¹ Bloch, Marc, The Historian's Craft (New York, 1953), 46Google Scholar, translation modified.

² Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago, 2019; first published 1958), 33.

³ Hont, István, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA, 2005)Google Scholar (henceforth JT), 4–5, 155–6.

⁴ Two Festscriften give a sense of this extension: Kapossy, Bela, Nakhimovsky, Isaac, and Whatmore, Richard, eds., Commerce and Peace in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bela Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky, Sophus A. Reinert, and Richard Whatmore, eds., Markets, Morals, Politics: Jealousy of Trade and the History of Political Thought (Cambridge, MA, 2018). Hont's influence communicates into other scholarly traditions by the hegemony of anglophone scholarship, even in the relatively polyglot field of history.

⁵ Hont, JT, 6–67.

⁶ For one influential discussion, Pincus, Steve, “Neither Machiavellian Moment nor Possessive Individualism: Commercial Society and the Defenders of the English Commonwealth,” American Historical Review 103/3 (1998), 705–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Hont, István, Politics in Commercial Society: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith, ed. Kapossy, Bela and Sonenscher, Michael (Cambridge, MA, 2015), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In his major work (JT), references are confined to the twentieth century. See also Tully, James, An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge, 1993), 127CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pocock, J. G. A., Politics, Language, and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (Chicago, 1989), 37, 91, 108–11Google Scholar. For a stimulating discussion—and some of the above references—see Lucas G. Pinheiro, “Factories of Modernity: Labor, Aesthetics, and the Racial Politics of Historical Capitalism” (PhD thesis, political science, University of Chicago, 2019), 1–4.

⁸ The half title of E. J. Hundert's groundbreaking study is informative in this regard: The Enlightenment's “Fable”: Bernard Mandeville and the Discovery of Society (Cambridge, 1994). On the origin of the social sciences, hence the category of “society” in France, see Baker, Keith Michael, Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics (Chicago, 1975)Google Scholar.

⁹ For recent discussions of these various actes de naissance of the economy see Walker, Jeremy, More Heat than Life: The Tangled Roots of Ecology, Energy, and Economics (Singapore, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mitchell, Timothy, “Fixing the Economy,” Cultural Studies 12/1 (1998), 82–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ According to Werner Sombart, in his classic article on the subject, “No theory—no history!” Sombart, Werner, “Economic Theory and Economic History,” Economic History Review 2/1 (1929), 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On presentism in economic history see Cannadine, David, “The Present and the Past in the English Industrial Revolution, 1880–1980,” Past and Present 103 (1984), 131–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ See, in this genre, Jeffrey Collins's critique of Skinner, Quentin, “Quentin Skinner's Hobbes and the Neo-republican Project,” Modern Intellectual History 6/2 (2009), 362–5Google Scholar.

¹² This effect was first discussed in print in Chevreul, M. E., De la loi du contraste simultané des couleurs: Et de l'assortiment des objets colorés, considéré d'après cette loi (Paris, 1839)Google Scholar. See Rossi, Michael, The Republic of Color: Science, Perception, and the Making of Modern America (Chicago, 2019), 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For visual examples see https://tinyurl.com/vlx86n5.

¹³ Mann, Geoff, In the Long Run We Are All Dead: Keynesianism, Political Economy, and Revolution (London, 2017)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Braudel, Fernand, The Perspective of the World (Berkeley, 1992)Google Scholar. Arrighi sketches out the relationship between Wallerstein, Braudel, and himself in “Capitalism and the Modern World-System: Rethinking the Nondebates of the 1970's,” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 21/1 (1998), 113–29. Arrighi writes, “A French historian close to Braudel once told me off the record that Braudel didn't really know what he was doing until Wallerstein came along and told him.” Ibid., 123.

¹⁵ Arrighi, Giovanni, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times (London, 1994)Google Scholar; on overaccumulation see Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 3, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole (New York, 1967), 241–52.

¹⁶ Arrighi discusses his “discovery of financialization” and the influence of Braudel in Arrighi, Giovanni, “The Winding Paths of Capital (Interview with David Harvey),” New Left Review 56 (March–April 2009), 73–4Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Brenner, Robert, “The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism,” New Left Review 104 (1977), 25–92Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Fernand Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce, trans. Sian Reynolds (Capitalism and Civilization, 15th–18th Century) (London, 1985), 229–30; Braudel, The Perspective of the World, 628. Beneath these two economic layers he placed the “non-economy” of what he termed “material life,” the subject of the first volume of the Capitalism and Civilization trilogy.

