ABSTRACT
In Year XI1 (1804) a little known author, C.-F. Bicquilley, at the age of 66, having never published any other writings on economics, published a work entitled Thebrie e'le'mentaire dzr ~ommerce ' in Toul, in the department of Meurthe. This book is not to be found in the catalogue of the Biblioth2que Nationale de France, nor is any reference made to it in studies of the 'precursors' of mathematical economics. However, the work is remarkable in more than one respect: (1) it is a mathematics book, constructed as such in terms of definitions, theorems and corollaries; (2) it is written for a wide public in a particularly clear and comprehensible style; (3) it contains a mathematical determination of prices very similar to N.-F. Canard's in his work Principes d'e'conomiepolitiqzre, although manuscript analysis proves that Bicquilley's formulation is without doubt the earlier of the two; (4) unlike the mathematical economic theories published in subsequent decades, Bicquilley's theory also uses probability theory. I will therefore be dealing with a work which has not only remained unknown until the present day, but which is also the product of a daring enterprise.
