ABSTRACT

The book studies the origins and evolution of economic textbooks in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, up to the turning point represented by Paul Samuelson’s Economics (1948), which became the template for all the textbooks of the postwar period. The case studies included in the book cover a large part of Europe, the British Commonwealth, the United States and Japan. Each chapter examines various types of textbooks, from those aimed at self-education to those addressed to university students, secondary school students, to the short manuals aimed at the popularisation of political economy among workers and the middle classes. An introductory chapter examines this phenomenon in a comparative and transnational perspective.

chapter 1|42 pages

The making of an economic reader

The dissemination of economics through textbooks

chapter 3|20 pages

Cours Leçons, Manuels, Précis and Traités

Teaching political economy in nineteenth-century France

chapter 5|34 pages

Educating the nation

Textbooks and manuals of political economy in Italy 1815–1922

chapter 6|31 pages

Teaching, spreading and preaching

Textbooks of political economy in Spain 1779–1936 1

chapter 8|34 pages

‘A powerful instrument of progress'

Economic textbooks in Belgium 1830–1925

chapter 9|37 pages

From ruminators to pioneers

Dutch economics textbooks and their authors in the nineteenth and early twentieth century