Review essay

Historical reections upon commerce, poeighteenth-century Atlantic World

Manuela Albertone

University of Turin, Italy

History of European Ideas 37 (2011) 506510

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

History of European Ideas

jou r nal h o mep age: w ww.els evier . co m/lo c ate /h i s t eur o ideaswere discussed by philosophes, statesmen and merchants. The conclusions is that at the end of the eighteenth-century science ofcommerce and political economy presented rival conceptions ofthe future of France.8

Eighteenth-century understanding of the terms commerceand science of commerce is still in need of a thoroughinvestigation. It is worth emphasising the point that Du Pont deNemours denition of political economy is still valuable: Elle estla science du droit naturel applique, comme il doit letre, auxsocietes civilisees. Elle est la sciences des constitutions.9 Cheney

E-mail address: manuela.albertone@unito.it.1 Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce. Globalization and the French Monarchy

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).2 David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2000); The British Atlantic World, 15001800, ed. David

Armitage, M. G. Braddick (London: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2002).3 Anthony Pagden, Lords of the World. Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and

France c. 1500c. 1800 (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1995); J. H.

Elliott, Empires of Atlantic World. Britain and Spain in America 14921830 (New

Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2006).4 John G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the

Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975).5 See Alan Potofsky, The One and the Many: the Two revolution Question and the

Consumer-Commercial Atlantic, 1789, in: Rethinking the Atlantic World. Europe

and America in the Age of Democratic Revolutions, ed. Manuela Albertone, Antonio De

Francesco (London: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2009) 1745.

6 Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce, 11.7 Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce, 7.8 Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce, 8.9 Pierre-Samuel Du Pont de Nemours to Jean-Baptiste Say, 22 April 1814, in:

Collection des principaux economistes, Physiocrates, ed. E. Daire, t. II, Paris

(Guillaumin, 1846), 397.

0191-6599/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2011.07.011The reduction of interest in the French Revolution in recentyears is at one with the crisis of political history and more generallyof political inquiry. In such circumstances, the recovery of thecentrality of French perspectives on eighteenth-century Atlantichistory and its consequences for the French Revolution is the rstgreat strength of Paul Cheneys Revolutionary Commerce. Globali-zation and the French Monarchy.1

In the last few decades the most important contributions to theNew Atlantic History have centred on the history of the BritishAtlantic Empire.2 Even taking into account histories of the Atlantic-based empires of Spain, Portugal and France, continental Europehas remained very much on the sidelines.3 From the point of viewof intellectual history, historical studies of the Atlantic world of theeighteenth century have been rather anglocentric. This is becausethe success of the Atlantic Republican tradition has led to the ideaof the unity of Anglo-American political thought in the modernage4; consequently scant regard has been paid to the contributionsmade in this eld by other European countries.

Cheneys approach is innovative as his outlook on the Atlanticworld is set in France. At the same time his attention to the linkbetween commerce and the French Revolution owes much to theAtlantic history perspective and its attention to economicelements. This has led him to a new reading of the FrenchRevolution, and one which overcomes the opposition betweenMarxist and non-Marxist interpretations.5

The process of globalization in the eighteenth-century and itsrevolutionary effects are the core of the volume. Contemporaryobservers called it progre`s du commerce and its outcomeslitical economy and revolution in the

book tackles the interplay between political, institutional andeconomical factors, all of which were highly important for theeighteenth-century democratic revolutions. By the variety of hissources Cheney aims to go beyond traditional intellectualhistory. He is particularly concerned to distance himself fromthe so-called Cambridge school contextualism and its philologi-cal investigation, which he holds responsible for criticising thematerialist approach to history as reductive.6 The purpose ofthe book is to describe economic ideas about globalization in theeighteenth-century France, a period when transnational eco-nomic forces eluded the control of individual states. Hisinterpretation focuses on two main points: rstly, that thepremises of the science of commerce, namely how to create acommercial monarchy, were false, since moderate reforms wereimpossible; secondly, that there is a strong link between thecommercial revolution and the French Revolution.

