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  • 2018
  • Book

Markets, Morals, Politics: Jealousy of Trade and the History of Political Thought

By: Béla Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky, Sophus A. Reinert and Richard Whatmore
  • Format:Print
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Abstract

When Istvan Hont died in 2013, the world lost a giant of intellectual history. A leader of the Cambridge School of Political Thought, Hont argued passionately for a global-historical approach to political ideas. To better understand the development of liberalism, he looked not only to the works of great thinkers but also to their reception and use amid revolution and interstate competition. His innovative program of study culminated in the landmark 2005 book Jealousy of Trade, which explores the birth of economic nationalism and other social effects of expanding eighteenth-century markets. Markets, Morals, Politics brings together a celebrated cast of Hont’s contemporaries to assess his influence, ideas, and methods.
Richard Tuck, John Pocock, John Dunn, Raymond Geuss, Gareth Stedman Jones, Michael Sonenscher, John Robertson, Keith Tribe, Pasquale Pasquino, and Peter N. Miller contribute original essays on themes Hont treated with penetrating insight: the politics of commerce, debt, and luxury; the morality of markets; and economic limits on state power. The authors delve into questions about the relationship between states and markets, politics and economics, through examinations of key Enlightenment and pre-Enlightenment figures in context—Hobbes, Rousseau, Spinoza, and many others. The contributors also add depth to Hont’s lifelong, if sometimes veiled, engagement with Marx. .
The result is a work of interpretation that does justice to Hont’s influence while developing its own provocative and illuminating arguments. Markets, Morals, Politics will be a valuable companion to readers of Hont and anyone concerned with political economy and the history of ideas.

Keywords

Morals; Politics; Istvan Hont; Jealousy Of Trade; Enlightenment; Economic Nationalism; Markets; Moral Sensibility; Government and Politics; Trade; History

Citation

Kapossy, Béla, Isaac Nakhimovsky, Sophus A. Reinert and Richard Whatmore, eds. Markets, Morals, Politics: Jealousy of Trade and the History of Political Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018.
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About The Author

Sophus A. Reinert

Business, Government and the International Economy
→More Publications

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More from the Authors
  • The Global Great Depression, 1929-1939 By: Alberto Cavallo and Sophus A. Reinert
  • Entrepreneurship in a Changing Arctic: Siberian Reindeer Herders and the Northern Sea Route By: Sophus A. Reinert, Quinn Lewis, Anders Oskal and Kjell Stokvik
  • Mercantilism, the Medici, and the Making of the Modern World (B) By: Sophus A. Reinert and Robert Fredona
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