Blaming the Medici: Footnotes, falsification, and the fate of the ‘English Model’ in eighteenth-century Italy
2006; Routledge; Volume: 32; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2006.08.005
ISSN1873-541X
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Economic and Social Studies
ResumoAbstract Franco Venturi famously emphasised the importance of the 'English Model' for Italian reformist culture in his Settecento riformatore. This essay contributes to the history of the development and evolution of the 'English Model' beginning with its influential appearance in Antonio Genovesi's 1757–1758 translation of John Cary's 1695 Essay on the State of England. The 'English Model' was not a stable concept and, in fact, one tradition inverted the model's meaning, rejecting the need for protectionism and instead embracing a providential faith in laissez-faire. This tradition began with an important, but falsified footnote in Carlo Denina's 1769–1770 Rivoluzioni d'Italia. In this note and the tradition that adopted it, Lorenzo de' Medici's imagined English wool factories became the locus of this inversion, and, through a reading of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, blaming the Medici as agents of Italy's aberrant historical development became an alternative to blaming English economic imperialism in late eighteenth-century Italy. The narrative of Medici involvement in the decline of Italy was finally realigned with Genovesi's original intention under the auspice of Pope Pius VI in 1794. Keywords: EnglandPolitical economyItalyMercantilismProtectionism Notes 1 John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress from this world, to that which is to come… (London, 1678), p. 140. 2 On this see among others David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 3 William Petty, Several Essays in Political Arithmetick… (London, 1699), p. 274. In the same work, Petty clearly adhered to the common trope of the moment concerning England's opposition to absolutist regimes both political and secular when he noted that 'Since the great Fire of London, Anno 1666… [the] present vast City hath been new built… and become equal to Paris and Rome put together, the one being the Seat of the great French Monarchy, and the other of the Papacy', p. 103. 4 Franco Venturi, Settecento riformatore (Turin: Einaudi, 1998), pp. 571–574. 5 Franco Venturi, Utopia e riforma nell'illuminismo (Turin: Einaudi, 2001), p. 9. 6 As William Bouwsma argued in his The Waning of the Renaissance, 1550–1640 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), the radical ferment of Italian Renaissance culture, with its liberation of time, space, and political life, had given way to anxiety and a demand for safer, worldlier moorings, while people found their new bearings. This dearth of Utopias is observable just by flipping through Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi's wonderful Dictionary of Imaginary Places (New York: Harcourt, 2000). 7 On these structural changes of the world economy and the importance of size see among many others the classic Immanuel M. Wallerstein, The Modern World System (New York: Academic Press, 1974) and the immense literature it generated. On the Italian case in particular, see Carlo M. Cipolla, 'The Economic Decline of Italy', in The Economic Decline of Empires, ed. idem (London: Methuen & Co., 1970), pp. 196–214. 8 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), book II, p. 80. This passage is discussed in Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 108n. 9 Already in his early sixteenth-century History of Italy, in fact, Francesco Guicciardini had noted how Columbus' discovery of the New World was a harbinger of Italy's decline, causing 'great detriment and damage'. For a discussion, see John A. Marino, 'Economic structures and transformations', Early Modern Italy, ed. Idem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 51–68. 