The key stages of the development of economic thought in France during the Enlightenment have been outlined so far - a period very rich in theoretical perspectives and lively debates.
By contrast, the last decade or so of the eighteenth century looked a bit lacklustre, especially because of the dramatic events of the French Revolution. This is not to say, however, that nothing novel happened, and some notable developments have already been mentioned (Chapters 6 and 8) - as regards public economics and formalisation, for example.
But novelties sometimes happen discreetly among the writings of authors that the history of economic thought consider as rather minor. They are also indirectly to be found in events which proved important to the spread of political economy as a new discipline. In this perspective, a few points are worth examining as concluding remarks to this volume. First, a usually neglected theme must be addressed in order to better understand the environment of the development of economic ideas in the French language during the second half of the eighteenth century: that of the translations of works originally written in foreign languages. Second, during the Revolution, while the novelty of political economy as a distinct science was highlighted and seen as one symbol of modernity, the impression prevailed that the new discipline was in the end more developed in Great Britain and that its partial disregard by the authorities was a source of the difficulties of the time: hence, during the Revolution, an incentive to react at the institutional level. Third, a brief analysis of some additional theoretical advances during the 1780s and 1790s is in order: they were part of the legacy of the Enlightenment for the next century.1.