Revolutionary Commerce emphasises the emergence of thescience of commerce in the eighteenth-century. This raisesimmediately an important question: what does the author meanby science of commerce? Cheney maintains that political economyand science of commerce were pervasive though not preciselysynonymous terms.7 Nevertheless, he does not specify thedifferences between them and the reader is left with a sense ofambiguity. We can sometimes assume that the science ofcommerce corresponds to the expression of mercantile interests,as Cheney claims that commerce deserves more attention thanpolitical economy, being more related to the reality established byintellectual, political and economic forces. One of his interesting

prefers the less determined term science of commerce. This ismore devoted to practice, and his analysis aims at using differentconcepts to which, in his view, intellectual history does not paysufcient attention: competitive pressures, imperial politics,models of governance. He deals with administrators, diplomats

constitution and agreed with the idea that in France governmentand social structure ought to be considered from an internationaleconomic perspective, in which states oriented toward territorialconquest were loosing ground to commercial states. The idea thatmoeurs more than natural resources inuenced French economiclife was a well received opinion in 1748, when the Esprit des loiswas published.

M. Albertone / History of European Ideas 37 (2011) 506510 507and merchants. He aims at treating commerce not as a concept, butas a series of practices and institutions. Through his pages we ndeighteenth-century economical culture displayed in its entirely;one of the valuable aspects of his book is to place the relationshipbetween economics and politics at the heart of the Atlantic history,a perspective hitherto poorly investigated.

Despite his criticisms, the author draws from the Cambridgeschool a stress on context, as he highlights the inuence of theinternational context on economic thought, namely the problem ofthe governance of the Atlantic world, and seeks to portray thepolitical economy of French imperial space. From a methodologicalperspective Cheney intends to provide an innovative and richerintellectual history, by considering the study of economic thoughtas a synthesis of social phenomena and a valuable approach to thestudy of the French eighteenth-century. The resulting intellectualhistory is rightly intrinsically interdisciplinary.

The investigation of the relationship between early modernstate formation and commercial capitalism, ideas and socialchange is held here as the way to overcome the dichotomybetween social and political interpretations of the FrenchRevolution. Nevertheless, we cannot help failing to mention thatone of the best historians of the French revolution, GeorgesLefebvre, could combine social and political history. By hisapproach Cheney aligns himself with the new economic readingof the French Revolution. In this respect he openly rejects therevisionist interpretations envisaging the Revolution as a purepolitical affair without material origin.

Among the recent studies on the link between economics andpolitics and the emergence in the eighteenth-century of politicaleconomy, as the modern political language,10 this volume amountsto a stimulating contribution, by considering that the question ofsovereignty was not a fact of the Old Regime politics, but an issue ofpolitical economy, posed by the primitive fact of globalization.Cheney gives consideration to Istvan Honts perspective inconceiving the economy in political terms. He aims to answerJealousy of trades strong question: can we assume a plurality ofpolitical visions suitable to the integration of politics and marketsociety, or just that the modern representative republic has afnitywith markets?11 Nevertheless, Cheneys approach is far fromHonts repudiation of the economic determination of politics, evenif he takes account of Honts important lesson to highlight thepolitical insights in the eighteenth-century theories of interna-tional economic rivalry.

The rst three chapters of Revolutionary commerce illustrate theprogressive emergence in the French economic writers of theawareness of the link between economics and geopolitics,constitution and commercial prosperity and of the importanceof overseas trade as the central context for the consideration ofeconomic thought. Discussions of Great Britain and the UnitedProvinces provided case studies for French writers, who wereeconomic reformers and not revolutionaries as Cheney outlines attentive to the links between the English constitution and itscommercial prosperity, and keen to point out how nances wererepresentative of the defects of the state. The Abbe de Saint Pierre,Melon, Silhouette: all concentrated on the nature of the French

10 Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International competition and the Nation-state in

Historical Perspective (Cambridge, London: Belknap Press of Harvard University

Press, 2005); John Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment: Scotland, Naples, 1680