¹⁹ There is a soupçon of Braudel's market/capitalism distinction in Arrighi's hope that China might become a peaceful “Smithian” hegemon. See Giovanni Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century (London, 2007).

²⁰ Arrighi, “The Winding Paths of Capital,” 64–5. Giovanni Arrighi, Sviluppo economico e sovrastrutture in Africa (Turin, 1969). For a contemporary account of the role of African universities in general in the politics of development see Yesufu, T. M., Creating the African University: Emerging Issues in the 1970's (Ibadan, 1973)Google Scholar.

²¹ Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vol. 1, Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the World Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1974), 4–6, quotation at 5.

²² Frank, André Gunder, Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution. Essays on the Development of Underdevelopment and the Immediate Enemy (New York, 1970), 3–16Google Scholar.

²³ For a couple of examples see Wallerstein, Immanuel, “Africa in a Capitalist World,” Issue: A Journal of Opinion 3/3 (1973), 1–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wallerstein, “Dependence in an Interdependent World: The Limited Possibilities of Transformation within the Capitalist World Economy,” African Studies Review 17/1 (1974), 1–26.

²⁴ Baran, Paul A., The Political Economy of Growth (New York, 1957), 138, 161–8Google Scholar. See also Rodney, Walter, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington, DC, 1981), 147–64Google Scholar.

²⁵ Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vol. 2, Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World Economy, 1600–1750 (New York, 1980), 131–45.

²⁶ Baran, The Political Economy of Growth, 158.

²⁷ See Amin, Samir, L'accumulation à l’échelle mondiale, vol. 1 (Paris, 1970), 51–2Google Scholar.

²⁸ For different variations on this theme see Cheney, Paul, Revolutionary Commerce: Globalization and the French Monarchy (Cambridge, MA, 2010)Google Scholar; Catherine Larrère, “Montesquieu économiste? Une lecture paradoxale,” in C. Volpilhac-Auger, ed., Montesquieu en 2005 (Oxford, 2005), 243–66; Claude Morilhat, Montesquieu: Politique et richesses (Paris, 1996); Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton, 2007), Ch. 2; and Céline Spector, Montesquieu: Pouvoirs, richesses et sociétés (Paris, 2004).

²⁹ Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle en Europe [1734], in Montesquieu, Oeuvres complètes, ed. R. Caillois, 2 vols. (Paris, 1949–51), 2: 18, paragraph XVIII. See also Montesquieu, Lettres Persanes [1721], in Montesquieu, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Caillois, 1: 164 (letter 23): “Paris, qui est le siège de l'empire d'Europe.”

³⁰ Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (Cambridge, 1989; first published 1748), Bk 21, Ch. 21. All translations below from this edition, with some modifications. Henceforth cited as EL, with citations by book and chapter (EL, 21.21).

³¹ Montesquieu, EL, 21.5.

³² Ibid., 20.5.

³³ Ibid., 21.20.

³⁴ Ibid., 22.13.

³⁵ For the classic treatment see Hirschman, Albert O., The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph, 2nd edn (Princeton, 1996), 60, 70–80Google Scholar.

³⁶ Montesquieu, EL, 22.15.

³⁷ Ibid., 21.14,

³⁸ Montesquieu, “Mes Pensées,” no. 808, in Montesquieu, Oeuvres complètes, ed. A. Masson, 5 vols. (Paris, 1950–55), 1: 1290.

³⁹ Montesquieu, EL, 22.14.

⁴⁰ See Smith's famous discussion in Bk 3, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations [1776] (Chicago, 1976). See also John Millar, The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks (Basil, 1793).

⁴¹ Montesquieu, EL, 20.23.

⁴² Fernand Braudel saw high prices in the metropole as an arsenal that countries in the core used against the periphery. See Braudel, Wheels of Commerce, 171–6.

⁴³ Montesquieu, EL, 20.5. Presumably by “Danzig” Montesquieu means the city's corps de marchands. Montesquieu seems to have gleaned this information from Jacques Savary des Brulons, Dictionnaire universel de commerce. An interesting comparison can be made with the analysis of Amin, L'accumulation à l’échelle mondiale, 214–23.

