Federico D'Onofrio | Università Ca' Foscari Venezia (original) (raw)
Books by Federico D'Onofrio
La regolazione istituzionale dei mercati granari, nata per garantire localmente la certezza degli... more La regolazione istituzionale dei mercati granari, nata per garantire localmente la certezza degli approvvigionamenti in congiunture di scarsità, costituisce uno degli aspetti più comuni delle economie di Antico Regime. Pilastro di quel sistema ordinato al bonum commune che i philosophes dipinsero come ostacolo al libero commercio e alla 'pubblica felicità, essa costituisce un terreno imprescindibile di riflessione sul complesso rapporto tra bene pubblico e logiche dello scambio, tra razionalità di governo e razionalità economiche. Il volume esplora, attraverso casi di studio relativi agli stati italiani preunitari tra Sei e Settecento, le configurazioni concrete di questo rapporto, la dialettica di interessi e poteri intorno alla regolazione dei mercati cerealicoli, l'evoluzione dei saperi e delle tecnologie di governo.
Observing Agriculture in Early Twentieth-Century Italy describes how Italian agricultural economi... more Observing Agriculture in Early Twentieth-Century Italy describes how Italian agricultural economists collected information about the economy of Italy, between the Giolittian and the Fascist era. The book carefully describes three main forms of economic observation: enquiries, statistics, and farm surveys. For each of these forms of observation, the main participants to the investigation are discussed with their respective agendas, alongside the purposes of the investigation, and its practical constraints. This work introduces the concept of "stakeholder statistics", and stresses the two-way relation between the observer and the observed in the co-production of observational knowledge. Practices of observation developed together with agricultural economics as a discipline and a profession. The study of forms of investigation therefore shed light on the constitution of a coherent and self-conscious group of agricultural economists in Italy, and the scientific and methodological alliances they forged with agricultural economists elsewhere in Europe. Thanks to ambitious research projects, Ghino Valenti in the Giolittian period, and Arrigo Serpieri, after the First World War, led the transformation of Italian agricultural economists from agents of estate owners, to social and economic experts in the service of the Italian state. The group of agricultural economists who gathered around Serpieri played an important role in supplying the ideology of the agricultural elites with economic content, especially after the First World War, along lines that resemble the development of agrarian ideologies in other countries of Central Europe. This work discusses how observation entered the political debate on agricultural policies of the Fascist regime, namely the so-called Ruralismo.
Papers by Federico D'Onofrio
European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2020
The Swiss-Russian economist Nikolaj Sieber was one of the first who wrote about Marx in Russia. I... more The Swiss-Russian economist Nikolaj Sieber was one of the first
who wrote about Marx in Russia. In this article we reconstruct the
development of his thought by mobilising evidence about the
intellectual and political context he lived in. We document his
involvement within the Ukrainian national movement of the
1870 s and argue that this closeness was consistent with his take
on the capitalist evolution of the Russian Empire. We discuss his
importance in the Russian debates on the future of the peasant
commune and of Russia and conclude that his interpretation of
Marx and capitalism was crucial for the development of the
Russian social-democratic party.
Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, 2019
A comment on Mauro Boianovsky's "Arthur Lewis and the Classical Foundations of Development Econom... more A comment on Mauro Boianovsky's "Arthur Lewis and the Classical Foundations of Development Economics"
Società e Storia, 2018
This article exploits the concepts of emulation and heterotopia in order to answer an important q... more This article exploits the concepts of emulation and heterotopia in order to answer an important question: what kind of constitutional arrangement did Antonio Genovesi and his pupils have in mind? While previous literature underlined how the commercial states of north-western Europe offered the Neapolitans a model to imitate, the article highlights the paradigmatic role of China. In the works of Paolo Mattia Doria and Antonio Genovesi we find the origins in Naples of the enduring myth of China’s perfect administration and political economy. Such a positive image of China survived among Genovesi’s pupils until the last decades of the century. The idea that China was ruled in agreement with the laws of nature, originating in Jesuist sources, became part of Genovesi’s attack on Montesquieu’s and feudalism; but it also provided the Neapolitan reformers with the model of a ruling elite of mandarins whose only title to power was their knowledge of political economy. The Supreme Council of Finance, created in 1782, seemed for a while to embody certain proposals derived from alleged Chinese models.
