How Quesnay's Tableau Économique Offered a Deeper Analysis of the Predicament of France

Walter Eltis

Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2002, vol. 24, issue 1, 39-53

Abstract: When François Quesnay began to publish on economics there were unmistakable indications that fundamental change was required in France. The finances of the State were in perpetual difficulty, and it had to borrow at higher interest rates than the private sector. Paris was the intellectual capital of Europe, and France was unquestionably one of Europe's great powers, but she had difficulty in simultaneously financing the Army and the Navy, which her international ambitions required. In the repeated wars with Great Britain in what has been described as the Second Hundred Years War (dating from 1688 until 1815) military weaknesses under the Bourbons associated with inadequacies of finance hampered France's efforts to match Britain in the colonization and exploitation of the wealth of North America and India. In the absence of representative institutions such as the British Parliament, the wealthy in France would not consent to the taxation required to establish the French State on a financial foundation commensurate with its political aspirations.

Date: 2002
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