⁴⁴ Montesquieu, EL, 2.3.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 20.23. Richard Cantillon, Essai sur la nature du commerce en général traduit de l'anglois (London, 1755), Part 1, Ch. 15, 99–101, describes how demand for foreign luxuries on the part of noble landowners in Poland deprives peasants of subsistence goods, depressing demographic growth.

⁴⁶ See most notably Robert Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-industrial Europe,” Past and Present 70 (1976), 51–60; Braudel, The Perspective of the World, 254–56. Paul Baran and André Gunder Frank also emphasize how the siphoning off by elites of agricultural surplus into luxury consumption, rather than productive investment, helps to reinforce backward agricultural systems. Ray Kiely, “Dependency and World-Systems Perspectives on Development,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies, 1 March 2010, 4.

⁴⁷ Montesquieu, EL, 21.1.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 21.3.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 21.2.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 18.11–16 18.22–6. See also ibid., 17.9. This more technical distinction does not entirely preclude normative judgements: Montesquieu observes that Africa—apparently the entire continent!—has a climate similar to South Asia and therefore experienced the same sort of servitude (ibid., 17.2). Elsewhere Montesquieu concludes that African pastoralism and hunter-gatherer ways of life are conducive to liberty (ibid., 18.14).

⁵¹ Jacques Savary des Brulons, “Commerce de l'Afrique,” in Dictionnaire universel de commerce, vol. 1 (Paris, 1741), 369–401.

⁵² On commerce and industry in West African societies see John K. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1998), 44–53; Joseph Inikori, “Reversal of Fortune and Socioeconomic Development in the Atlantic World: A Comparative Examination of West Africa and the Americas, 1400–1850,” in Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong, Robert H. Bates, Nathan Nunn, and James A. Robinson, eds., Africa's Development in Historical Perspective (New York, 2014), 59–88; and, less optimistically about commercialization, Ralph A. Austen, African Economic History: Internal Development and External Dependency (London, 1987), 44.

⁵³ On these techniques in comparison with industrial methods see Ralph A. Austen, “The Sources of Gold: Narratives, Technology, and Visual Culture from the Mande and Akan Worlds,” in Kathleen Bickford Berzock, ed., Caravans of Gold (New Haven, 2019), 63–73; and Emmanuel Ofosu-Mensah Ababio, “Historical Overview of Traditional and Modern Gold Mining in Ghana,” International Research Journal of Library, Information and Archival Studies 1/1 (2011), 6–22. For Montesquieu's awareness of the technical aspects of Spanish mining operations in the Americas see Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Considérations sur les richesses de l'Espagne [1728], in Montesquieu, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Caillois, 2: 12 (article 2).

⁵⁴ Montesquieu, EL, 22.1. On both lack of monetization and the salt trade see Austen, “The Sources of Gold,” 67–8.

⁵⁵ Montesquieu, EL, 22.8

⁵⁶ Ibid., 2.2.

⁵⁷ Summarized in Wallerstein, “Africa in a Capitalist World,” 7–10.

⁵⁸ Walter Rodney, “Gold and Slaves on the Gold Coast,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 10 (1969), 15–17.

⁵⁹ David Richardson, “Prices of Slaves in West and West-Central Africa: Toward an Annual Series, 1698–1807,” Bulletin of Economic Research 43/1 (1991), 21–56, at 34, Figure 1. A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London and New York, 1973), 104–5, argues that the exportation of slaves from West Africa can be explained by lower productivity of this labor in Africa than for alternative uses in the Americas.

⁶⁰ Wallerstein, “Africa in a Capitalist World.”

⁶¹ For one such analysis see Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, 103–13.

⁶² Montesquieu, EL, 15.5, 21.21.

⁶³ Céline Spector puts paid to the notion that Montesquieu supported slavery in “‘Il est impossible que nous supposions que ces gens-là soient des hommes’: La théorie de l'esclavage au livre XV de L'Esprit des lois,” Lumières 3 (2004), 15–51.

⁶⁴ Principally under discussion here are Hont, JT, Introduction; Ch. 2, “Free Trade and the Economic Limits to National Politics” (henceforth ELNP), and Ch. 3, “The ‘Rich Country–Poor Country’ Debate in the Scottish Enlightenment” (henceforth RCPC); István Hont, “The ‘Rich Country–Poor Country’ Debate Revisited: The Irish Origins and French Reception of Hume” (henceforth RCPC-Revisited), in M. Schabas and C. Wennerlind, eds., David Hume's Political Economy (London, 2008), 243–323; and “The Early Enlightenment Debate on Commerce and Luxury,” in M. Goldie and R. Wokler, eds., The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge, 2006), 379–418.