Agricultural History Review, 2017
This article examines the statistics produced by the International Institute of Agriculture in co... more This article examines the statistics produced by the International Institute of Agriculture in connection with the economic conferences that were held under the auspices of the League of Nations in Genoa (1922) and Geneva (1927). Established in 1905 in Rome, the International Institute of Agriculture formed an important institutional framework for the exchange of knowledge on agriculture in the first half of the twentieth century. By examining the Institute’s reports and enquiries and the planning for the world census of agriculture (1930), the article argues that the Institute held a particular vision of the relationship between agriculture and industry that differed greatly from the perspective of the Anglophone experts of the League of Nations. It will be shown that whilst the League addressed the issue of famine and food shortages, the Institute focused on stabilizing farmers’ income.
Agricultural History, 2017
By studying the theoretical and empirical work of agricultural economists in pre-World War I and ... more By studying the theoretical and empirical work of agricultural economists in pre-World War I and interwar Italy, this article shows that agrarianism was a general paradigm shared across the Italian political spectrum by different political families. Originating in the agricultural crisis of the late nineteenth century, agrarianism was understood differently by different political groups, so that its political meaning changed over time, while the underlying economic principles remained stable. The “democratic agrarianism” of the first two decades of the twentieth century—an effort to increase the number of owner-farmers in the name of the “social utility” of land—evolved into the “productivist agrarianism” of the fascist period, when the regime tried to reconcile under a technocratic leadership the contrast between social issues and land productivity. It declared peasant farmers a protected category of subjects, and put the development of Italian agriculture under the tutelage of the state and its bureaucratic structure.
Almanakh, 2015
Throughout his teaching career, Antonio Genovesi invoked history to explain to the students of “t... more Throughout his teaching career, Antonio Genovesi invoked history to explain to the students of “trade and mechanics” how the Kingdom of Naples came to be lagging behind the wealthy nations of north-western Europe and what should be done in order to make the kingdom flourish again. This article explores the three constitutive elements of Genovesi’s philosophy of history: an immutable human nature; the refinement of the arts and sciences; the history of individual nations as accidents of geography and politics made it. Genovesi proclaimed the victory of modern commercial societies over ancient societies and savage nations, but his regard remained anchored the necessities of the European backward periphery. He attributed therefore a providential role to the Sovereign, the sole authority that could reconnect national and universal history.
Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Sep 2015
A few notes on the concept of ‘felicitas publica’ in 18th century Political Economy In this cont... more A few notes on the concept of ‘felicitas publica’ in 18th century Political Economy
In this contribution I present a few notes on the concept of public happiness to the students of the history of political economy in order to clarify the meaning of “public happiness” in the 18th century Italian context. This clarification appears to be necessary because of the recent rise in popularity that the notion of happiness enjoys among economists and historians of political economy. Recently, in particular, some authors have identified Public Happiness as the distinctive trait of a continental, mainly Italian way of understanding political economy, stressing how understanding political economy as the science of achieving public happiness, as the Italians did, differed from understanding political economy as the science of increasing the wealth of nations. These authors insisted on the importance of rediscovering the lost art of “Civil Economy” as a more humane alternative to free market capitalism, in order to provide a theoretical framework within economics for non-profit activities , or even as an ambitious “foundation for an economic theory of civil society” associated with claims that before the peace of Westphalia “social evolution was much more complex and richer than the one characterizing modernity”. My contribution is a reappraisal of the concept of public happiness in the context of the Italian Enlightenment.
First of all, I want to clarify that by public happiness Muratori and Genovesi meant something very specific, namely the goal of a good Monarch. For Genovesi and Muratori, public happiness was a formula useful in asserting the rights of the Prince and the government over and above the rigidity of the legal system . It was obviously not the individual happiness of the members of the community but the final goal of the Monarch and his duty toward the Society. I have showed elsewhere by examining the image of China in the Neapolitan Enlightenment, how at least since the 1760s the political program of Genovesi and his pupils envisaged a strong government that would be able to pursue public happiness rather than be entrapped by the legal litigations of private interests. I also want to show that although public happiness resembles the Aristotelian ideal of bonum commune, it has also different characteristics and it actually originates in that sort of Aristotelian synthesis that we find in the German natural law tradition. The German tradition of Natural Law provided Muratori and Genovesi with an overall framework to understand these issues.