1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).11 Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 4.A new and rich reading of Montesquieu is a key element ofCheneys interpretation. Montesquieu is considered aside from thedichotomy of laissez-faire/mercantilism. He was considered acentral gure of the Old Regime illusion concerning the possibilityof transforming France into a commercial monarchy. He sought toaccommodate new classes to old political forms and encouragedcommerce in a modernized absolute monarchy, by reaching acompromise between the traditional order and the new geopoliti-cal context. Cheney employs the term feudal to refer to eighteenth-century France. This is in fact not suitable to the French socialstructure of the last part of the Old regime.12 Montesquieu showedthat the rise of commerce set limits to despotism and to the size ofempires and that commercial expansion helps liberty to emerge,because markets implied a different distribution of power. The wayin which Montesquieu represents a synthesis between old and newis testied by the histories of commerce here analyzed, far fromRaynals philosophical approach. Two signicant examples arechosen, the Chevalier dArcq and Butel Dumont. Both weremethodologically inuenced by Montesquieu as both paid atten-tion to commerce in European polities and the central role offoreign commerce, but their analyses diverged. Chevalier dArcqrejected manufacture and trade and singled out agriculture as theprimary economic activity; on the opposite side, Butel Dumontshared the opinion that freedom from arbitrary government wasthe cause of the prosperity of Britains colonies.

Cheney very correctly highlights the distinction betweennatural and articial wealth as a characteristic of the Frencheconomic writers; chapters 4 and 5 are accordingly devoted tophysiocracy, the economic theory based on the natural order,which was at odds with Montesquieus empire of climate, andexpressed by the idea of a pre-existing constitution.

In the last decades important new readings of physiocracy havebeen jointly offered by historians and economists. These readingshave changed the interpretation of the rst scientic economictheory.13 They put new stress on the political meaning ofphysiocratic discourse and have emphasised the progressiveimplications of the physiocratic economic approach. Cheneysingles out the key role played by the physiocratic writers: theyattacked the European colonial-mercantile system and the practiceof slavery and advocated free trade and free markets, economicliberalism and the abolition of the society of orders that was atodds with the natural economic order as they saw it. Nevertheless,Cheney underestimates the innovative political implications ofphysiocracy. On the issue of sovereignty he is not persuasive inclaiming that the Physiocrats drew upon the theories of Jean Bodin,on the grounds that each advocated the unity of legislative andexecutive powers.14

The theorists of the ordre naturel et essentiel des societespolitiques were actually far removed from the theorist of Frenchabsolutism. It is true that they rejected the separation of legislativeand executive powers. Indeed, according to them, law was not

12 Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce, 54.13 Catherine Larre`re, Linvention de leconomie au XVIIIe sie`cle. Du droit naturel a` la

physiocratie (Paris: PUF, 1992); Philippe Steiner, La science nouvelle de leconomie

politique (Paris: PUF, 1998); Victor Riquetti de Mirabeau, Francois Quesnay, Traite de

la monarchie, edite et presente par Gino Longhitano (Paris, LHarmattan, 1999);

Fisiocrazia e proprieta` terriera, introduzione e cura di Manuela Albertone, Studi

Settecenteschi, numero monograco, 24 (2004).14 Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce, 14849.

made by men, as it already existed in the natural order and couldbe revealed by the principle of evidence. This rationalist approachimplied that the sovereign does not act as a legislator, but onlymakes law understandable. For this reason the sovereign needs themeans to implement law made by nature: Ils nont point ditLEGISFAITEUR - Du Pont de Nemours wrote - ce qui auroit indiquele pouvoir de faire arbitrairement des loix; ils ont dit LEGISLATEUR,porteur de loi, ce qui determine que celui qui est charge de cettefonction respectable, na dautre droit que de prendre la loi dans ledepot immense de la nature.15 This entailed strong limits toabsolutism and had liberal implications, as is testied by theindependence and political key role the physiocrats assigned to thejudiciary.16 From this perspective physiocratic political rational-ism cannot be assimilated to enlightened despotism, as Cheneysuggests. The real meaning of despotisme legal, namely politicalpower submitted to the natural order, undermines absolutism andrenders groundless the existence of an opposition between politicsand nature in physiocratic theory.17

