A New Setting: The Influence of Les Ideologues
The moment in which Polo y Catalina wrote his Tratado sobre la industria de Espana is highly significant, for just two years before, in 1802, a circular was published that prohibited the sale of books that came from outside Spain, in any language, even though a copy was presented before the Consejo de la Inquisicion.
That measure was made even harsher in February of 1804, when an edict was issued by the Inquisition itself, prohibiting a series of works, such as those of Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, Etienne Bonnot de Condillac and John Locke, among others.In the month of August, other titles of works were added, because they were considered “impious, blasphemous, highly obscene, contrary to the sovereignty, calumnious or subversive,” and included in this ban were several issues of the newspaper La Decade Philosophique literaire [sic]. All of this clearly shows the harsh attitude of the censors, especially in relation to the movement of ideas emerging from the French Revolution, which was the object of suspicion and persecution dating back to the last decade of the previous century, with a prohibitionist decree on censorship promulgated by Minister Jose Monino, conde de Floridablanca (Alfaya, 1924, 21-23).
However, as historian Lucienne Domergue proved, the effectiveness of these measures was partial or null, due both to the delayed actions of the Inquisition as a result of an overly controlling system as well as to a certain tolerance on the part of the official administrators (1981). One of the best examples of the inefficiency of these measures and of the permeability in regard to French ideas during the turbulent years from 1800 to 1804 is the close relationship existing between two important publications of both countries. It is well known that in 1794, with the momentum of the “ideologues,” the magazine La Decadephilosophique, litteraire etpolitique was created, whose editorial staff included a young Say (Regaldo, 1976).
From the beginning, the magazine showed its concern for Spain’s political situation and the country’s scientific backwardness, caused by, among other reasons, strong censorship. For this reason, it relied on political allies, whom the ideologues considered in possession of more advanced ideas, such as the Count of Aranda, Ministers Pedro Cevallos and Mariano Luis de Urquijo, and, in particular, Nicolas de Azara, who was the Spanish ambassador in Paris (1798-99 and 1801-3). Azara was considered a personal friend of the emperor (Sanchez, 2006, 83-84). La Decade also maintained contact with the group of pro-French supporters, which included Manuel Jose Quintana, Alvarez Cienfuegos, Leandro Fernandez de Moratin and Abbot Marchena.
The strong censorship did not permit a close relationship between French and Spanish intellectuals until almost ten years after the creation of La Decade. The relationship between the two groups grew closer when the magazine Variedades de Ciencias: [AS] Keep the coma Literatura y Artes was created in Spain, which relied on the support of the aforementioned Quintana and Juan Alvarez Guerra, among other noteworthy Spanish scientists and intellectuals.
Thanks to this publication, the ideas of the ideologues and especially those of JeanLouis Alibert, Condillac,Joseph Marie De Gerando and Antoine Destutt de Tracy, came to Spain (Castro, 1986, 338). The ideologic influenced several Spanish economists in a decisive way, such as Ramon Campos, the author of, among others, a work that covered and summarized the ideas put forth by Smith in Wealth of Nations (Campos, 1797). Variedades also published the ideas of scientists and economists, such as the Count of Rumford, Claudio Boutelou, Edward Jenner, l’abbe Rozier and Franz Joseph Gall.
Economist and politician Alvarez Guerra launched the ideas of the agrarian Arthur Young in its pages, although he criticized Young’s ideas on taxation, crop specialization and most especially his ideas on the right size of agrarian properties.
These criticisms, together with the fact that he had been the translator of Franςois Rozier’s Diccionario de Agricultura, led to a passionate debate on the historiography of the supposed influence of physiocracy on Alvarez Guerra (Sanchez, 2006, 88).10The relations between the ideologues and the Spanish writers of the magazine were excellent from the very beginning, and the appearance of the Spanish magazine was received with great enthusiasm by the editors of La Decade, who, as soon as its first issue appeared, commented, “Les amateurs de la litterature etrangere apprendront avec plai- sir que l’on publie a Madrid un journal intitule: Varietes dans (sic) les Sciences, la Litterature el les Arts...” (La Decade, 1804, 567).
The purpose of these paragraphs is none other than to show that the ideologie arrived in Spain, although in a selective manner, at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, and how some of the controversies regarding the nature of economics that had created confrontations between authors and schools in France were translated through a rather peculiar process in Spain.
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