10 Frederick Lane acutely identified this as 'increasing returns' from the use of force in international trade in his Profits from Power: Readings in Protection Rent and Violence-Controlling Enterprises (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1979). Charles Tilly makes a similar argument based on the 'capacity for coercion' as a significant factor in economic rise and decline in Coercion, Capital, and European States (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990). And as Jan de Vries has showed us, 'only toward the end of the seventeenth century, after decades of determined imitation, government protection, and military aggression, did British shipping and commercial facilities become competitive with the Dutch', The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 253. 11 Chief among them David Hume. On this debate among Scottish political philosophers and economists, see Istvan Hont, 'The "Rich Country–Poor Country" Debate in the Scottish Enlightenment', in idem. Jealousy of Trade, pp. 267–322. 12 On the acts in question and their immediate context, see Patrick Kelly, 'The Irish Woollen Export Prohibition Act of 1699: Kearney Re-Visited', Irish Economic and Social History, (1980) 7, pp. 484–496. 13 John Cary, An Essay on the State of England (Bristol, 1695), p. 98. I am in the process of completing a dissertation on John Cary and his influence throughout eighteenth-century Europe. 14 On Genovesi's life and intellectual formation, see generally Franco Venturi's chapter on 'La Napoli di Antonio Genovesi' in Settecento riformatore, pp. 523–644 and Paola Zambelli, La formazione filosofica di Antonio Genovesi (Naples: Morano, 1972). On his economic thought see Lucio Villari, Il pensiero economico di Antonio Genovesi (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1959) and Eluggero Pii, Antonio Genovesi: dalla politica economica alla 'politica civile' (Florence: Olschki, 1984). On the Neapolitan context that bore him, see John Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples, 1680–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Koen Stapelbroek, Love, Self-Deceit, and Money: Commerce and Morality in the Early Neapolitan Enlightenment (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming). 15 Adam Smith, 'Letter to the Edinburgh Review', Adam Smith: Essays on Philosophical Subjects, eds. W.P.D. Wightman and J.C. Bryce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 242–254, quote from p. 243. 16 Antonio Genovesi's lecture notes on Elementi di commercio for the year 1757 have now finally been edited and published. See Delle lezioni di commercio o sia di economia civile con Elementi di commercio, ed. Maria Luisa Perna (Naples: Istituto italiano per gli studi filosofici, 2005), quote from p. 40. 17 On Gournay and his group, see Gustave Schelle, Vincent de Gournay (Paris: Guillaumin, 1897) and Antoin E. Murphy, 'Le Groupe de Vincent de Gournay', in Nouvelle Histoire de la Pensée Economique, eds. Alain Béraud and Gilbert Faccarello (Paris: Editions La Découverte, 1992), vol. 1, pp. 199–203. 18 I have discussed the voyages and vicissitudes of Cary's text in my 'Traduzione ed emulazione: La genealogia occulta della Storia del Commercio', in Atti del convegno 250 ° anniversario dell'istituzione della cattedra di 'Commercio e Meccanica', Naples, 5–6 May 2005 (forthcoming). 19 Antonio Genovesi, Storia del commercio della Gran Brettagna… (Naples, 1757–1758), vol. 1, p. ii. 20 Genovesi, Elementi di commercio, p. 50. 21 Genovesi, Storia del commercio, vol. 1, pp. 22–23, 190n; vol. 2, pp. 291 and n, 294n. 22 On this and Serra generally see Erik S. Reinert and Sophus A. Reinert, 'An Early National Innovation System: the Case of Antonio Serra's 1613 Breve Trattato', Institutions and Economic Development/Istituzioni e Sviluppo Economico (2003), 1 (3), pp. 87–119. See also Walter Ziersch, Antonio Serra, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Nationalökonomie (Bonn: Carl Georgi, 1905); L. Granata, Antonio Serra: economista e meridionalista inconsapevole e il suo Breve Trattato (n.p.: Santelli, 1998); Bertram Schefold (ed.), Antonio Serra und sein Breve Trattato—Vademecum zu einem unbekannten Klassiker (Düsseldorf: Verlag Wirtschaft und Finanzen GMBH, 1994). 23 From their hands, Croce has argued, the Breve trattato passed 'like a lamp of life' among the greatest Italian economists of the next centuries, being finally donated to Luigi Einaudi and now found at the Einaudi Foundation in Turin. Storia del regno di Napoli (Bari: Laterza, 1925), pp. 159–160. 24 Ferdinando Galiani, Dialogues sur le commerce des bleds (London, 1770), pp. 150–151. 25 Genovesi, Storia del commercio, vol. 1, pp. xxxi, lxvii, 180n–181n. 26 Genovesi, Storia del commercio, vol. 2, p. 252. 