⁶⁵ Hont, JT, Introduction, 155.

⁶⁶ This is neatly summarized in Hont, JT, 271–2. Hont drew his understanding of comparative-advantage theory from David Ricardo, but well beyond that to highly standard rational-reconstructionist accounts of David Hume's monetary theory. J. F. Berdell, “The Present Relevance of Hume's Open-Economy Monetary Dynamics,” Economic Journal 105/432 (1995), 1205–17. He also drew on mid-twentieth-century neoclassical international-trade theorist Paul Samuelson, and supplemented this with Raymond Vernon's foundational article on product cycle theory, “International Investment and International Trade in the Product Cycle,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 80/2 (1966), 190–207. These articles and other material are found in Hont's papers in a dossier market “Comparative Advantage.” Saint Andrews Intellectual History Archive, uncatalogued and (partly) undated material. Thanks to Richard Whatmore for providing me with these items.

⁶⁷ Hont, JT, Introduction, 21, 41, 129; all in the course of discussions on Hobbes.

⁶⁸ Immanuel Kant, “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose” [1784], in Kant, Political Writings (Cambridge, 1970), 44–5, fourth proposition, original emphasis.

⁶⁹ On commercial society see Hont, Politics in Commercial Society, 1–13. Marx criticized the inefficiency of the private handicrafts that characterized precapitalist modes of production. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (New York, 1977), 479–80, and more generally Ch. 14.

⁷⁰ Hont, JT, Introduction, 2 (retreat from Marx), 66–67 (globalization); and Murray Milgate and Shannon C. Stimson, review of Review of Ricardian Politics, Political Theory 22/2 (1994), 343; the full quotation reads: “Marx will not be truly buried until we understand the politics of ‘classical’ political economy.” “With hindsight we know that the policy [of private property] did work … Even so, even today its implementation causes social upheaval and ‘moral’ opposition.” Hont, JT, Introduction, 97.

⁷¹ David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation [1817], ed. Pierro Straffa and Maurice Dobb (Cambridge, 1951), Ch. 8, “Of Foreign Trade,” 134; cited in Hont, ELNP, 265.

⁷² Here he quotes at length from Ch. 7 of Ricardo's Principles. The specific wording is “classically formulated,” and later “evocative and drastic.” Hont, ELNP, 264–5. “The Economic Limits to National Politics” was originally published after what is now Ch. 3 of JT, “The Rich Country–Poor Country Debate,” so it represents both a refinement of Hont's thoughts on the subject and a grounding in earlier debates.

⁷³ Hume speaks in a much more general way about an undifferentiated mass of “commodities, labour, industry, and skill.” See e.g. David Hume, “On the Balance of Trade,” in Hume, Essays Moral, Political and Literary, ed. E. F. Miller (Indianapolis, 1985), 308–26, at 312, 313, 315 n. 11.

⁷⁴ For these criticisms and rectifications see Hont, RCPC, 273 (“weakness”), 281, 298, 319–20.

⁷⁵ Hont, RCPC, 281.

⁷⁶ One obvious connection is Hume's analysis of the opportunity costs of French wine versus English cereal production. Hume, “On the Balance of Trade,” 315. But this brief allusion is sandwiched in a larger discussion of exchange-rate dynamics.

⁷⁷ For his analysis, Hont draws principally upon Charles Davenant, The Political and Commercial Works of … Charles D'Avenant, vol. 1, Essay on the East-India Trade (London, 1771); and secondarily ibid., vol. 2, The Balance of Trade (London, 1771). Quote in Hont, ELNP, 216.

⁷⁸ Davenant, The East India Trade, 89–91 (reexport), 107–10 (luxury goods). Hont, ELNP, 216–17.

⁷⁹ For Hont's references to skills in the context of Davenant's polemic see Hont, ELNP, 216, 219, 220, 222; and Hont, “RCPC-Revisited,” 258. Notably, Davenant is never directly quoted when concerns over skill are attributed to him; the word creeps in over the course of Hont's summaries.

⁸⁰ Davenant, The Balance of Trade, 107.

