This workshop will address the historical relationship between theory and practice in early modern political economy, particularly with regards to the challenges of systematizing and harnessing practical knowledge.
The science of trade was professionalized as a form of expert knowledge in the early modern period. Disparate discourses were connected through processes of mutual emulation that in the 18th century shifted from continental commercial republics to England and the British Empire. Simultaneously, the group of practitioners believed to best generate economic knowledge was joined by political arithmeticians, statisticians, and, with time, “political economists” who were considered better able to systematize and render economic experience useful for states and policy-makers. The kind of knowledge generated by these new “experts” in turn influenced the practices of merchants across Europe.