Finally, I will show that Italian economists fell within a broader stream of thought that dominated Central Europe, and that their intellectual roots in the Natural Law tradition make them close relatives of the German Cameralists rather than the Scottish Enlightenment.
History of Political Economy, 2012
Book Sections by Federico D'Onofrio
Les organisations patronales et la sphère publique, Danielle Fraboulet et Pierre Vernus (ed.), 2013
Book Reviews by Federico D'Onofrio
European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2020
Capitalism, Alone by Branko Milanovic, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2019, 304 pages, ... more Capitalism, Alone by Branko Milanovic, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2019, 304 pages, £23.95, ISBN 9780674987593.
La vie des idées, 2017
Review of Alain Chatriot, La politique du blé : crises et régulation d’un marché dans la France d... more Review of Alain Chatriot, La politique du blé : crises et régulation d’un marché dans la France de l’entre-deux-guerres, Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France.
Addressing the issue of state intervention in agricultural markets, La Politique du Blé by Alain Chatriot examines the political debate behind the creation of the Office Interprofessionnel du Blé, the French national wheat pool, that was established in 1936 by the leftist government. http://www.booksandideas.net/The-Agricultural-New-Deal.html
Thesis by Federico D'Onofrio
Drafts by Federico D'Onofrio
Partito Genovesiano", così Franco Venturi definiva il gruppo dei giovani provinciali venuti a Nap... more Partito Genovesiano", così Franco Venturi definiva il gruppo dei giovani provinciali venuti a Napoli ad ascoltare le lezioni di Economia Civile dell'abate salernitano fra gli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta del diciottesimo secolo 1 . Egli attribuiva ai semi piantati coi corsi napoletani, il successivo diffondersi dei Lumi nel regno e nelle sue province, secondo quello che era il programma esplicitamente enunciato da Antonio Genovesi nel suo Discorso sul vero fine delle lettere e delle scienze, con cui la cattedra napoletana di commercio e meccanica era stata inaugurata.
Conference Presentations by Federico D'Onofrio
Call for Papers by Federico D'Onofrio
Conference and Panel Organization by Federico D'Onofrio
Workshop on N. I. Sieber at Université de Lausanne, Lausanne Switzerland (22 Sept. 2017) organise... more Workshop on N. I. Sieber at Université de Lausanne, Lausanne Switzerland (22 Sept. 2017) organised by François Allisson and Federico D'Onofrio
Rural History 2017 Conference (11-14 September 2017, Leuven, Belgium) Panel 8 (Wednesday 13 Septe... more Rural History 2017 Conference (11-14 September 2017, Leuven, Belgium)
Panel 8 (Wednesday 13 September 2017, 08:30-13:00).
La regolazione istituzionale dei mercati granari, nata per garantire localmente la certezza degli... more La regolazione istituzionale dei mercati granari, nata per garantire localmente la certezza degli approvvigionamenti in congiunture di scarsità, costituisce uno degli aspetti più comuni delle economie di Antico Regime. Pilastro di quel sistema ordinato al bonum commune che i philosophes dipinsero come ostacolo al libero commercio e alla 'pubblica felicità, essa costituisce un terreno imprescindibile di riflessione sul complesso rapporto tra bene pubblico e logiche dello scambio, tra razionalità di governo e razionalità economiche. Il volume esplora, attraverso casi di studio relativi agli stati italiani preunitari tra Sei e Settecento, le configurazioni concrete di questo rapporto, la dialettica di interessi e poteri intorno alla regolazione dei mercati cerealicoli, l'evoluzione dei saperi e delle tecnologie di governo.
