Political economy to achieve love from the king. The treatise of the VI Marqués de San Adrián.

ZAMORA, ROMINA

Seminario; Political Economy and Law since the 18th Century:Theoretical Debates and Practical Consequences; 2021

Universität Zurich/ Harvard University

Political economy has had hugely different meanings because it had always been an operative concept in various disciplines with different objectives and varied methodologies but, above all, it had been used to justify different ideological goals. I would like to speak specifically about the political economy of the origins, about the concept as it has been used in the early Enlightenment. Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the concept of the economy had nothing to do with the current concept neither of the market economy nor with wages, nor even with the production of wealth; even less with the wealth of nations (Zamora, 2017). This makes it necessary to introduce into the history of political economy, questions about family organization and household philosophy, the importance of marriage in order to be able to participate in the political space of the city, the role of the "mothers of the family", the wives, in the different decision-making spaces both at household as in the city. In Aristotelian terms, it is necessary to see the female role as an active agent in oeconomics as well as in politics (Becker, 2017). I will try to explain that ancient concept of economics, the Aristelian oeconomia, whose roots go back to ancient times and its branches grew in scholasticism and medieval treatises. It?s important because the early political economy writers had that old economy in mind, not the new one. Thinking about wives is too transcendental because not only were public and private spaces not separated, but also because having a home and having a wife and children was the indispensable condition for a man to be part of the republic. Ergo, the wife validated the man's entry into politics and at the same time reserved for himself some decision-making spheres, domestic and political, visible or invisible ones. But it is necessary to differentiate their active roles according to their class membership, so as not to fall into the error of lumping all "women" into a single concept (Scott, 1999). German historians such as Otto Brunner have drawn our attention to the "oeconomy of old Europe" (Brunner, 1936). It was easy for him to differentiate ancient economy from de new one, because, in German, there are two words to say "economy". The word Ökonomik was refered to the old relations related to the ?big household?, and the word Wirtschaft was related to the modern relations of production, circulation, and consumption. International scholars have decided to use ?oeconomy? to differentiate the ancient concept from the new one. If we do not understand the ancient meanings, we run the risk of projecting our contemporary meanings onto the traditional signifiers. In order to express this idea, I will present a Treatise on political economy of Navarra from the late 18th century, written by the 6th Marqués de San Adrián, José María Magallón y Mencós, the "Method for an Economic Plan of the Kingdom of Navarra" from 1799.