Cheneys reading of physiocracy is intended to reinforce hiswhole interpretation, and he sees physiocracy as an attack on the

distinguish between republican government and republicandiscourse. The latter entailed reection on the public good,political representation, and the foundations of sovereignty,without reference to any particular form of government. Besides,to investigate eighteenth-century republican ideas, we can thenenlarge our historical analysis and go beyond commercialcountries, such as the United Provinces, a republic, or GreatBritain, a commercial monarchy, and also appreciate republicanimplications according to the eighteenth-century meaning ofthe economic approach developed in the context of Frenchagricultural reality, represented by the physiocratic tradition:M. Turgot disait souvent: Je nai jamais connu de constitutionvraiment republicaine, cest-a`-dire, de pays ou` tous les proprietaireseussent un droit egal de concourir a` la formation des lois, de reglerla constitution des assemblees qui redigent et promulguent ces

M. Albertone / History of European Ideas 37 (2011) 506510508traditional order. In fact, he has relied too much on recent Britishinterpretations of physiocracy as far from modernity,18 and heassumes that the Physiocrats natural science was incompatiblewith their scheme of society.

Physiocrats did not envisage a commercial monarchy and theirnew order was not applicable to the practices of Atlanticcommerce. According to them, the mercantile system reinforcedEuropean scal governments.19 Cheney well depicts the originalityand the importance of this physiocratic perspective. In Cheneysview, there is an inconsistency between their attack on commerceand their attention to the history of commerce, testied to byRoubauds Histoire generale de lAsie, de lAfrique et de lAmerique.One can argue that physiocratic theory envisages an interdepen-dence among all economic activities and that there is no oppositionbetween agriculture and commerce (they advocated a commer-cialized agriculture), but between agriculture and mercantileinterests. They opposed merchants, not commerce. It is worthunderlining that commerce and mercantile interests were not thesame. We can nd in Francois Quesnay the clear distinctionbetween commerce, corresponding to production and consump-tion, and the profession du negociant, qui ache`te pourrevendre.20

Cheneys book in its entirety rests on the idea that commerceultimately justied the republic, liberty and democracy. Never-theless, facing the many-sided reality of the Old Regime we need to

15 John Stevens, Examen du gouvernement dAngleterre, compare aux constitutions

des Etats-Unis. Ou` lon refute quelques assertions contenues dans louvrage de m. Adams

intitule: Apologie des constitutions des Etats-Unis dAmerique et dans celui de m.

Delolme intitule: De la constitution dAngleterre, par un cultivateur de New-Jersey.

Ouvrage traduit de langlois et accompagne de notes, Londres (et se trouve a` Paris

chez Froulle), s.e. (1789), 17779, note XIX.16 I have discussed the Physiocrats contribution to modern constitutionalism

related to the issue of the separation of powers in: Manuela Albertone, Que

lautorite souveraine soit unique. La separation des pouvoirs dans la pensee des

physiocrates et son legs: du despotisme legal a` la democratie representative de

Condorcet, in: Les usages de la separation des pouvoirs, The uses of the separation of

powers, Textes reunis pas Sandrine Baume et Biancamaria Fontana (Paris: Michel

Houdiard, 2008), 3868.17 Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce, 148.18 Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual

Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton: Oxford, Princeton University Press,

2007).19 Cheney discussed this aspect of physiocratic attacks to the mercantile system,

in: Paul B. Cheney, Les economistes francais et limage de lAmerique. Lessor du

commerce transatlantique et leffondrement du gouvernement feodal, Dix-huitie`me

sie`cle, XXXIII (2001), 23145.20 Francois Quesnay, Lettre de M. Alpha sur le langage de la science economique,

in: Francois Quesnay, Oeuvres economiques comple`tes et autres textes, ed., Christine

There, Loc Charles, Jean-Claude Perrot, 2 vols. (Paris: INED., 2005), t. II, 1117.lois.21 These arguments seem to give some grounds for saying thatconstitutional freedom rather than the republic was related tocommerce in the eighteenth-century debates.