⁸¹ The single exception, out of ninety-seven occurrences over five volumes of Davenant's work, comes in The Balance of Trade, 276, on locksmiths.

⁸² Davenant, The East India Trade, 100. Hont, JT, Introduction, 60, observes incorrectly that Davenant eschewed “administrative” (as opposed to market) measures in order to cut wages. The inventory Davenant made of the considerations that go into the “general view” of the economy does not include labor productivity or skill, rather the “number of people” and “hands employed.” Davenant, The Balance of Trade, 120. Not discussed here is Davenant's constant harping on import duties as a cause of wage inflation, a fact he blamed on misguided politicians.

⁸³ Davenant, The East India Trade, 105–6 (quotations); Davenant, The Balance of Trade, 207–13 (private scheme).

⁸⁴ Davenant, The Balance of Trade, 210–21, 251.

⁸⁵ “Reformatted” and “formatted” are pet expressions that Hont uses when he is making one thinker directly comparable with another. See Hont, JT, Introduction, 15, 47; Hont, “RCPC-Revisited,” 291; and Hont, Politics in Commercial Society, 26, 28.

⁸⁶ For these arguments see Jan de Vries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present (Cambridge, 2008), Chs. 1–4.

⁸⁷ This is what is often referred to as “the backward-bending supply of labor”; rather than continuing to trade work for leisure as wages rise, traditional workers work up to the point of satiation with a limited repertoire of goods, and may even work less as wages rise.

⁸⁸ Lucas G. Pinheiro, “A Factory Afield: Capitalism and Empire in John Locke's Political Economy,” Modern Intellectual History (2020), http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1479244320000347, 5–7, on John Locke and for general considerations see Ben Dew, “Spurs to Industry in Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees,” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 28/2 (2005), 158–62; and, classically, Edgar S. Furniss, The Position of the Laborer in a System of Nationalism: A Study in the Labor Theories of the Later English Mercantilists (Boston, 1920).

⁸⁹ For this geographical emphasis see Hont, JT, Introduction, 38, 52 (factor endowments).

⁹⁰ For a recent treatment see Pim de Zwart and J. L. van Zanden, The Origins of Globalization: World Trade in the Making of the Global Economy, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 2018), 40–77 and more generally Chs. 2–3.

⁹¹ István Hont, “David Hume and Adam Smith on China: Past Futures and Long Prospects,” John Dunn 教授榮退國際學術研討會 International Conference in Honor of Professor John Dunn 衡量非理性：面對全球政治的挑戰 Taking Unreason's Measure: Facing the Global Challenge of Politics, Academica Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, 2007, unpublished paper, 14. See also Hont, JT, Introduction, 4–5.

⁹² Quotations: Hont, “RCPC-Revisited,” 314–15. For “globalization” see Hont, JT, Introduction, 46, 59, 66.

⁹³ Pieter Emmer, “The Myth of Early Globalization: The Atlantic Economy, 1500–1800,” European Review 11/1 (2003), 37–47; Patrick O'Brien, “European Economic Development: The Contribution of the Periphery,” Economic History Review 35/1 (1982), 1–18.

⁹⁴ Hont, “RCPC-Revisited,” 248.

⁹⁵ Jean-Yves Grenier, L’économie d'ancien régime: Un monde de l’échange et de l'incertitude (Paris, 1996), 82, 420. Silvia Marzagalli, “The French Atlantic World in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Nicholas Canny and Phillip Morgan, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic World: 1450–1850 (Oxford and New York, 2010), 235–51; her interpretation is based upon the classic Louis Meignen, “Le commerce extérieur de la France à la fin de l'ancien régime: Déficit apparent, prospérité réelle mais fragile,” Revue historique du droit français et étranger 56/4 (1978), 583–614.

⁹⁶ “In FRANCE, ENGLAND and indeed most parts of EUROPE, half of the inhabitants live in cities.” David Hume, “Of Commerce,” in Hume, Essays Moral, Political and Literary, 253–67, at 256 n. 2. In 1750, 23 percent of the English population was urban, rising to 29 percent in 1800; France remained at 13 percent over the same period. Melon overestimated France's urban population at 20 percent but was far closer than Hume to the truth as we understand it. For urbanization figures, which can vary according to the threshold of what counts as an urban agglomeration, see Robert C. Allen, “Economic Structure and Agricultural Productivity in Europe, 1300–1800,” European Review of Economic History 4/1 (2000), 1–26, at 8–9, Table 2.

