginori; Livorno Saint-Pierre, Abbé Charles Iréné Castel de, 29, 303. See also Melon Salento, Republic of, 80. See also Fénelon Salerno, province of, 254. See also Naples Salvius, Lars, 234 Santini, Antonio Maria, 194, 200

358

INDEX

Savary Des Bruslons, Jacques, 33, 38, 164, 182–184, 197, 198, 203, 208, 209, 211, 212, 255 power of the states depended on trade, 17. See also Histories of trade; Huet; Livorno; Louis XV; Medici; Peter I (the Great); Russia Say, Jean-Baptiste, 336, 337 Schabas, Margaret, 219, 317 Schlözer, August Ludwig, 41, 217–243. See also Cameralism; Civilisation(s); Histories of trade; Natural history; Political economy; Royal Danish Arabian Expedition (1761–1767); Sweden Schlözer, Christian, 223, 226 Science des moeurs , 4. See also Civilisation(s); Histories of trade; Montesquieu Science of history, 40, 60, 86 counter-history of trade, 115. See also Civilisation(s); Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce); Political economy Scottish School, 95, 97 and the development of human societies, 95. See also Commercial humanism; Histories of trade; Hume; Mirabeau; Robertson Seele, Carl Wilhelm, 223 Self-love, 67. See also Duguet; Jansenism; Nicole Self-interest, 67, 68, 79 Sennacherib, King of Ethiopia, 62 Septimius Severus, Roman emperor, 14 Serra, Antonio, 252 Seven Provinces. See Dutch Republic

Seven Years’ War, 36, 110, 114, 130, 243, 278, 279, 281, 301, 302, 303, 307 Severus Alexander, Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor, 79 Sicily, 188, 273 Sidon, 9, 22, 210. See also Defoe; Savary Des Bruslons; Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure Skinner, Andrew, 95 Skornicki, Arnault, 221 Smith Adam, 95, 119, 120, 125, 314 historical account explained modern economic reality, 119. See also Commercial humanism; Histories of trade; Hume; Scottish school Sola, Giovan Battista Martin, economic decline and the abandonment of ancient principles, 26. See also Histories of trade; Venice Solomon, King of Israel image of, 30 intuited the great advantages of trade, 21 united men through the arts of peace, 210. See also Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure Solon, 85. See also Athens Spain, 42, 72, 100, 10, 133, 138, 139, 167, 170, 171, 298, 314, 319, 323–329, 339, 340 Bourbon regime, 263 Minorca, 299 political economy and reform, 328 Spanish monarchy, 12, 123, 246 Sparta, 13, 85, 304, 335 and the Physiocrats, 86, 102, 103, 105

INDEX

bellicosity, 105 mythologisation, 335. See also Gassier; Mably; Vauvilliers Spinoza, Baruch, 142 Spirit of commerce, 28, 29, 38, 78, 109, 207, 230, 311, 312, 316, 321, 322, 339. See also Civilisation(s); Jealousy of trade; Melon; Mengotti; Montesquieu; Russia; Saint-Pierre; Spirit of conquest Spirit of conquest, 28, 77, 78, 105, 109, 230, 268, 311–313, 316, 320, 323, 326, 339. See also Huet; Melon; Montesquieu; Saint-Pierre; Torres Stapelbroek, Koen, 41, 67, 219, 230 Stewart, Dugald, 95 Stockholm, 217, 220, 222, 223, 226 St. Petersburg, 217. See also Diderot; Civilisation(s); Russia; Voltaire Strabo, 274 Sully, Maximilien de Béthune Duke of, 92 Sweden, 218, 222, 226, 232, 234, 236, 240, 243 Age of Liberty (1719–1772), 219, 239 Cap Party, 219, 239, 242 Commodity Act (Produktplakat ), 233 Council of the Realm, 239 Diet (Riksdagar), 219, 239 Hat Party, 219, 239, 241, 242 Linneaus’s vision for, 233 Swedish Lapland, 232 Swedish Office of Tables (Tabellverket ), 237 Sybaris, rise and fall of, 262, 304 Syracuse, 119. See also Naples

359

T Tavanti, Angelo, 187. See also Richecourt; Tuscany Taveneaux, René, 64. See also Jansenism Temple, William, England’s leading diplomat, 154 Thalassocracies, 81. See also Athens; Carthage Thales of Miletus, 11, 85 Thirty Years’ War, 236 Tilli, Gaspare, 202 Tolonen, Mikko, 67 Torres y Ribera Antonio de, 42, 311, 319–327, 330, 331, 339 “balanced combination of “force” and “industry””, 320 Toscana. See Tuscany Trajan, Roman emperor, 324 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), 305 Treaty of peace and free trade, Tuscany-Algiers (1748), 189 Treaty of peace and free trade, Tuscany-Ottoman Empire (1747), 189 Treaty of peace and free trade, Tuscany-Tripoli (1749), 189 Treaty of peace and free trade, Tuscany-Tunis (1748), 189 Trevers, Joseph, on smuggling, 165 Trieste, 189, 315 Trinchera, Francesco, 255. See also Fortunato Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques, Baron de l’Aulne, 84, 111, 227 integrated history into political economy, 84. See also Civilisation(s); Physiocracy Tuscany, 185, 186, 193, 195, 197, 199, 200, 214, 216 “Compagnia Orientale di Livorno”, 191