In the Old Regime corporate society, where different interestsprevailed, commerce was not always equivalent to freedom, asGreat Britains protectionism testied; it usually implied privilegeand in any case freedom was conceived differently from ourmodern perspective. Besides, the dimension of an integratedEuropean and Atlantic market in the eighteenth-century, consid-ered as a world system, has been recently challenged.22 S. R.Epstein, a scholar in economic history, questioned some years agowhether the driving force of pre-modern growth was the defenceand growth of individual and mercantile freedom against theautocratic powers of states, and whether different kinds of politicalregimes, absolutist or republican, gave rise to different economicoutcomes. In the traditional order, where what really matteredwere property rights to land, Epstein claims that monarchiesemerged that were more liberal and pluralistic than the republics,since republican subjects economic and political freedom waslimited by the power concentrated in the hands of a rulingoligarchy, as the United Provinces showed.23 Facing the complexityof modern state formation as a slow and non-linear process ofexpanding sovereignty, stimulating observations come fromEpsteins analysis of absolutism as a propagandistic device devoidof practical substance.24 From a different perspective even IstvanHont emphasises the republican animosity to commerce andexplains how jealousy of trade the application of reason of stateto international trade follows from the imperative of protectingthe republic against external threats.25

Over many centuries the emerging of the world economy wasdominated by the long struggle between the Dutch republic,France and Great Britain26; afterwards, in the last phase of the OldRegime republics the emergence of commercial empire of twomonarchies as France and Great Britain changed the survivalstrategies of the small republics.27 In such circumstances we do not

21 Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat de CONDORCET, Vie de Turgot (1786), in:

Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat de Condorcet, Oeuvres, ed. A. Condorcet

OConnor, M.-F. Arago, 12 vol. Paris, F. Didot fre`res, 18471849, t. V, 20910.22 S. R. Epstein, Freedom and Growth. The Rise of States and Markets in Europe, 1300

1750 (London, New York, Routledge, 2000); Alan Potofsky, The One and the Many.23 S. R. Epstein, Freedom and Growth, 1237.24 S. R. Epstein, Freedom and Growth, 78.25 Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 13.26 Ronald Findlay, Kevin ORourke, Power and Plenty. Trade, War, and the World

Economy in the Second Millennium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).27 In his narrative Cheney tends to assimilate the United Provinces and Great

Britain as commercial states. From a different perspective Koen Stapelbroek has

recently outlined how during the American revolution the Dutch republics foreign

policy moved from Great Britain to the United States, which strove for gaining credit

on the international scene as the champion of trade freedom against the

protectionist Great Britain (Koen Stapelbroek, Neutrality and Trade in the Dutch

Republic (17751783): Preludes to a Piecemeal Revolution, in: Rethinking the Atlantic

World, 100119).

merely face an opposition between monarchies and republics, buta complex interplay, as Richard Whatmore has recently outlined,sketching the increasing tendency in Geneva to turn to Britain asthe only state capable of sustaining a peaceful commercialempire.28

Physiocrats believed France should concentrate its wealth awayfrom the ocean and they rejected territorial conquest, even though,as Philippe Steiner has shown, they were aware of the linksbetween power, wealth and the military and the navy on theinternational scene, as marked by the economic and politicalrivalry between France and Great Britain.29 Cheney pays attentionto the physiocrats original outlook on the European colonialsystem, since Physiocrats complained about the anti-economiceffects of slavery and colonial exploitation and envisaged coloniesas incorporated into the nation, in a space dominated by freedomof trade.30 In this perspective the role played by the physiocraticinternational perspective in the debate on the Exclusive, thetrading regime established in 1717, is here well analyzed.

