Concluding Remarks

From the pioneer studies of Robert Sidney Smith on the reaction to classical economic thought in Spain—in which it was shown that Spanish mercantilism had been strongly resistant and long-lasting in time (hardy perennial)—progress was made in the process of reception of Smith’s work and it was proven that it had undergone an unequal process, and, in many cases, the Smithian message was intermingled with mercantilism along the lines of what authors like W Grampp had classified as the liberal elements in English mercantilism (Grampp, 1952).

Or it led to what Llombart (2000) has called, for the Spanish case, the existence of a “liberal mercantilism,” a term that is apparently contradictory but that explains in a much more convincing manner the process of transition from mercantilism to liberalism in which Smith’s main work—adapted to the national interests—fulfilled an important function in Spain, just as it did in other European countries.

Later studies, such as that of Cosimo Perrotta, have demonstrated the coherence of mercantilist strategies in “second-comer” countries, most especially those of southern Europe. Even though Smithian ideas were well received in the last years of the eigh­teenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, they preferred to do so in a partially mercantilist way, which made it possible to support economic policies that were more coherent with their level of comparative development (Perrotta, 1993). This does not contradict Robert Sidney Smith’s hypothesis but rather explains the persistence of the mercantilist message in Spain as well as the interpretations of Adam Smith in a partially mercantilist way.

However, the interest shown by Spanish researchers in the study of the Reales Sociedades Economicas de Amigos del Pais, the true “torches” of the Enlightenment, where the first classes in economics were taught and where important modernizing poli­cies were launched, has relegated the study of other key institutions—such as the Balance of Trade Office and the Department of Public Works, dependent on the Secretariat of the Treasury Ministry where the first industrial statistical studies were conducted—to a second place.

Perhaps because they were created several decades after the Sociedades Economicas and due to the fact that they responded to other needs related to the country’s economy, they were oriented toward adopting different ideas, leading to different interpretations of Smith’s work—along a preindustrialist line—which proved to be much closer to Say’s work, translated into Spanish between 1804 and 1807.

In a strongly agrarian society, such as the Spanish one in the second half of the eigh­teenth century, a decisive role was played by the physiocratic message, stripped of its the­ory, and even more so that of the agrarians, not physiocrats, like Young, which explains the existence of Smith’s agrarian interpretations. Consequently, we see the influence of authors such as Garnier, whose Abrege was not published but translated and was used for teaching in several Sociedades Economicas de Amigos del Pais, and in the years 1805-6, the translation of Wealth of Nations was even republished in Spain.

Acknowledgments

I am especially grateful to J. Conway, who sent me the manuscripts from the British Library to which I refer in the text.