To rise to power through emulation, one must grasp the principles at the origins of the admired power: knowledge is necessary for successful imitation. When the formidable economic success of England came to be codified in political economy, European nations yearned to acquire such powerful knowledge. Emulation thus took the form of translations, the necessary step toward the appropriation of the original. Following the path of this emulation across Europe, Translating Empire traces a novel history of the origins and institutionalization of political economy. Rejecting the “historiography of political economy invented retroactively in Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century” (3), the book takes issue with its portrait of the birth of political economy as the scholarly accomplishment of a few distinguished theorists laying out the doctrines of doux commerce and free trade. Instead, by showing the influence of a forgotten and seemingly minor book by a merchant from Bristol and its subsequent translations across Europe, Reinert argues that the new science of trade arose in England as a practical instrument of conquest codifying the way to “give laws” to other nations and that it was then disseminated through the repeated efforts of European nations to emulate England's wealth.
Reinert's book thus seeks to debunk two myths: first, the supposed role of laissez-faire economics in England's success, and, second, the idea that commerce was a peaceful activity replacing conquest. Instead, emphasizing the context of British imperialism and European rivalries, he argues that substantial government interventions in stimulating industrial activities were foundational to political economy and that the intentions of this new science of trade were clearly nationalistic, bellicose, and imperialist. Reinert also takes issue with two methodological tendencies in the scholarship: following the canon of established “classical economists” and studying national traditions independently from one another. The originality of Reinert's book lies in his alternative strategy: to focus on the comparative study of a minor yet deeply influential figure. The reader is introduced to John Cary's neglected Essay on the State of England (1695) as the central piece laying out the principles of an English science of trade. Reinert then argues that studying the multiple cumulative translations and adaptations of this book in the eighteenth century across France, Italy, and Germany would help us understand the displacements of the emerging science of political economy. Translatio studii and translatio imperii are indissociable. Following the flow of translations of the foundational books of political economy is thus tracing the displacements of power, sought by Europeans who tried to emulate the formidable economic—and therefore political—success of England by studying political economy as the art to gain such power. Through his study of the flow of economic translations, Reinert proposes an original path to understand the codification of political economy in an international context.
The first chapter lays the conceptual and methodological foundations of the book by studying “emulation” and justifying the focus on translation. Trade emerged as a powerful instrument of domination, allowing the commercially aggressive nations to “give laws” to other nations. Reinert shows how international trade thus became an aspect of statecraft: success in trade and wealth appeared as keys to domestic freedom and political hegemony. The second part of the chapter analyzes a data set of early modern economic translations between different European languages (from 1500 to 1848) in light of markers of economic development. While the author acknowledges the incompleteness of his data, he argues that the neglected study of economic texts in translation transforms our perception of the history of political economy by shedding light on forgotten books such as Cary's, which were the ones that had a lasting influence on economic strategies in Europe.
Much of the book's argument relies on the importance of the Essay on the State of England in codifying the successful commercial practices explaining the economic success of England. Taking its source in Cary's experience as a merchant, the Essay offers “the principles of all [English] trade,” an endeavor necessary for the “publick good,” which is the protection of the “Protestant interest in Europe” (79). Never leaving the practical world of merchants, the Essay nonetheless has a main theoretical point: the government should encourage domestic manufacturing, while colonies must provide raw materials necessary for such industrial development. While Reinert notes that Cary had a few notable supporters such as John Locke, he aims to show the intrinsic interest of Cary's own position independently of the support from more famous figures. Cary supported high wages as he thought technological progress rather than pressure on wages was the key to competiveness. He argued that through the use of targeted tariffs, the maintenance of a powerful navy, and encouragement to manufacture and technological inventions, the government could realize its imperialist policy and become both economically and politically powerful. Cary's book endorsed a mixture of economic and military principles illustrating Reinert's thesis that the science of commerce was a bellicose science.
Cary's insights into the relation between government intervention and the production of wealth proved influential beyond England. In the remainder of the book, we follow the history of their dissemination across Europe. Reinert shows how Cary's book kept growing in size as translators adapted and transformed the original to meet the specific features of their national circumstances, excising unwanted elements (such as anti-Catholicism in the French version and more generally Cary's interest in the Irish question) or adding concerns unknown to the English (such as the fear of decline in Italy). Reinert analyzes each of these translations in France, Italy, and Germany, showing how they shed light on the economic development of these countries as they tried to counter economic decline. Ultimately, the book shows how the instruments used by an imperialist England served an emancipatory role when Argentina and the United States came to use them in turn to encourage their own domestic industry. Knowing the sources of economic power became a tool to fight back against imperialist nations.
Reinert's book is remarkable for its density, erudition, and ambition. Following the fate of Cary's book in translations, Reinert traces the landscape of political economy as an emerging science across Europe in the long eighteenth century, revisiting the scholarship on many thinkers such as Melon, Hume, Gournay, and the Cameralists. The book combines original research and methodology with historical breadth and depth. One might object that some chapters oscillate uneasily in the tension between the analysis of these forgotten translations and a larger overview of political economy in national traditions. Moreover, some of the theses contested here (the predominance of doux commerce and free trade at the birth of political economy) have already been challenged in recent scholarship. Yet it remains true that Translating Empire is an impressive and original piece of scholarship opening new paths in the study of the history of political economy.