Cheneys sixth chapter on the Exclusive plugs an important gapin historical discussion of the Atlantic word, by highlighting theFrench contribution to the eighteenth-century economic andpolitical culture of the Atlantic, too often considered as Britishcentred. After the pioneering works by Jacques Godechot andPierre Chaunu,31 French historiography has been late in dealingwith the new Atlantic history, reducing it to history of empires, anddeeming it not compatible with French national history.32 ForFrench scholars the Atlantic is not a concept as it is for Anglo-

historiography, which gives new centrality to France in the Atlanticworld, by highlighting the unintended outcomes of the economicdiscussions.

The center-pheriphery outlook allows Cheney to trace themutual exchange between metropolis and colonies. During the

M. Albertone / History of European Ideas 37 (2011) 506510 509American historians. It is not a question of French backwardness;indeed, we can even maintain that the Atlantic history began inFrance in the eighteenth-century, when the Academy of Lyoninstituted in 1781 a prize on the effects on Europe of the discoveryof America, proposed by Raynal, who himself encouraged anhistorical overview on Atlantic history through the success of hisHistoire des deux Indes. In comparison with Anglo-Americanhistoriography, French scholars have adopted a different approach,which is open to the Mediterranean, continental Europe and theOceanic spaces.33 By this perspective the compact analysis ofRevolutionary commerce represents a turning point in the American

28 Richard Whatmore, Neither Masters nor Slaves: Small States and Empire in

the Long Eighteenth Century, in: Lineages of Empire. The Historical Roots of British

Imperial Thought, Proceedings of the British Academy, 155 (2009), 5381. See also

Richard Whatmore, Lamitie de grands Etats est leur plus sur appui. The Small

State Dilemma in Genevan Political Economy, 176217980 , Schweizerische Zeitschriftfur Geschichte/Revue Suisse dHistoire/Rivista Storica Svizzera, vol. 50 (2000), 35371.29 Philippe Steiner, Wealth and Power: Quesnays Political Economy of the

Agricultural Kingdom, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, XXIV, n. 1 (2002),

91109.30 For two recent overviews on Physiocracy and slavery see: Marcel Dorigny, The

Question on Slavery in the Physiocratic Texts: A Rereading of an Old Debate, in:

Rethinking the Atlantic World, 147162; Pernille Rge, The Question of Slavery in

Physiocratic Political Economy, in: Governare il mondo. Leconomia come linguaggio

della politica nellEuropa del Settecento, a cura di Manuela Albertone (Milano,

Fondazione Feltrinelli, 2009), 14969.31 Jacques Godechot, Histoire de lAltantique (Paris, Bordas, 1947); Huguette and

Pierre Chaunu Seville et lAtlantique, 15041650 (Paris, Colin, 1955); Paul Butel,

Histoire de lAtlantique de lAntiquite a` nos jours (Paris, Perrin, 1997).32 Marcel Dorigny, LAtlantique: un etat de la question, in LAtlantique, Dix-

huitie`me sie`cle, n. 33 (2001), 716, Dorigny argues there is a strong French

historiography on the Atlantic world; see also Marcel Dorigny, Bernard Gainot, Atlas

des esclavages : traites, societes coloniales, abolitions de lAntiquite a` nos jours (Paris,

Autrement, 2006); Cecile Vidal, The Reluctance of French Historians to Address Atlantic

History, Southern Quarterly, 43 (2006), 15389. A recent investigation of French

America, which pays attention non only to the overseas organization but also to the

metropolitan system, is offered by Trevor Burnard, Allan Potofsky, Introduction. The

Political Economy of the French Atlantic World and the Carribean before 1800, special

issue, French History, vol. 25, n. 1 (2011), 18.33 A comparison between the French and Anglo-American historiography on the

Atlantic is offered by Silvia Marzagalli, Sur les origins de lAtlantic History:

paradigme interpretatif de lhistoire des espaces atlantiques a` lepoque moderne, in:

