Introduction

Studies of the emergence of Political Economy during the European Enlightenment have adopted a more cosmopolitan criterion in recent decades, moving away from the largely hegemonic and almost exclusively Franco-British approach of the past. Besides gradually integrating a wider continental dimension, this approach also focuses on certain economists, who, although considered minor from the standpoint of economic analysis, were authors of treatises that enjoyed considerable success at their time. It has been necessary to undo the restraints that kept the history of political economy handcuffed with this analytical perspective to understand that the emergence of a science of political economy during the eighteenth century was conditioned by factors other than the mere formulation of theories. This is demonstrated by the multifaceted nature of works of the political economy published during the Enlightenment. And it is shown by recent studies on the complex roles of ‘virtue’ and ‘commerce’ in economic debates and in the field of literary forms and representation. Equally importantly, however, historiography has increasingly opened its eyes to the importance of ‘economic policy’: the discipline of political economy, after all, matured as a science around debates regarding such issues as public finance and the grain trade. In more general terms, it is undeniable that the ‘new science’ of political economy, eventually known as economics, was inseparably linked to the ‘old science’ of politics: trying to separate these two components would completely distort the genuine content of the ‘political economy’ of the eighteenth century. Consequently, the growing appreciation of political economy as a key language in the international circulation of enlightened ideas, as a path of modernisation throughout the European continent, is hardly surprising.

All of these points should be taken into account when explaining why certain economic treatises became real bestsellers in Europe at the time. They moved throughout all of Europe and, in some cases, were known even in the most remote corners of the Continent. This is even more significant in the case of countries such as Spain. In spite of being a major political, imperial and economic power during the eighteenth century, it was rather an importer than an exporter of economic ideas.