⁹⁷ Hont, “RCPC-Revisited,” 261–7; see also Hont, “The Early Enlightenment Debate on Commerce and Luxury,” 408–12.

⁹⁸ See also Sonenscher, Michael, Sans-Culottes: An Eighteenth-Century Emblem in the French Revolution (Princeton, 2008), 92–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹⁹ O'Rourke, Kevin H. and Williamson, Jeffrey G., “When Did Globalization Begin?”, European Review of Economic History 6 (2002), 28–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar (for the North Atlantic). Freight charges, another measure, do not diminish between Bordeaux and London during the eighteenth century. See also Zwart, Pim de, “Globalization in the Early Modern Era: New Evidence from the Dutch–Asiatic Trade, c.1600–1800,” Journal of Economic History 76/2 (2016), 520–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ingham, Geoffrey K., Capitalism Divided? The City and Industry in British Social Development (New York, 1984), 102–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁰ Victoria Bateman observes that both France and England's internal markets were integrating over the early modern period, but that England began from a much higher base in the late medieval period. Bateman, Victoria, “The Evolution of Markets in Early Modern Europe, 1350–1800: A Study of Wheat Prices,” Economic History Review 64/2 (2011), 447–71, Table 5, at 464CrossRefGoogle Scholar (for English superiority). Daudin, Guillaume, “Domestic Trade and Market Size in Late-Eighteenth-Century France,” Journal of Economic History 70/3 (2010), 716–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰¹ See Charles Tilly's critique of modernization theory in the context of French rural economies in “Did the Cake of Custom Break?”, in John M. Merriman, ed., Consciousness and Class Experience in 19th and 20th Century Europe (New York, 1980), 17–41.

¹⁰² See note 70 above on the vindication of private property.

¹⁰³ For a brief but comprehensive survey of similar conditions all over Europe—including discussion of Germany, where analogies to the French case abound—see Ogilvie, Sheilagh, “The European Economy in the Eighteenth Century,” in Blanning, T. C. W., ed., The Short Oxford History of Europe: Europe, 1688–1815 (Oxford, 2000), 91–130Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁴ For these pairings see Hont, JT, 68–9; Hont, “RCPC-Revisited,” 312–13. Hont, JT, Introduction, 70 n. 146, cites Sabel, Charles and Zeitlin, Jonathan, “Historical Alternatives to Mass Production: Politics, Markets and Technology in Nineteenth-Century Industrialization,” Past and Present 108/1 (1985), 133–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ Piore, Michael J. and Sabel, Charles F., The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity (New York, 1984), 108, 170, 184–6Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁶ The term first appears in ibid. Michael Sonencher, a close colleague and interlocutor of Hont's, also cites Sabel and Zeitlin and Sabel and Piore in his groundbreaking analysis of eighteenth-century French labor markets. See Sonencher, Michael, Work and Wages: Natural Law, Politics and the Eighteenth-Century French Trades (Cambridge, 1989), 130 n. 5Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁷ Hont, JT, Introduction, 26, 104.

¹⁰⁸ Skidelsky, Robert, The World after Communism: A Polemic for Our Times (London, 1995), 142Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁹ Hont, JT, 33, 62, 104, 242, 251, also 73 (reconstructing); Hont, “RCPC-Revisited,” 247. On 1970s deindustrialization and the writing of cultural history see Paul Cheney, preface to the second edition of Wiener, Martin J., English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850–1980, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2004), xiii–xviiiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹⁰ Hont, JT, 33. The full passage refers to legislation to prevent the use of machinery. The argument is restated in Hont, “RCPC-Revisited,” 263.

¹¹¹ Hont, JT, Introduction, 62. These are attitudes attributed to Henry Martyn, one of those early modern theorists, like Hume, whom Hont believed had properly understood the workings of global trade.

¹¹² There is no space to develop the point here, but references to “flexible specialization” moved to the center of Hont's account in later writings—i.e. in the Introduction to the Jealousy of Trade and in later essays published after 2007. This is why it seems fairer to characterize Hont's project as “Third Way” rather than Thatcherite.

