A nice copy of first French translation of Sir James Steuart’s An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy (1767), translated by Étienne de Sénovert (1753-1831).
“Sir James Steuart had the misfortune to be followed by Adam Smith in less than a decade. Otherwise [his Principles] would probably have served as the standard English economic text.” (Carpenter). “In the Principles*,* Steuart made notable contributions to economic theory: the historical analysis of the origins of the exchange economy, where he (like Adam Smith) was influenced by David Hume; to the theory of economic development with its emphasis on the importance of interdependent sectors; to the theory of competitive price, and, most notably, to the treatment of money and banking, where he showed his appreciation of banks as a means of mobilizing resources in countries undergoing the process of institutional, as well as economic, change.” (Andrew S. Skinner, ODNB).
Having been overwhelmed, despite its matching physical bulk of two quarto volumes and near-1300 pages, by the reception of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), the reputation of Sir James Steuart’s Principles*,* as Andrew S. Skinner noted in his ODNB entry, remained high in Europe, where much of his material had been obtained, through much of the 19th Century, and, for a shorter time, in North America:
“During the 1770s the text was translated into German (twice), and into French in 1789. … The admiration of the members of the nineteenth-century German historical school is now well known. Steuart’s historical and cosmopolitan perspective later attracted the well-documented attention of Marx, while it is known that Hegel spent some three months studying one of the German editions. But perhaps the most intriguing link is with North America. The Dublin edition of the Inquiry (1770) was widely circulated in the colonies. The book also attracted the attention of Alexander Hamilton, whose protectionist position was adopted with a view to counterbalancing the competitive advantages of the British economy in the years following the treaty of Paris (1783).” (ODNB).
