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Tuscany: The Politics of Reform in an Agricultural Land

TILL WAHNBAECK

in Luxury and Public Happiness: Political Economy in the Italian Enlightenment

This chapter investigates the received wisdom that Tuscan thought was eclectic and that the undoubted inclination of Tuscan political economists towards physiocracy was merely a somewhat ... More

This chapter investigates the received wisdom that Tuscan thought was eclectic and that the undoubted inclination of Tuscan political economists towards physiocracy was merely a somewhat opportunistic echo of Peter Leopold's own preferences. It traces Tuscan economic thought back to the beginning of the century and shows its close relation with French thought that was a source of later physiocratic thinking. It notes that by the time the ideas of the physiocrats reached the grand duchy, it will be argued, they must have been perceived as almost genuinely Tuscan; their teachings also seemed especially relevant to Tuscany's agricultural economy.Less

The Tuscan Luxury Debate between Morals and Economics

TILL WAHNBAECK

in Luxury and Public Happiness: Political Economy in the Italian Enlightenment

This chapter investigates the treatment of luxury by Ferdinando Paoletti, who was influenced by the issue of economic stagnation, peasant ministry, and improvement of the countryside. It explains ... More

This chapter investigates the treatment of luxury by Ferdinando Paoletti, who was influenced by the issue of economic stagnation, peasant ministry, and improvement of the countryside. It explains that Paoletti argues that luxury detracts from efforts to make agriculture profitable and that the inspiration that he drew from physiocratic writings was visible enough. It discusses how the pragmatic tradition of Tuscan thought together with the powerful influence of French economic thinking had substantially altered the discussion. It stresses that even the enlightened Catholic tradition had to accept the vocabulary and the concepts of the pragmatic school in order to say their moral concerns.Less

The German Territories After c. 1760

Joachim Whaley

in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire: Volume II: The Peace of Westphalia to the Dissolution of the Reich, 1648-1806

The Aufklärung did not reject the governmental forms and institutions of the past but sought to give them a new purpose. Discussion of Aufklärung ideas was fostered by the explosive growth of the ... More

The Aufklärung did not reject the governmental forms and institutions of the past but sought to give them a new purpose. Discussion of Aufklärung ideas was fostered by the explosive growth of the print media. Aufklärung was defined by Kant and others; it suffused Protestant and Catholic thinking and many Jewish communities. The reforms of the period often responded to the problem of reconstruction after the Seven Years War, but they were shaped by new cameralist and physiocratic ideas. ‘Improvement’ soon became a general watchword leading to important new developments in administrative practice, law and justice, schools and universities, thinking about religious toleration and in the culture of the German courts. There is some evidence to suggest that the reforms in the German territories helped them avoid the kind of societal crisis that exploded in France in 1789.Less

Looking for (Economic) Growth in the Eighteenth Century

Christian Marouby

in Systems of Life: Biopolitics, Economics, and Literature on the Cusp of Modernity

In the context of the book’s emphasis on “Systems of Life” in the social sciences in the eighteenth century, this chapter seeks to interrogate the conception of growth, an evidently biological ... More

In the context of the book’s emphasis on “Systems of Life” in the social sciences in the eighteenth century, this chapter seeks to interrogate the conception of growth, an evidently biological analogy, in the work of two major founders of the discipline of economics, François Quesnay and Adam Smith. Taking its cue from a famous passage in the Wealth of Nations, the first part investigates the surprisingly discreet physiological conceptions in the non-medical writings of the theorist of physiocracy. While recognizing significant parallels between the biological and economic systems developed by Quesnay, particularly with regards to circulation, this first investigation fails to produce a model of economic growth based on physiological principles. The second part turns to the thought of Adam Smith himself, in which can be found not only an explicit analogy between physical health and that of the economy, but a clear conception of economic growth. But if it is tempting to find in Smith’s economics a system akin to that of life, a close examination of his theory of growth makes it even clearer than with Quesnay that its fundamental principle is not physiological, but sociological, grounded as it is in a stage theory of historical development.Less

From Liberalism to Liberty: Natural Rights in the French Enlightenment

Dan Edelstein

in On the Spirit of Rights

In France, with the exception of the exiled Huguenots, natural rights were rarely discussed before 1750. Even then, their revival at the hands of the philosophes was slow and weak. Stylistically, the ... More

In France, with the exception of the exiled Huguenots, natural rights were rarely discussed before 1750. Even then, their revival at the hands of the philosophes was slow and weak. Stylistically, the erudite works of the seventeenth-century natural lawyers offended Enlightenment sensibilities; these earlier texts were granted little attention. It was a group of economists, the Physiocrats, who ultimately did the most to revive the preservation regime of rights. For François Quesnay, the key right to retain in political society was property. But through their ties with philosophes in the salon of the baron d’Holbach, this economic focus gave way to a political one. By the 1770’s, nearly all the philosophes were criticizing states and laws that violated our natural rights. Another idea of rights also gained prominence in the 1770’s. This was the older constitutional theory of national rights, which members of the Paris Parlement brandished in opposition to Maupeou’s coup. This collective theory of rights rested on an idea of the nation as a natural entity. National rights were not produced through a transfer of individual rights, but had their own autonomy. These two concepts of rights were not incompatible, but there was a tension between them.Less