27 Genovesi, Storia del commercio, vol. 1, p. 249. Emphasis added. Similarly, in the translation of Mun that Genovesi included as part of the second volume of his Storia, he has Mun write 'And even though one wants commerce between all nations to be free, nonetheless I think, that this liberty can and should be restrained by certain limits, because in helping others, it could hurt us, as all countries should accommodate it to its interests, without others having the right to lament: because everyone is master of his house, to whose signoria the liberty of commerce cannot contest', vol. 2, p. 289. 28 Genovesi, Storia del commercio, vol. 1, p. 249. 29 Genovesi, Storia del commercio, vol. 2, pp. 21n–29n. 30 Genovesi, Storia del commercio, vol. 2, p. 30. 31 Genovesi, Storia del commercio, vol. 1, pp. lxxv–lxxvi. 32 Genovesi, Storia del commercio, vol. 1, p. 116n, 188–189n. In fact, in Genovesi's translation of Mun, he notes Englishmen should 'look to the Republics of Venice, Genoa, and Holland', for 'nothing is needed apart from doing what they did, with only a little more diligence and fatiga'. Genovesi, in an annotation, remarks 'This is how the Englishmen spoke a century ago. They had a different opinion of themselves, than that Europe generally has of them now' (vol. 2, p. 291 and n). Genovesi's translation of Mun is in this regard remarkably close to the original England's Treasure by Forraign Trade (London, 1664), pp. 23–24. Similarly, Genovesi writes in a note a few pages later, 'at that time the best manufactures and the most esteemed in all of Europe were Italian, Spanish, and of the Low Countries. The English and the French were hardly mentioned. How much a single century has been able to change!' Storia del commercio, vol. 2, p. 294n. The same sentiment is expressed in various places throughout the work, particularly vol. 2, pp. 303 and 325n: 'it is worth noting this passage by our author, where we learn, that little more than a century ago, the English, of whose wealth of traffic we are now envious, were envious of us…', but see also pp. 414–415n. 33 Genovesi, Storia del commercio, vol. 2, p. 81n annotates Bûtel-Dumont's description of anxious Englishmen in his Essai sur l'etat du commerce d'Angleterre (Paris, 1755), vol. 1, p. 330, based on Cary, Essay on the State of England, pp. 41–42. See also Genovesi's Storia del commercio, vol. 3, p. 146 for 'jealous' English merchants. For other 'anxious' Englishmen in the tradition Cary wrote in, see particularly Samuel Fortrey's Englands Interest and Improvement (Cambridge, 1663), pp. 28–29, and Carew Reynell's The True English Interest (London, 1674). 34 Genovesi, Storia del commercio, vol. 2, p. 36n. 35 The same tendency for things to reach equilibriums, perhaps a remnant both of Genovesi's Vician and Newtonian heritages, is observable in his critique of Petty's writings on the forced re-location of populations. Genovesi argued one should not worry as much as Petty had about the correct balance of populations between town and country because 'the nature of things, which brings everything into equilibrium, knows how to put herself in the best State'. Genovesi, Storia del commercio, vol. 2, p. 195n. On Newtonianism in Naples, see Vincenzo Ferrone, Scienza natura religione: Mondo Newtoniano e cultura italiana nel primo settecento (Naples: Jovene, 1982). 36 Genovesi, Storia del commercio, vol. 2, pp. 189n, 248n–249n. 37 Genovesi, Storia del commercio, vol. 2, p. 190n, and pp. 22n–23n. 38 Genovesi, Storia del commercio, vol. 2, pp. 24n. On the so-called 'rich country–poor country debate' of the eighteenth century with a particular emphasis on the Scottish discourse, which has influenced my analysis here, see again Istvan Hont, 'The "Rich Country–Poor Country" Debate in the Scottish Enlightenment' in idem. Jealousy of Trade, pp. 267–322. 39 Pietro Verri, 'Sulla spensieratezza nella privata economia', Il Caffé 1764–1766, ed. Gianni Francioni and Sergio Romagnoli (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1998), vol. II, p. 327. 40 Fondazione Mattioli, Milan, Ms. Correspondenza di Pietro Verri a vari destinatori 1763–1795 (ex CAR 083.01-11) Fasc. 7. Antonio Genovesi—Milano (CAR 083.07). 