ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by stating a conclusion that the author have come to following intensive study of Friedrich List’s life and work: France had a strong and lasting impact upon List unlike that of any other country. It examines the influences and demonstrates that List’s relationship to France, French thought and French politics was thoroughly ambivalent, filled with tension, even conflicted, such that in his final years it turned into mistrust and rejection. Chronology offers the best approach to these issues. The chapter presents his early years in Württemberg, where we can detect, in his basic thinking and its liberal political orientation, an engagement with the French model. Following this, it deals with the development of List’s system of political economy during the 1820s and 1830s, and its particular relationship to France and French thought. The chapter shows how, and for what reasons, List turned his back on France geographically and emotionally, but also politically and philosophically.