¹¹³ United Kingdom: Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, The 1998 Competitiveness White Paper: Our Competitive Future: Building the Knowledge-Driven Economy, British National Archives, sec. Executive Summary, point 1.5 (on capital goods versus skill), at https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20040722204152/http://www.lowpay.gov.uk/comp/competitive/summary.htm, accessed 1 Jan. 2021; Anthony Giddens, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Malden, MA, 1998), 108–10; and, on the American side, with a particular emphasis on flexible producer networks and the need for education, see Clinton Secretary of Reich, Labor Robert B., The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st-Century Capitalism (New York, 1991), Ch. 18Google Scholar, “The Education of a Symbolic Analyst.”

¹¹⁴ Hont, JT, 69–70. See also “Product cycle theory suggests that rich countries, and eventually all countries, live in constant economic flux. They have to both acquire and retain a genuine capacity for flexible specialization and technological innovation, or they face decline.” Hont, “RCPC-Revisited,” 313.

¹¹⁵ Hont, JT, Introduction, 33; and Hont, “The Early Enlightenment Debate on Commerce and Luxury,” 411. Hont cites Raymond Vernon's seminal article in connection with this discussion: Vernon, “International Investment and International Trade.” JT, Introduction, 69.

¹¹⁶ The phrase is repeated (!) in Hont, JT, 5, 156. For more on twenty-first-century relevance see Hont, “RCPC-Revisited,” 316–17.

¹¹⁷ See the epigraph to this essay.

¹¹⁸ Hont, “RCPC-Revisited,” 316–17.

¹¹⁹ Thomas Piketty, Capital and Ideology, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA, 2020), 534–37.

¹²⁰ BRIC denotes the emerging (or now fully emerged) industrial powerhouses of Brazil, Russia, India and China. The Asian tiger economies include South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and, by some accounts, Vietnam and Thailand.

¹²¹ Benanav, Aaron, “The Origins of Informality: The ILO at the Limit of the Concept of Unemployment,” Journal of Global History 14/1 (2019), 107–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹²² Davis, Mike, Planet of Slums (London, 2007), 179–83Google Scholar.

¹²³ Citigroup Research, “Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances,” 16 Oct. 2005; “Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer,” 5 March 2006.

¹²⁴ Philippon, Thomas, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets (Cambridge, MA, 2019), Chs. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar (on concentration), 4 (on decline in productivity and investment opportunities). On modern enclave capitalism see Ogle, Vanessa, “Archipelago Capitalism: Tax Havens, Offshore Money, and the State, 1950s–1970s,” American Historical Review 122/5 (2017), 1431–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹²⁵ Clegg, John J., “Capitalism and Slavery,” Critical Historical Studies 2/2 (2015), 281–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On politicized accumulation most recently see Dylan Riley, “Faultlines: Political Logics of the US Party System,” New Left Review 126 (2020), 35–50.

¹²⁶ Sagar, Paul, “István Hont and Political Theory,” European Journal of Political Theory 17/4 (2018), 488–90Google Scholar.

¹²⁷ Hont, ELNP, 264–5, incl. n. 187.

¹²⁸ Hont, JT, Introduction, 111 (“dreary”); and Sagar, “István Hont and Political Theory,” 478, on Hont and Smith's ordo-liberal solution.

¹²⁹ On fixed versus circulating capital in the early modern period see Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce, 310–25, 372–85, and passim. For Braudel early modern characteristics were “insidiously suggested by the present-day world.” Ibid., 311.

¹³⁰ I am not the first to suggest a link between certain strands of early modern political economy and development economics. See, for instance, Reinert, Jomo K. S. and Reinert, Erik S., The Origins of Development Economics: How Schools of Economic Thought Have Addressed Development (New Delhi, 2005), esp. Chs. 1–4Google Scholar. John Robertson does not phrase it in terms of developmental economics, but his understanding of political economy as science of material betterment, and of economic catch-up, pioneered in peripheral imperial zones is an influential a variation of this view. Robertson, John, The Case for the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples, 1680–1760 (Cambridge, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Reinert, Sophus A., Translating Empire: Emulation and the Origins of Political Economy (Cambridge, MA, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³¹ But simply evoking the word “capitalism” or “capital” is not the equivalent of a theory of productive capital or of capitalist social relations, as some recent criticisms of Thomas Piketty attest. Bihr, Alain and Husson, Michel, Thomas Piketty: Une critique illusoire du capital (Paris, 2020)Google Scholar; O'Sullivan, Mary, “Thomas Piketty: Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” American Historical Review 120/2 (2015), 564–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.