Observing Agriculture in Early Twentieth-Century Italy describes how Italian agricultural economi... more Observing Agriculture in Early Twentieth-Century Italy describes how Italian agricultural economists collected information about the economy of Italy, between the Giolittian and the Fascist era. The book carefully describes three main forms of economic observation: enquiries, statistics, and farm surveys. For each of these forms of observation, the main participants to the investigation are discussed with their respective agendas, alongside the purposes of the investigation, and its practical constraints. This work introduces the concept of "stakeholder statistics", and stresses the two-way relation between the observer and the observed in the co-production of observational knowledge. Practices of observation developed together with agricultural economics as a discipline and a profession. The study of forms of investigation therefore shed light on the constitution of a coherent and self-conscious group of agricultural economists in Italy, and the scientific and methodological alliances they forged with agricultural economists elsewhere in Europe. Thanks to ambitious research projects, Ghino Valenti in the Giolittian period, and Arrigo Serpieri, after the First World War, led the transformation of Italian agricultural economists from agents of estate owners, to social and economic experts in the service of the Italian state. The group of agricultural economists who gathered around Serpieri played an important role in supplying the ideology of the agricultural elites with economic content, especially after the First World War, along lines that resemble the development of agrarian ideologies in other countries of Central Europe. This work discusses how observation entered the political debate on agricultural policies of the Fascist regime, namely the so-called Ruralismo.
European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2020
The Swiss-Russian economist Nikolaj Sieber was one of the first who wrote about Marx in Russia. I... more The Swiss-Russian economist Nikolaj Sieber was one of the first
who wrote about Marx in Russia. In this article we reconstruct the
development of his thought by mobilising evidence about the
intellectual and political context he lived in. We document his
involvement within the Ukrainian national movement of the
1870 s and argue that this closeness was consistent with his take
on the capitalist evolution of the Russian Empire. We discuss his
importance in the Russian debates on the future of the peasant
commune and of Russia and conclude that his interpretation of
Marx and capitalism was crucial for the development of the
Russian social-democratic party.
Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, 2019
A comment on Mauro Boianovsky's "Arthur Lewis and the Classical Foundations of Development Econom... more A comment on Mauro Boianovsky's "Arthur Lewis and the Classical Foundations of Development Economics"
Società e Storia, 2018
This article exploits the concepts of emulation and heterotopia in order to answer an important q... more This article exploits the concepts of emulation and heterotopia in order to answer an important question: what kind of constitutional arrangement did Antonio Genovesi and his pupils have in mind? While previous literature underlined how the commercial states of north-western Europe offered the Neapolitans a model to imitate, the article highlights the paradigmatic role of China. In the works of Paolo Mattia Doria and Antonio Genovesi we find the origins in Naples of the enduring myth of China’s perfect administration and political economy. Such a positive image of China survived among Genovesi’s pupils until the last decades of the century. The idea that China was ruled in agreement with the laws of nature, originating in Jesuist sources, became part of Genovesi’s attack on Montesquieu’s and feudalism; but it also provided the Neapolitan reformers with the model of a ruling elite of mandarins whose only title to power was their knowledge of political economy. The Supreme Council of Finance, created in 1782, seemed for a while to embody certain proposals derived from alleged Chinese models.
Agricultural History Review, 2017
This article examines the statistics produced by the International Institute of Agriculture in co... more This article examines the statistics produced by the International Institute of Agriculture in connection with the economic conferences that were held under the auspices of the League of Nations in Genoa (1922) and Geneva (1927). Established in 1905 in Rome, the International Institute of Agriculture formed an important institutional framework for the exchange of knowledge on agriculture in the first half of the twentieth century. By examining the Institute’s reports and enquiries and the planning for the world census of agriculture (1930), the article argues that the Institute held a particular vision of the relationship between agriculture and industry that differed greatly from the perspective of the Anglophone experts of the League of Nations. It will be shown that whilst the League addressed the issue of famine and food shortages, the Institute focused on stabilizing farmers’ income.
Agricultural History, 2017
By studying the theoretical and empirical work of agricultural economists in pre-World War I and ... more By studying the theoretical and empirical work of agricultural economists in pre-World War I and interwar Italy, this article shows that agrarianism was a general paradigm shared across the Italian political spectrum by different political families. Originating in the agricultural crisis of the late nineteenth century, agrarianism was understood differently by different political groups, so that its political meaning changed over time, while the underlying economic principles remained stable. The “democratic agrarianism” of the first two decades of the twentieth century—an effort to increase the number of owner-farmers in the name of the “social utility” of land—evolved into the “productivist agrarianism” of the fascist period, when the regime tried to reconcile under a technocratic leadership the contrast between social issues and land productivity. It declared peasant farmers a protected category of subjects, and put the development of Italian agriculture under the tutelage of the state and its bureaucratic structure.
