ABSTRACT
Between 1740 and 1750, in a stormy climate of uncertainty, the Italian economy both one of its most critical points and, at the same time, the limit beyond which lay the inversion of tendency. The economic policy in the Kingdom of Sardinia after the promulgation of the Albertine Constitution is particularly interesting given the role that Piedmontese politicians and ideas were to have during the first phase of the unification of Italy's economy. Some economic historians hold, that an agricultural revolution of some kind is a prerequisite, though not sufficient in itself, for getting modern economic growth under way. Existing studies of Italy's economy before Unification, given the poverty of quantitative source material, do not allow even the approximate formulation of convincing estimates as to the trend of Italian agricultural and industrial production during the decade preceding Unification. Economists and reformers of European standard were present in eighteenth century Italy and at the moment of political unification.
