Recently, I participated in the thesis defense on an eminently local subject, political economic writing in the eighteenth century in the cantons of Vaud (where I live and teach) and Berne (which at the time had occupied the Canton of Vaud) in Switzerland. I will spare you the details of this 700-pages-thick thesis, with an appendix of another 200 pages, which was not even about political economic writing in all of the Swiss Federation, but only in these two small regions in one of the most beautiful spots of Europe. But I became mesmerized by the profoundness of the political economic thinking of a group of now largely forgotten administrators and members of the Swiss socio-economic elite that grappled with questions of how to position their economic doings against a Europe that was plagued by the early eighteenth-century War of Succession, questions about the economic consequences not of population growth but of population decline, and the consequences of what David Hume has characterized so well as the “Jealousy of Trade” between the emerging European colonial empires. More in particular, these local men of politics and power were concerned with if and how they could preserve the agricultural system of common pastures—that were to figure prominently in Elinor Ostrom’s early studies of the “commons”—or whether they should copy the English model of enclosures that seemed to promise agricultural innovation and economic growth. How would this pan out for the means of existence of the local population? And, of course, what would this mean for their own economic and political interests and standing? All these concerns brought them in conversation with the work of such writers as François Forbonnais, Richard Cantillon, the Physiocrats, and Scottish philosophers such as Hume, James Steuart, and Adam Smith, with some of whom they were also in correspondence. The measures the local elites implemented on the basis of these discussions were consequential for such important issues as land use, manufacture and commerce, and poor relief. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the thesis was supervised by one of Istvan Hont’s students, Béla Kapossy, a professor in the history department of the University of Lausanne.

中文翻译：

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水上烟雾：50 岁的他和历史的非中立性

最近，我在瑞士沃州（我生活和教书的地方）和伯尔尼州（当时占领了沃州）参加了关于十八世纪政治经济学写作的论文答辩。我不会向您详细介绍这篇700页厚的论文，还有另外200页的附录，它甚至不是关于整个瑞士联邦的政治经济学写作，而只是在瑞士最重要的两个小地区之一。欧洲美丽的景点。但令我着迷的是，一群现在基本上被遗忘的瑞士社会经济精英的管理者和成员的政治经济思想的深刻性，他们努力解决如何定位自己的经济行为以对抗受十八世纪初期困扰的欧洲的问题。世纪王位继承战争，关于人口下降而不是人口增长的经济后果的问题，以及大卫·休谟所描述的新兴欧洲殖民帝国之间“贸易嫉妒”的后果。更具体地说，这些当地的政治和权力人物关心的是他们是否以及如何能够保护公共牧场的农业系统——这在埃莉诺·奥斯特罗姆早期对“公地”的研究中占有重要地位——或者他们是否应该复制英国的农业系统。圈地模式似乎有望实现农业创新和经济增长。这对当地居民的生存方式有何影响？当然，这对他们自己的经济和政治利益和地位意味着什么？所有这些担忧使他们与弗朗索瓦·福博内、理查德·坎蒂隆、重农主义者等作家以及休谟、詹姆斯·斯图尔特和亚当·斯密等苏格兰哲学家的作品进行对话，他们还与其中一些人有书信往来。地方精英在这些讨论的基础上采取的措施对土地利用、工商业、扶贫等重大问题产生了重要影响。不出所料，这篇论文是由伊斯特万·洪特（Istvan Hont）的学生之一、洛桑大学历史系教授贝拉·卡波西（Béla Kapossy）指导的。