The Concours Académique, Political Culture, and the Critical Public Sphere

Jeremy L. Caradonna

in The Enlightenment in Practice: Academic Prize Contests and Intellectual Culture in France, 1670-1794

This chapter examines the concours académique in relation to French political culture and the public sphere. In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Jürgen Habermas explained how the ... More

This chapter examines the concours académique in relation to French political culture and the public sphere. In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Jürgen Habermas explained how the enlightened public sphere provided a range of venues for private individuals to join together, criticize sociopolitical institutions, and exert their collective or respective wills on the government through the new concept known as “public opinion.” This chapter argues that academic prize contests became an increasingly critical forum of exchange in the eighteenth century. It also considers how the academies transformed the concours into a collective problem-solving operation rooted in the collaborative ethos of the Republic of Letters, stimulated by competition and the hunt for cultural capital. Finally, it discusses various subjects tackled in prize contests, including slavery and serfdom; poverty, begging, and poor relief; and physiocracy and the liberalization of the grain trade.Less

Property, Equality, and the Passions in Eighteenth-Century French Thought

Michael Sonenscher

in Sans-Culottes: An Eighteenth-Century Emblem in the French Revolution

This chapter explores the problems of reform in eighteenth-century French thought, beginning with an examination of the origins of a new, theologically heterodox, interest in the human body, and its ... More

This chapter explores the problems of reform in eighteenth-century French thought, beginning with an examination of the origins of a new, theologically heterodox, interest in the human body, and its bearing on the moral and political thought of François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon and his followers. Its aim is to present some idea of the intellectual context that made it possible to align Rousseau's moral and political thought either with Thomas Hobbes or with Fénelon, and, ultimately, with both. With this established, it may then be easier to see why the advocates of the ambitious programme of economic and social reform that came to be known as Physiocracy were able to associate Rousseau, Hobbes, and Fénelon with something like the same, rather sober, set of moral and political arrangements.Less

Finding Nature

in The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution

During the first year of the French Republic, it was commonplace to compare the nascent government to “those days that can be called the true golden age,” a time “when each nation determined on its ... More

During the first year of the French Republic, it was commonplace to compare the nascent government to “those days that can be called the true golden age,” a time “when each nation determined on its own its rights and duties” and when the people “shared more or less equally the advantages of a collective administration.” The myth of the golden age had been naturalized, escaping from the confines of poetry and royalist rhetoric to enter the authoritative narratives of history and ethnography. Perhaps the most eloquent and intriguing proponent of natural republicanism of the pre-revolutionary decades in France was Sylvain Maréchal, who demonstrated how the belief in a society governed solely by natural right was wholly assimilated into the discourse of sensibilité. This chapter examines three critical shifts with respect to natural right: Orientalist studies, new voyages of discovery (in particular French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville's visit to Tahiti), and physiocracy.Less

Jefferson and the Simple Story of Pastoral Economies

Elizabeth Hewitt

in Speculative Fictions: Explaining the Economy in the Early United States

This chapter argues that resistance to Hamiltonian finance was both an economic and literary critique. The familiar opposition between Hamiltonian finance and Jeffersonian agrarianism has put the ... More

This chapter argues that resistance to Hamiltonian finance was both an economic and literary critique. The familiar opposition between Hamiltonian finance and Jeffersonian agrarianism has put the stress on the rural setting—an emphasis that has led scholars to talk about economic policy with the literary term, “pastoralism.” This chapter argues that the importance of the pastoral to Jeffersonian writers is not found in agrarianism, but on the formal structure of simplification that is essential to pastoral poetics. This same imperative toward simplicity is also located in the eighteenth-century economic science that was crucial to the Jeffersonians: French physiocracy. The chapter explains the importance of physiocracy and pastoralism to the political-economic writing of Thomas Jefferson, George Logan, and John Taylor of Caroline.Less

The Path to the Sacred: Korea as an Agrarian Paradise

Albert L. Park

in Building a Heaven on Earth: Religion, Activism, and Protest in Japanese Occupied Korea

Chapter 4 outlines the organization of the three rural movements and especially introduces Chosŏn nongminsa, which was the main arm of Ch’ŏndogyo to design and carry out its rural campaign. This ... More

Chapter 4 outlines the organization of the three rural movements and especially introduces Chosŏn nongminsa, which was the main arm of Ch’ŏndogyo to design and carry out its rural campaign. This chapter also analyzes the three organizations’ criticisms of urbanization and industrial capitalism and their support for a pastoral life, which they believed promised the cultivation of personality, social harmony, authentic wealth, a lasting national identity, and a sacred life.Less

Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce

Peter M. Jones

in Agricultural Enlightenment: Knowledge, Technology, and Nature, 1750-1840

This chapter sets the scene in a Europe which is coming to terms with the debt burden and in some regions the physical devastation left in the wake of the Seven Years’ War (1756–63). It depicts ... More

This chapter sets the scene in a Europe which is coming to terms with the debt burden and in some regions the physical devastation left in the wake of the Seven Years’ War (1756–63). It depicts agriculture, industry, and commerce as activities that were still closely connected. The new economic discourses that start to take shape around 1750 are identified and analysed: physiocracy, cameralism, political economy, and agronomy. The role of the movement of ideas known as the Enlightenment in the crystallization of these discourses and their dissemination in Europe is outlined. So, too, is the role of the State which made use of, and even adopted, the new discourses in order to buttress the economic policy objectives pursued by ancien régime rulers and their bureaucracies.Less

Fiscal Policy and Trade

Nancy Shields Kollmann

in The Russian Empire 1450-1801

This chapter explores the empire’s fiscal institutions and policies in the eighteenth century. Given the diversity of Russia’s economy, its policies were flexible and expedient, reflecting ... More

This chapter explores the empire’s fiscal institutions and policies in the eighteenth century. Given the diversity of Russia’s economy, its policies were flexible and expedient, reflecting mercantilist, protectionist, and Physiocratic tendencies as appropriate. The century witnessed vigorous economic growth, linked with a demographic boom, expansion into the fertile black earth steppe, and growing investment in productivity by private individuals and the state. Mining and metallurgy in the Urals and Siberia, export trade through St. Petersburg and the newly acquired Baltic and eventually even Black Sea ports produced wealth and economic growth. The state’s tariffs and taxation policies are surveyed, contrasting the capitation tax obligation on East Slavic peasantry with the different types and rates of direct taxation on non-Slavic subject peoples (iasak and other forms). The chapter concludes with the state’s indiscriminate use of assignats, mounting state debt, and economic stress by the end of century.Less

Talking Property before 1789

Rafe Blaufarb

in The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern Property

Chapter 1 explores the intellectual roots of the revolutionaries’ vision of demarcated spheres of property and power, on the one hand, and full, independent property-ownership, on the other. It shows ... More

Chapter 1 explores the intellectual roots of the revolutionaries’ vision of demarcated spheres of property and power, on the one hand, and full, independent property-ownership, on the other. It shows how these ideas first emerged in the writings of legal humanist jurists in the sixteenth century. These jurists progressively elaborated a legal conception of property that tended to redefine public power as a thing that could not be owned by individuals, but rather belonged exclusively to the sovereign. The chapter then follows the elaboration of these ideas in seventeenth-century conflicts over royal claims to universal property rights, eighteenth-century Enlightenment debates over the constitution of France, and physiocracy. It shows how the question of the proper relationship between property and power was at the heart of early modern French constitutional reflection.Less

Nature or Nation?: Rights Conflicts in the Age of the French Revolution

Dan Edelstein

in Rethinking the Age of Revolutions: France and the Birth of the Modern World

The century that was capped off by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen showed little indication, during its first fifty years, that it would come to care so much about natural ... More

The century that was capped off by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen showed little indication, during its first fifty years, that it would come to care so much about natural rights, or believe that the purpose of society was to conserve “the natural and imprescriptible rights of man.” So how did this particular rights regime come to hold such sway? As the author shows in this essay, the Enlightenment did not invent the idea of inalienable rights, which had already been forcefully expressed as far back as the sixteenth century. But a century of absolutist politics had silenced this discourse, despite its flourishing across the Channel. Its rediscovery, in the eighteenth century, does not appear to have been triggered by cross-cultural currents, or the rereading of older documents. Rather, it is argued that it was thanks to the Physiocrats that inalienable natural rights became once again a cornerstone of political discourse.Less

One-Off Capitalism in Song China, 960–1279 CE

Kent Deng

in Capitalisms: Towards a Global History

The rise of the industrial and commercial sectors in Song China was a result of historical contingency rather than an organic growth from the pre-Song past, which was marked by the ... More

The rise of the industrial and commercial sectors in Song China was a result of historical contingency rather than an organic growth from the pre-Song past, which was marked by the physiocracy-cum-farming that China was famous for. The right amount of external pressure from China’s northern and western borders served as a catalyst while the switch to mercantilism was the key of the Song state-led growth. Without a doubt, by 1100 CE, China was on a track to a quasi-modern structure with profit-making commercialization and proto-industrialization. However, the Song capitalist model did not lead to military supremacy in East Asia. As a result, it lost its northern territory in 1127 to the Jurchens and then its southern territory in 1279 to the Mongols, whereby the capitalist experiment ended by external violence.Less