41 Cesare Beccaria, A Discourse on Public Economy and Commerce (London, 1769), p. 42. I have explored some of the linkages between the Neapolitan and Milanese schools of Enlightenment political economy in 'The Italian Tradition of Political Economy: Theories and Policies of Development in the Semi-Periphery of the Enlightenment', in The Origins of Development Economics: How Schools of Economic Thought Have Addressed Development, ed. Jomo K. Sundaram and Erik S. Reinert, (London and New Delhi: Zed Books and Tulika Books, 2005), pp. 24–47. Regarding the influence of the Accademia dei pugni's embrace of Genovesi's ideas, it is worth noting that out of the 14 academic chairs at the Scuole Palatine in 1773, three were occupied by former members of the Accademia. See Wolfgang Rother, 'The Beginning of Higher Education in Political Economy in Milan and Modena: Cesare Beccaria, Alfonso Longo, Agostino Paradisi', History of Universities (2004), 19 (1), p. 120. 42 Sebastiano Franci, 'Alcuni pensieri politici', Il Caffe 1764–1766, pp. 143–150. 43 Carlo Salerni, Riflessioni sull'economia della provincia d'Otranto, ed. Vittorio Zacchino (Lecce: Centro di studi salentini, 1996 [1782]), pp. 87, 82. On Salerni and his context, see Pasquale Matarazzo, 'Da Spioni a Speculatori. La politicizzazione della tradizione scientifica a Lecce nel secondo settecento', in Prospettive sui lumi: Cultura e diritto nell'Europa del Settecento, ed. Maria Rosa di Simone (Turin: G. Giappichelli Editore, 2005). 44 On Tron, see Giovanni Tabacco, Andrea Tron e la crisi dell'aristocrazia senatoria a Venezia, 2nd ed. (Udine: Del Bianco, 1980). 45 Andrea Tron, Serenissimo principe…, ed. Paolo Gaspari (Venice: Gaspari editore, 1994 [1784]), p. 106. 46 For some considerations on the fortunes of Physiocracy in Italy, see the recent special issue of Studi settecenteschi (2005), 24, eds. Maria Albertone and Gianni Francioni. 47 On Carlo Denina, see Franco Venturi, Settecento riformatore, vol. II: La chiesa e la repubblica dentro i loro limiti (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), pp. 78–85; Franco Venturi, 'Nota Introduttiva' to the section on Carlo Denina, in idem. ed., Riformatori piemontesi e toscani del settecento, tomo primo (Turin: Einaudi, 1979), pp. 5–17; Gianni Marocco, Profilo biografico, in Carlo Denina, Opere Giovanili, ed. Gianni Marocco (Turin: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1980), pp. iii–xiv; Carlo Corsetti, Vita ed opere di Carlo Denina (Cuneo: L'Arciere, 1988). Denina's 'pallid' proposals for reform invariably circled around the theme of increasing the population: 'One could affirm as indubitable that the only way to improve and develop the state… is to promote the population independently of any other regard'. This, Denina argued, was necessary to 'further the manufactures, cultivate barren lands, [and] perfect agriculture', Rivoluzioni d'Italia (Turin: Giuseppe Pomba, 1829), vol. 9, p. 207–208. Even his most radical and economic work, Sull'impiego delle persone, which indeed would be the catalyst of his exile and remain unpublished for three decades after its completion in 1773, did not venture much further. 48 'Parliamento ottaviano ovvero le adunanze degli osservatori italiani', in Riformatori piemontesi e toscani del settecento, ed. Franco Venturi (Milan: Ricciardi, 1958), pp. 19–32, pp. 20, 23. Denina was similarly critical of Hume, who, while a 'vast genius' in every way, was brought down by his 'pernicious dogmas'. See Carlo Denina, Discorso sopra le vicende della litteratura, 2nd ed. (Glasgow, 1763), pp. 148, 226. On Denina's reformism, see also Vitilio Masiello, 'Carlo Denina riformatore civile e storico della letteratura', Belfagor (1969), 24 (5), p. 511: 'Denina's proposals for "reform" had nothing subversive in them, nor did they question existing structures'. Masiello, curiously, thinks Denina essentially criticises Rousseau's 'Enlightened irreligiosity', p. 521. 49 On the process of writing the Rivoluzioni d'Italia, see Corsetti, Vita ed opere, pp. 58–68. 50 For an analysis of Denina as a 'mercantilist' see Corsetti, Vita ed opera, p. 65. For the 'physiocratic' elements in Denina's writings see, among others, Luigi Negri, Carlo Denina: Un accademico piemontese del '700, sulla scorta di documenti inediti (Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1933), p. 35 and Ernesto Sestan, 'In Margine alle "Rivoluzioni d'Italia" di Carlo Denina', in L'età dei lumi: Studi storici sul settecento europeo in onore di Franco Venturi (Naples: Jovene, 1985), pp. 1045–1091. 