360

INDEX

Council of Commerce, 189, 194 Council of Finance, 189 Fideicommissum Law (1747), 191 Fiefs law (1748), 191 Grand Duchy, 40, 182, 184, 187, 189, 190, 213, 214, 216 law on nobility and citizenship (1750), 191 Lorraine Regency (1739–1765), 182, 190, 193 Medicean, 192, 210 naval edict (1748), 189 press law (1743), 191, 206 Regency Council (1739–1746), 186, 194, 205 “Spanish party”, 185, 187, 188 Tempietto delle glorie della Toscana, 213 “Tuscan Company”, 190 Tyre, 9, 14, 22, 69, 70, 119, 120, 210 proof of the power that a nation can obtain through commerce, 210. See also Defoe; Huet; Savary Des Bruslons; Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure; Zanobetti

U Udine, Academy of Science, Letters and Arts, 319 Ulloa, Antonio de, 194, 195 Ulloa, Bernardo de, 267 Ulloa, Juan de, 192, 195 United Provinces. See Dutch Republic Universal history, 4, 267, 269 gigantic collector of stereotypes, 4. See also Antiquarianism; Civilisation(s); Erudition; Histoire philosophique; Histories of trade

Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, 184, 198–201, 208, 210 on commerce and peace, 23. See also Ginori; Savary Des Bruslons; Zanobetti Universal monarchy, English aspirations to, 112, 271 Uppsala, 217, 218, 220, 222, 223, 232, 234, 242, 244 University, 234 Uztáriz, Jerónimo de, 196, 255, 262 V Valencia, 311, 327 Valladolid, Real Sociedad Económica, 311, 327 Van Dam, Pieter, 140, 139, 146 pleaded for a reform of the Dutch East Indies trade, 140 Van der Capellen, Joan Derk, 134 Van Kley, Dale, 67. See also Jansenism Van Vollenhoven, Cornelis, 150. See also Grotius Vasari, Giorgio, 215 Vattel, Emer de, “political equilibrium” based on the balance of trade, 264 Vauvilliers, Jean-François, 86, 90, 103–107 against Athens as a commercial republic, 105. See also Mably; Montesquieu Velia, 262 Venice, 26, 31, 119, 120, 191, 210, 324, 330, 334, 335, 339 Accademia Donada, 322 Republic of, 310, 317, 319 separating trade from conquest, 318 Veneto, 26, 317 Venturi, Franco, 181, 255 Venuti, Filippo, 201, 213

INDEX

Véron de Forbonnais, François, 3, 19, 20, 23, 93, 94, 113, 269 experimental and inductive approach, 40, 93 subdivided the history of trade into six periods, 19. See also Butel-Dumont; England; Gournay’s circle; Histories of trade; King; Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce) Vespucci, Amerigo, 215 Vico, Giambattista, cyclical view of the history of civilisations, 250 Vienna, 190, 195, 199 Villafranca, 193 Vincent de Gournay, Jacques-Claude Marie, 83. See also Gournay’s circle; Histories of trade; Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce); Véron de Forbonnai Virilio, Paul, 277–279. See also Raynal Voltaire, François Marie Arouet, 1, 33, 34, 87, 93, 94, 102, 224, 226, 303 demographic and economic forces of peoples, 93. See also Civilisation(s); Histoire philosophique; Peter I (the Great); Russia Vries, Jan de, 125 W Wadsworth, Alfred P., 179 Walpole, Robert, 298 War of Jenkins’ Ear, 298 War of the Austrian Succession, 181, 190, 305 War of the Polish Succession, 28 War of the Spanish Succession, 140, 147, 152, 281, 297 Welt-Geschichte. See World history

361

Welt-Handel , 223, 225. See also Civilisation(s); Nouvelle science du commerce (Science of commerce) West, 14, 268, 285 Weulersse, Georges, 84. See also Physiocracy White Sea, 15. See also Huet; Peter I (the Great); Russia William III, King of England, 157 William IV, Dutch Stadholder, 123 Wittenberg, 217, 220 World history, 217, 224. See also Civilisation(s); Histoire philosophique; Universal history World System Analysis, 247. See also Dependency Worsley, Benjamin, 161 colonisation and aggressive pursuit of trade, 162 X Xenophon, Cyropaedia (c. 370 BCE), 75, 79. See also Duguet Z Zacarias de Malcorra y Azanza, Antonio, 311, 327–331, 339. See also Histories of trade; Mengotti; Spain Zaccaria, Francesco Antonio, 199 Zanobetti, Giovanni Batista, 186, 187, 199–202, 206, 208–212 peace as the requisite for the growth of commerce, 210 trade as an agent of change and improvement, 208. See also Belloni; Fantechi; Ginori, Carlo; Histories of trade; Medici; Savary Des Bruslons; Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure Zwierlein, Cornel, 261