Mercantilism and Moeurs: Comparative History and Sociology in the Analysis of France's Overseas Trade, 1713-1748

Paul Burton Cheney

This paper explores the economic analysis brought to bear on France's competitive prospects in colonial commerce. It demonstrates the centrality of historical and comparative methods to this analysis, by highlighting how categories that would become fundamental for Montesquieu in his 1748 Spirit of the Laws were very much in use by economic thinkers by that time. In particular, it discusses how French economic writers, from diplomats to early Enlightenment men of letters, understood the role of moeurs (mores) and forms of government in shaping the successes and failures of the major European players (including England, Spain, Holland, and of course France) in the field of colonial commerce. The goal of this paper is to provide an alternative intellectual genealogy for eighteenth-century reform economics, one that goes beyond the traditional evolutionary line linking mercantilism to physiocracy and finally Smithian economics.

[WP # 99002]