LAtlantique, 1731.eighteenth-century colonists mounted a resistance to the Exclu-sive, as the island economy increased. Merchants demandedfreedom of trade in terms of national interest, and later thePhysiocrats theorized this demand, emphasising that a monarchi-cal empire was a more modern regime type than a commercialrepublic. On the other side, the chambers defended the Exclusivethrough the rhetoric of nationhood. There is here an original anduninvestigated approach to the shaping of national character,which offers a contribution to the discussions that are currentlytaking place regarding national histories and global history.Cheney encourages us to rethink the lines of interaction betweennational histories and area studies, to follow how ideas andeconomic and political movements spread and to practice a globalhistory which helps also to take into account the differencesbetween nations.34

The last part of the volume is the most innovative, as it placesthe French revolution at the core of the Atlantic context and thethreats posed to France by primitive globalization. It is rooted in are-evaluation of the economic approach against the revisionisthistoriography on the French revolution. Cheney rejected thetendency to conne the interpretation of the revolution to itspolitical aspects and he carefully points out the economicfoundations of representative government. He envisages twophases in the monarchys efforts to accommodate the traditionalorder with the new commercial reality: (1) the bankruptcy of 1788and the revolution of 1789, (2) the fall of the monarchy in 1792.The nature of what was at stake was evident in the Affaire descolonies, the controversy in the rst stages of the revolution aboutthe fate of French colonies. The moderate path of reformers, topreserve slavery and make revolution, was not practicable and it ishere exemplied by the position of Barnave. An important andneglected protagonist of the French revolution is then newlyevocated from an unusual standpoint.

During the revolution colonies were an economic and essentialinterest and a compromise was required between the revolution-ary universalism and the demands of commercial empire. Theliberal revolution at home was at odds with the ow of wealth fromthe colonies and their illiberal structure. The singularity of theFrench empire is outlined by comparison with the centrality ofempire to the British nationhood, as David Armitage has traced it.35

There did not exist in France a similar perception of empire; thePhysiocratic project to create a monarchical empire aimed in fact atthe abolition of the empire system.

It is Cheneys contention that the revolutionary effects of thecommercial revolution caused the 1789 revolution and thatBarnaves Introduction a` la revolution francaise highlighted theinterplay between constitutional monarchy and commercialempire, since they collapsed together.

Two ideas of metropolis-colony relationship were at stake:rstly, the enforcement of the revolutionary principles ofuniversality and equality, which could have led to the indepen-dence of colonies. Cheney contends that this solution was close tothe Physiocrats proposals. Secondly, the imperial solution, a sort ofAmerican federalism similar to constitutional monarchy, theillusion being that the revolution could be terminated by

34 Rethinking American history in a Global Age, ed. Thomas Bender (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2002); Chistopher A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern

World 17801914 (Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 2004); Thomas Bender, A Nation

among Nations: Americas Place in World History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006).35 David Armitage, The Ideological origins of the British Empire.

preserving together monarchy, colonies and slavery. Barnaverepresented this illusion, as he emphasised the link between themonarchy and the colonial question, both of he intended topreserve. For him the survival of the revolution depended on thewealth of colonies, which he aimed to keep safe by a civilizedmonarchy and an aristocracy of property.

Cheneys perspective leads to a new and innovative reading ofthe positive effects of the Atlantic economy. He goes beyond theNew Atlantic history, and encourages an analysis of the dynamics,complexity and diversity of empires, following the postcolonialstudies argument that there is not any evident distinction betweenimperialisms. Revolutionary Commerce takes account of the wealthof all the Anglo-American scholars contributions on the AtlanticHistory.

It is true that Anthony Pagdens Lords on the Word provides acomparative study among Spanish, French and British empires andshows colonies political effects on the metropolitan powers, butPagdens book is focused on ideologies rather than on discourses.36

