Economy. CHILD. Traités sur le commerce.

CHILD, Josiah. Traités sur le commerce.

Amsterdam-Berlin, Jean Neaulme, Paris, Guérin & Delatour, 1754

Prima edizione francese delle “Brief observations concerning Trade and Interest of Money“, nella traduzione di Vincent de Gournay e G.M Butel-Dumont. Josiah Child, 1630-1699, principale azionista della Compagnia delle Indie Orientali, intraprese poi la carriera politica. Quest’opera ha avuto una certa influenza nella tradizione del mercantilismo inglese. L'autore sostiene l'imposizione per legge di tassi di interesse molto bassi come mezzo per garantire la prosperità generale, e presenta gli Atti sulla Navigazione come più adatti alle esigenze della difesa che agli interessi del commercio. Insieme a William Petty e Dudley North, è uno dei rappresentanti della scuola inglese dei precursori dell'economia, formata dal commercio internazionale. Shumpeter: “… this Discourse deals with the practical problems of its time—employment, wages, money, exchanges, exports and imports, and so on—in the light of clearly adumbrated ‘laws’ of the mechanism of capitalist markets; though not explicitly worked out, the tool that we call equilibrium theory is, as it were, present behind the scene. […] Child’s reputation as an economist, besides suffering from the general prejudice against ‘mercantilist’ writings, also suffered from a fact that is of great interest to the sociologist of science. Child was a leading businessman, in fact the very incarnation of the most hated big business of that age: he was chairman and for some years the undisputed leader of the East India Company, besides being personally very wealthy. Accordingly, he was unpopular in his time, and so he has remained for over 250 years, historians being careful to clear their skirts of the ‘monopolist’ and ‘special pleader’ (scilicet for his personal interest).”

Quérard, La France littéraire, Vol. II, p. 189; Kress 5335; Goldsmiths 8910; Higgs 746; Shumpeter, History of economic analysis, 1954, p. 189.