ABSTRACT
From 1751 to 1783, among the francophone journals seven were interested in economy in a broad sense:
Le Journal œconomique (1751-72), Paris Le Nouvelliste œconomique et littéraire (1754-61), La Haye Le Journal de commerce (1759-62), Brussels La Gazette du commerce (1763-83), Paris2
Le Journal de l’agriculture, du commerce et des finances (1765-74), Paris3
Les Ephémérides du citoyen (1767-72), Paris Les Nouvelles Ephémérides économiques (1774-76), Paris
in order to give an account of French political economy, a field whose first vigor dates from this period.5 Nevertheless, unlike some of these studies, we think that it is deceptive to arrange economic literature before 1763-5 around the fictitious center of physiocracy.6 On the contrary, we think that it is a question of understanding how the very appearance of physiocracy is possible: among the different forms of economic thought that were born in the middle of the eighteenth century, how did it succeed first in entering into existing economic thought, and then in expressing itself as a current of autonomous thought? This reversal of perspective will lead us to consider physiocracy as one component of French economic thought among others, and it incites us to underline the closeness of the links existing between physiocracy and other forms of economic thought.7 Only thus can the “new
science of political economy” (Dupont de Nemours 1768b) be understood without using the deforming practice of retrospective history.
