ABSTRACT
Jean Charles Leonard Simonde de Sismondi, or, as he preferred, Sismondi, entered and left this world amid revolutionary turmoil and armed conflict. His sixty-nine years (1773-1842) spanned the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars and the European social tension leading to the turmoil of 1848. Due to the stormy events in the aftermath of the French Revolution, young Sismondi was forced to break off his apprenticeship to a silk dealer in Lyons and to seek asylum in England, a circumstance that taught the French-speaking man from Geneva not only English, but also much about the British socioeconomic landscape. Upon his return to Geneva, the family assets were sequestered and the 21-year-old was to taste prison life for the first time. A close friend who was sheltered in the family estate was dragged from the home and shot nearby by revolutionary guards. Sismondi’s refuge in Tuscany blessed him with three more stints in prison, incarcerated by both parties in the ongoing revolutionary turmoil.