51 Carlo Denina, Autobiografia berlinese, 1731–1792, ed. Fabrizio Cicoira (Bergamo: Lubrina, 1990), pp. 83–84. 52 For example Denina, Rivoluzioni, vol. 9, p. 23, on Colbert p. 130 and particularly on 'the animating genius of the great Colbert', pp. 154–162. 53 As Steven L. Kaplan has shown in his classic Bread, Politics, and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), vol. 1, p. 116, Physiocracy had 'changed the test of adherence to liberal principles from a simple litmus to a difficult Rorschach'. Denina might have passed the former, but not the latter. Denina's engagement with Rousseau has recently been pointed out by Vincenzo Ferrone, I profeti dell'illuminismo (Bari: Laterza, 2000), p. 433. 54 Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino, Turin, Ms. Libreria scelta di autori e traduttori italiani, Q2-I—12, p. 97. 55 Denina had already argued that 'the competitions of princes, when they don't trespass into hostilities, procure, like the emulation of individuals, useful results for states', Rivoluzioni, vol. 9, p. 36. 56 Denina's relationship with 'the Florentine secretary' was complex. His manuscript entitled Libreria scelta di autori e traduttori italiani (Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino, Turin, Q2-I—12) dismissed The Prince as a useless anachronism, unless one were a 'tyrant' or 'charlatan' willing to sacrifice 'all honesty' to 'tempt a great fortune'. He was much more favourably disposed towards Machiavelli's other works: the Discourses 'contain less atrocious maxims', and he considered the 'History' a necessary reading (pp. 95, 178). 57 Denina, Rivoluzioni, vol. 8, pp. 51–52. Denina later elaborated on the decline of Italy, maintaining that 'gone was the time in which the maritime peoples of Italy ruled the seas and the foreign ports, and their cities were market fairs for foreign nations. The science and magnanimity of two Italians had shown other people the way to bring this advantage to their own countries', vol. 8, p. 264. Although Denina here spoke of the age of exploration and probably referred to Columbus and Vespucci, the basic idea of repatriating and personifying the forces of decline remains. 58 Denina, Rivoluzioni, vol. 9, p. 49. 59 In fact, while Genovesi often spoke of how Italy taught the world its manufactures, he, like Bûtel-Dumont, specifically named the Flemish weaver 'Giovanni Kemp' for introducing his craft across the channel. Storia del commercio, vol. 1, p. 226. 60 Niccoló Machiavelli to Francesco Vettori, 9 April 1513, in Niccoló Machiavelli, Tutte le opere, ed. Mario Martelli (Florence: Sansoni, 1971), pp. 1131–1132. 61 Niccolò Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, in Tutte le opere, p. 843. 62 George Holmes, 'Lorenzo de' Medici's London Branch', in Progress and Problems in Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Edward Miller, eds. Richard Britnell, John Hatcher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 273–285. See also M.E. Mallett, 'Anglo-Florentine Commercial Relations, 1465–1491', The Economic History Review (1962), New Series, 15 (2), pp. 250–265, particularly pp. 252–253. On the mismanagement, see the classic Raymond de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397–1494 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963). 63 On this debate see Giuseppe Ricuperati, 'Ipotesi su Carlo Denina storico e comparatista', Rivista storica italiana (2001), 113 (1), pp. 107–137. 64 Carlo Denina, Bibliopea o sia l'arte di compor libri (Turin, 1776), pp. 267–268, 272–276. In this context, Denina's earlier quite caustic criticisms of Voltaire for his poor and dishonest scholarship become particularly amusing. See his 'Parliamento ottaviano ovvero le adunanze degli osservatori italiani', in Riformatori piemontesi e toscani del settecento, ed. Franco Venturi (Milan: Ricciardi, 1958), pp. 19–32. 65 Denina, Rivoluzioni, vol. 9, pp. 154, 156, 161–162. Ironically, Denina's Rivoluzioni was translated into English as a model of what not to do. As Denina's translator wrote in his dedication to A Dissertation, Historical and Political, on the Ancient Republics of Italy, ed. John Langhorne (London, 1773), p. ix: 'to prevent [England's] decline, nothing can more effectually instruct us than a due attention to the causes of that decline in other states… particularly if they proceed from internal causes'. Denina, whose 'name' was 'already established' according to the translator, had succeeded in repatriating the agency of Italy's decline even to an English audience, who now feared they too would sink 'under the accumulated corruptions of time' (pp. i–vi). 