‘The Proud Epithet of Enlightened': Ferdinando Galiani and the Neapolitan Debate on Colonies, Commerce and Conquest

This chapter presents an argument that served as a response to supporters of the then dominant view that colonies robbed the mother-country of its population, were expensive and were a main factor in the demise of empires. Thus the economic portfolio of colonies had to be closely guarded in order to retain unity within the Empire. Besides, although relocating Superfluous labour to external territory was in all Respects useful, the Growth of Colonies was slow. It began to employ funds that were previously spent on arms and destroyed in war for shipbuilding and the establishment of colonies, the construction of ports and fortresses, and for the creation of roads and warehouses. Through the moral philosophy and history of commerce and modern government he simultaneously constructed, Galiani arrived at a position from which he launched predictions about the future of international trade and shifts within international relations

The idea of democracy and the eighteenth century

Throughout Europe, local authorities are facing problems of scale. Municipalities have a variety of tasks, including service delivery and local policymaking. Furthermore, they represent the local society at other levels of government. Although this is a problem of all time, the downward vertical shift of governance is increasing the scale problem in sub-national tiers of government. This chapter focuses on those strategies in which scale enlargement is the main element. In other words, it addresses strategies in which regional governance serves as a solution to the problem of limited local governmental scale. It then discusses two models: 'consolidation' and 'new regionalism' and links these two approaches to the issue of democratic legitimacy. Some countries have decided to create new layers of government at the regional level, and others have improved inter-municipal cooperation. Responsibilities may be vested exclusively within a regional tier of government, or they may be shared by a number of cooperating authorities

‘L’economia civile’ e la società commerciale: Intieri, Genovesi, Galiani e la paternità dell’illuminismo napoletano

Genovesi’s economia civile, famously, attempted to show that economic growth and public happiness ought to be regarded as two sides of the same coin. To bring out the particulars of Genovesi’s project, this article proposes the hitherto unexplored approach of comparing his economia civile with Ferdinando Galiani’s ideas about commercial society. In sharp contrast to Genovesi, Galiani never became a hero of the later Neapolitan Enlightenment, but was always portrayed, by contemporaries and historians alike, as an opportunist, a sceptic and as ‘machiavellino’. However, a reconstruction of some of Galiani’s juvenile lectures suggests that the aim of Della moneta was similar to Genovesi’s economia civile fifteen years later. Pursuing this argument, it is suggested that Galiani, in the preface to the second edition of Della moneta, of 1780 (when Genovesi’s pupils were Naples’ main intellectuals), claimed paternity over the Neapolitan Enlightenment. This paper sets Galiani’s ideas about commercial society against Genovesi’s economia civile. It reveals the similarities of the two projects and uses Galiani’s scepticism to highlight the specific character of Genovesi’s economia civile. This approach sheds new light on the historiography of the Neapolitan Enlightenment

The Idea of Democracy and the Eighteenth Century

If the central concern of present-day political debate across the board involves the term democracy (or the democratic quality of society), the connecting themes in eighteenth-century political discourse were commerce and morality. From attitudes towards the reform of nations into viable commercial societies to the level of global governance, this theme dominated Enlightenment politics. It might also be argued that Enlightenment ideas about commerce and morality are, in some sense, the equivalent of ideas about ‘democracy’ now. To see the grounds for comparison, we need to look beyond the fact that democracy was neither on the cards as a possibility, nor as a desire for improving the well-being and quality of people in civil society. In this way, it becomes possible to recognise that early eighteenth-century politics still revolved around much the same issues as early twenty-first century politics

Commerce and morality in eighteenth-century Italian political thought

This special issue presents a number of studies by young scholars in the history of eighteenth-century Italian political thought, a field that was put on the map in the second half of the twentieth century by the efforts of Franco Venturi. By taking up the theme of commerce and morality, the articles published here follow in the footsteps of Venturi, but take his project of construing a ‘political history of ideas’ in a new direction

The devaluation controversy in eighteenth-century Italy

Following the Succession Wars of the early eighteenth-century, political economists across Italy discussed a range of possible reforms. Among the issues drawing most attention was the complicated problem whether devaluation policies were appropriate means for boosting economic growth. Not only did the issue raise moral and juridical questions, it also triggered profound historical reflections on the evolution of ‘commercial societies’ out of feudal systems. This article places a number of Italian mid-eighteenth-century ideas of money in their original context of political and intellectual challenges and attempts to draw some of the main dividing lines in this debate