Title
Translating Empire : Emulation and the Origins of Political Economy / Sophus A. Reinert.
ISBN
9780674063235
Published
Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2011]
Copyright
©2011
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (456 p.) : 2 maps, 20 graphs
Other Standard Identifiers
10.4159/harvard.9780674063235 doi
Call Number
HB83 .R45 2011eb
Dewey Decimal Classification
330.1094
Summary
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.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Aug 2021)
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