On the other hand Revolutionary Commerces variety of sources isdeeply anchored in historical reality and in economic and politicalpractices and suggests a dialogue among different protagonists.Nevertheless, Cheney does not share Pagdens concern about thedenition of concepts, as his encouragements to annotate the

and he is affected by his opinion that the British Atlantic worldcombined liberty and empire, which in Cheneys perspectivecorresponds to commerce. Armitage maintains that liberty can bethe foundation of empire and emphasises that the success of atrading nation, as Britain was, was related to the liberty of itsgovernment. Nevertheless, we can not help failing to mention that as Cheney well depicts the collapse of the Old Regime broke outin France, and not in Great Britain, and that the French revolutionrepresented a turning point in the shaping of modern Europeanidentity. In this respect the French case analyzed by Cheney, wherethe link between colonies and absolutism nally moved torevolution, is far from the British model. From this point of viewthe author argues against the centrality of the British Empire as aninterpretative key applicable to the whole of the Atlantic world.40

Cheney is close to the global dimension of eighteenth-centuryideas offered by Armitages recent analysis of the AmericanDeclaration of independence as a global phenomenon, suggestingthat it is possible to compare discrete phases of globalization.41

Post-colonial studies assume that empire, imperialism andcolonies were the same and that all people were subjected in thesame way. The Anglo-American new Atlantic history has exploredvarious early imperialisms and has dened them in different way.

M. Albertone / History of European Ideas 37 (2011) 506510510terms empire, imperialism and their meanings suggest, nor does heshare Armitages effort to avoid any conceptual ambiguity, whenhe gives detailed denitions of ideology.

The French case adds new elements of the emergence ofdifferent identities in the Atlantic world, it backs up the idea thatthere is not a typical colonial venture, that the creation of thisidentity was not self-conscious and that the Atlantic coloniesdeveloped their identities over a period when the mother-countries were acquiring their identities as modern nations.37

Cheney does not share the view that empires can also bepositive forces in the world, a perspective which has been recentlydenounced as being thinkable again.38 David Armitages TheIdeological origins of the British Empire is an avowed point ofreference for Cheneys reading of the French idea of empire,different from the British case, which is inseparable from itsimperial history.39 He follows Armitages proposal to go beyondnation-state history, which allows us to overcome the separationbetween domestic and overseas history. Most of all he sharesArmitages optimistic assessment that trade depends on liberty

36 Anthony Pagden, Lords of the World.37 Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 15001800, ed. Nicholas Canny, Anthony

Pagden (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).38 Anthony Pagden, From Empire to Federation, in: Imperialism. Historical and

Literary Investigations 15001900, ed. Balachandra Rajan, Elizabeth Sauer (London:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 25571.39 David Armitage, The Ideological origins of the British Empire.For his part Anthony Pagden has highlighted an economicdeterministic paradigm, proceeding from Adam Smith and theeighteenth-century economists, alleging that people benets inthe modern world were related to commercial societies, andincompatible with conquest. Pagden emphasises that liberalimperialism is a topic coming back, sometimes disguised asinternational politics, in recent historiography.42

By considering French colonies in relation to an absolutisticregime and an economically dynamic state, Cheneys approach issignicant. In the last chapter of his book he outlines the limits ofthe Barnaves effort to combine the colonial system withconstitutional monarchy and with the new revolutionary reality.Nevertheless, his interpretation sometimes suffers from eigh-teenth-century writers excessive optimism. His reading of therevolutionary effects of commerce sometimes overlooks, as otherAnglo-American investigations on the Atlantic world do, that thepositive outcomes of commerce had been preceded by conquest,that commerce implied exploitation and that liberty and revolu-tion in Europe were dependent upon the subjection of non-European people.

40 Preface by Bernard Bailyn, in: The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800, ed. David

Armitage, M. G. Braddick (London: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2002).41 David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence. A Global History (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). Stimulating observations come from

Armitages contention that the American Declaration arose from movements of

individuals and goods around the Atlantic world that linked Europe, Africa and

Americas into a single economic and cultural system, showing that the various

European sources for the Declaration encourage the rethinking of American history

in a global age and can help to show that globalization, as Cheney outlines, is not a

novel condition. See also, David Armitage, Is there a Pre-History of Globalization?, in:

Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective, ed. Deborah Cohen,

Maura OConnor (London, New York, Routledge, 2004), 16576.42 Anthony Pagden, From Empire to Federation.