1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910458044203321

Autore

Reinert Sophus A

Titolo

Translating empire [[electronic resource] ] : emulation and the origins of political economy / / Sophus A. Reinert

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge, Mass., : Harvard University Press, 2011

ISBN

0-674-06323-6

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (454 p.)

Classificazione

MD 1800

Disciplina

330.1094

Soggetti

Economics - Europe - History - 18th century

Enlightenment - Europe

Philosophy, European - 18th century

Electronic books.

Europe Intellectual life 18th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures -- Map: the Americas and the Caribbean, c. 1788 -- Map: Europe, c. 1788, with dates of publication for Cary's Essay on the State of England -- Introduction -- Chapter one. Emulation and Translation -- Chapter two. Cary's Essay on the State of England -- Chapter three. Butel- Dumont's Essai sur l'État du Commerce d'Angleterre -- Chapter four. Genovesi's Storia del commercio della Gran Brettagna -- Chapter five. Wichmann's Ökonomischpolitischer Commentarius -- Epilogue -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Historians have traditionally used the discourses of free trade and laissez faire to explain the development of political economy during the Enlightenment. But from Sophus Reinert's perspective, eighteenth-century political economy can be understood only in the context of the often brutal imperial rivalries then unfolding in Europe and its former colonies and the positive consequences of active economic policy. The idea of economic emulation was the prism through which philosophers, ministers, reformers, and even merchants thought about economics, as well as industrial policy and reform, in the early modern period. With the rise of the British Empire, European powers and others sought to



selectively emulate the British model.In mapping the general history of economic translations between 1500 and 1849, and particularly tracing the successive translations of the Bristol merchant John Cary's seminal 1695 Essay on the State of England, Reinert makes a compelling case for the way that England's aggressively nationalist policies, especially extensive tariffs and other intrusive market interventions, were adopted in France, Italy, Germany, and Scandinavia before providing the blueprint for independence in the New World. Relatively forgotten today, Cary's work served as the basis for an international move toward using political economy as the prime tool of policymaking and industrial expansion.Reinert's work challenges previous narratives about the origins of political economy and invites the current generation of economists to reexamine the foundations, and future, of their discipline.