66 Denina, Rivoluzioni, vol. 8, p. 267. Similarly, in his Discorso, p. 176, Denina had argued that 'urbanism, and the magnificence which accompanies it, is sometimes mother of good taste in literature, then produces idleness, and naturally degenerates into luxury, and into laxity'. 67 For a discussion of 'temporality and the prospects of commercial society in the language of civic humanism' for a very different early modern context, see Hont, 'The "Rich Country—Poor Country" Debate in the Scottish Enlightenment', pp. 267–322, as well as J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975) and Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966). For a particularly symptomatic passage of Rousseau, see The Discourses and other early political writings, ed. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 202: 'This is how the State, while it grows rich on the one hand, gets weak and depopulated on the other, and how the most powerful Monarchies, after much labour to grow opulent and become deserted, end up by being the prey of the poor Nations that succumb to the fatal temptation to invade them, and grow rich and weak in their turn, until they are themselves invaded and destroyed by others'. 68 Denina, Rivoluzioni, vol. 9, 153–154. 69 Denina, Rivoluzioni, vol. 8, p. 266. 70 Denina, Rivoluzioni, vol. 9, p. 255. 71 As Rousseau so memorably formulated the cost of progress: 'Remember that the walls of cities are only built with the wreckage of farmhouses', The Social Contract and other later political writings, ed. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 112. Ferrone's Scienza, natura, religione discusses a 'Christian agrarianism' in the context of Fénelon and Paolo Mattia Doria, and Denina might fruitfully be compared to this tradition. 72 On this see again my Emulazione e traduzione. 73 Footnotes are, of course often much more than the simple apparatus through which scholars present the empirical proofs for their claims, and Denina's case is hardly unique. For an erudite and delightful approach to the misadventures of the footnote, see Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). 74 On Mengotti, see Oscar Nuccio, Economisti Italiani del XVIII secolo: Ferdinando Galiani, Antonio Genovesi, Pietro Verri, Francesco Mengotti (Rome: Ediz. dell'Ateneo & Bizzarri, 1974), pp. 251–286; Leone Iraci Fedeli, 'Francesco Mengotti e il "Colbertismo"', Annali del Istituto Giangiacomo Feltrinelli (1959), 2, pp. 560–576; On Il Colbertismo as a 'Bible' see Marco E.L. Guidi et al. 'Neo-Smithian Political Economy in Italy: 1777–1848', Economies et sociétés (2004), 34 (2), p. 224. 75 Francesco Mengotti, Del commercio dei Romani ed Il Colbertismo (Milan, 1829), p. 227. On the French translations of Adam Smith, see Kenneth Carpenter, The Dissemination of the Wealth of Nations in French and in France, 1776–1843 (New York: Bibliographical Society of America, 2002). 76 Mengotti, Del commercio, p. 199. 77 Antonio Genovesi, Lezioni di commercio o sia di economia civile (Naples, 1765–1767), vol. 1, p. 311. 78 Mengotti, Del commercio, pp. 66, 115, 124. 79 Mengotti, Del commercio, pp. 122, 126. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, vol. 1, book III, pp. 401–445. 80 Mengotti, Del commercio, pp. 129–130. 81 Mengotti, Del commercio, pp. 86, 104, 177. 82 Mengotti, Del commercio, p. 181. Emphasis mine. 83 Mengotti, Del commercio, pp. 202, 208, 214–215, 295, 327. 84 Mengotti, Del commercio, pp. 241–245. 85 Mengotti, Del commercio, pp. 249–250. 86 Smith, Wealth of Nations, vol. 1, book 1, particularly pp. 53, 118–119. 87 On this see Istvan Hont, 'Adam Smith and the Political Economy of the "Unnatural and Retrograde" Order', idem. Jealousy of Trade, pp. 354–388. 88 Mengotti, Del commercio, pp. 281–282, 284–285. 89 Mengotti, Del commercio, pp. 255, 281–282. 90 Mengotti, Del commercio, pp. 283–284. 91 Smith, Wealth of Nations, vol. 1, book 3, p. 428. 92 Mengotti, Del commercio, pp. 279–280. 93 Smith, Wealth of Nations, vol. 1, book 3, p. 428: 'But when this taste [for foreign manufactures] became so general as to occasion a considerable demand, the merchants, in order to save the expense of carriage, naturally endeavoured to establish some manufactures of the same kind in their own country'. Smith does in fact also discuss Machiavelli's account of Lorenzo's reckless agents, but does not connect the two passages like Mengotti does, vol. 2, book 5, p. 343. 94 As Smith himself had begun to do, Wealth of Nations, vol. 1, book 3, p. 431. 95 For a profound discussion of the survival of this myth of free-trade England into the nineteenth century, see John Vincent Nye, 'The Myth of Free-Trade England and Fortress France: Tariffs and Trade in the Nineteenth Century', The Journal of Economic History (1991), 51 (1), pp. 23–46. 96 Franco Venturi, 'Nota introduttiva' to Paolo Vergani, Illuministi Italiani, vol. vii, Riformatori delle antiche repubbliche, dei ducati, dello stato pontificio e delle isole, ed. Giuseppe Giarizzo, Gianfranco Torcellan, and Franco Venturi (Milan: Ricciardi, 1965), pp. 629–644. Vergani was in favour of capital punishment on the striking grounds that 'love for humanity, in this regard, has been brought too far'. On Vergani see also Enzo Piscitelli, La riforma di Pio VI e gli scrittori economici romani (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1958), pp. 215–218 and Franco Venturi, 'Elementi e tentativi di riforme nello Stato Pontificio del settecento', Rivista storica italiana (1963), 75 (4), pp. 778–817. 97 On Venturi's life, see Edoardo Tortarolo, 'La rivolta e le riforme. Appunti per una biografia intellettuale di Franco Venturi (1914–1994), Studi settecenteschi (1995) 15, pp. 9–38. On his internments see particularly p. 30. For a fascinating selection of articles on Venturi's life and work, see also Il coraggio della ragione. Franco Venturi intellettuale e storico cosmopolita, eds. Luciano Guerci and Giuseppe Ricuperati (Turin: Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, 1998). 98 Franco Venturi to Leo Valiani, 3 September 1964, in Leo Valiani-Franco Venturi Lettere 1943–1979, ed. Edoardo Tartarolo (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1999), p. 341. 99 On the relationship between cosmopolitanism and patriotism see Vittorio Foa, 'Franco Venturi storico e politico', in Franco Venturi, La lotta per la libertà: Scritti politici, ed. Leonardo Casalino, (Turin, 1996), pp. ix–xxxiii, particularly p. xix, and John Robertson, 'Franco Venturi's Enlightenment', Past and Present (1992), 137, pp. 183–206. Only two days before passing away on 14 December 1994, Venturi reaffirmed the importance of this duality upon receiving the Sigillo Civico del Comune di Torino: 'young and less young, always think that local roots and the great ideas that break the sky of Europe can never be separated', quoted by Leonardo Casalino, 'Nota introduttiva e biografica', in Franco Venturi, La lotta per la libertà: Scritti politici, ed. Leonardo Casalino, (Turin, 1996), pp. liii–lxv, p. lxv. 100 Paolo Vergani, Della importanza e dei pregi del nuovo sistema di finanza dello Stato pontifico (Rome, 1794), pp. 24–25. While Vergari's narrative is almost verbatim identical to Denina's, he does not cite the Rivoluzioni d'Italia. Only a few pages later, however, he tellingly quotes a passage from that very work to support his argument, pp. 31–32: 'and Italy, as the celebrated Mr. Carlo Denina reflects, "which one, or two centuries earlier had been the sole master of custom, and legislature of good taste and of the arts to the rest of Europe, became a serf, rather than an imitator of foreign customs, and instead of attracting the gold of other nations, she made herself tributary of transalpine artisans and merchants".' 101 Vergani, Della importanza, pp. 26, 29. 102 Vergani, Della importanza, pp. 78–81, 92–95. He also quotes Smith on pp. 170, 396–397, 402–405, and 407. 103 Vergani, Della importanza, p. 416. 104 For another recent exploration of the bifurcated readings of Adam Smith, see Gareth Stedman Jones, An End to Poverty? (London: Profile Books, 2004). 105 Giovanni Battista Fanucci, Storia dei tre celebri popoli marittimi dell'Italia, Veneziani, Genovesi e Pisani e delle loro navigazioni e commerci nei bassi secoli (Pisa, 1822), vol. 4, p. 272. Emphasis mine.
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