Almanakh, 2015
Throughout his teaching career, Antonio Genovesi invoked history to explain to the students of “t... more Throughout his teaching career, Antonio Genovesi invoked history to explain to the students of “trade and mechanics” how the Kingdom of Naples came to be lagging behind the wealthy nations of north-western Europe and what should be done in order to make the kingdom flourish again. This article explores the three constitutive elements of Genovesi’s philosophy of history: an immutable human nature; the refinement of the arts and sciences; the history of individual nations as accidents of geography and politics made it. Genovesi proclaimed the victory of modern commercial societies over ancient societies and savage nations, but his regard remained anchored the necessities of the European backward periphery. He attributed therefore a providential role to the Sovereign, the sole authority that could reconnect national and universal history.
Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Sep 2015
A few notes on the concept of ‘felicitas publica’ in 18th century Political Economy In this cont... more A few notes on the concept of ‘felicitas publica’ in 18th century Political Economy
In this contribution I present a few notes on the concept of public happiness to the students of the history of political economy in order to clarify the meaning of “public happiness” in the 18th century Italian context. This clarification appears to be necessary because of the recent rise in popularity that the notion of happiness enjoys among economists and historians of political economy. Recently, in particular, some authors have identified Public Happiness as the distinctive trait of a continental, mainly Italian way of understanding political economy, stressing how understanding political economy as the science of achieving public happiness, as the Italians did, differed from understanding political economy as the science of increasing the wealth of nations. These authors insisted on the importance of rediscovering the lost art of “Civil Economy” as a more humane alternative to free market capitalism, in order to provide a theoretical framework within economics for non-profit activities , or even as an ambitious “foundation for an economic theory of civil society” associated with claims that before the peace of Westphalia “social evolution was much more complex and richer than the one characterizing modernity”. My contribution is a reappraisal of the concept of public happiness in the context of the Italian Enlightenment.
First of all, I want to clarify that by public happiness Muratori and Genovesi meant something very specific, namely the goal of a good Monarch. For Genovesi and Muratori, public happiness was a formula useful in asserting the rights of the Prince and the government over and above the rigidity of the legal system . It was obviously not the individual happiness of the members of the community but the final goal of the Monarch and his duty toward the Society. I have showed elsewhere by examining the image of China in the Neapolitan Enlightenment, how at least since the 1760s the political program of Genovesi and his pupils envisaged a strong government that would be able to pursue public happiness rather than be entrapped by the legal litigations of private interests. I also want to show that although public happiness resembles the Aristotelian ideal of bonum commune, it has also different characteristics and it actually originates in that sort of Aristotelian synthesis that we find in the German natural law tradition. The German tradition of Natural Law provided Muratori and Genovesi with an overall framework to understand these issues.
Finally, I will show that Italian economists fell within a broader stream of thought that dominated Central Europe, and that their intellectual roots in the Natural Law tradition make them close relatives of the German Cameralists rather than the Scottish Enlightenment.
History of Political Economy, 2012
European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2020
Capitalism, Alone by Branko Milanovic, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2019, 304 pages, ... more Capitalism, Alone by Branko Milanovic, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2019, 304 pages, £23.95, ISBN 9780674987593.
La vie des idées, 2017
Review of Alain Chatriot, La politique du blé : crises et régulation d’un marché dans la France d... more Review of Alain Chatriot, La politique du blé : crises et régulation d’un marché dans la France de l’entre-deux-guerres, Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France.
Addressing the issue of state intervention in agricultural markets, La Politique du Blé by Alain Chatriot examines the political debate behind the creation of the Office Interprofessionnel du Blé, the French national wheat pool, that was established in 1936 by the leftist government. http://www.booksandideas.net/The-Agricultural-New-Deal.html
Partito Genovesiano", così Franco Venturi definiva il gruppo dei giovani provinciali venuti a Nap... more Partito Genovesiano", così Franco Venturi definiva il gruppo dei giovani provinciali venuti a Napoli ad ascoltare le lezioni di Economia Civile dell'abate salernitano fra gli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta del diciottesimo secolo 1 . Egli attribuiva ai semi piantati coi corsi napoletani, il successivo diffondersi dei Lumi nel regno e nelle sue province, secondo quello che era il programma esplicitamente enunciato da Antonio Genovesi nel suo Discorso sul vero fine delle lettere e delle scienze, con cui la cattedra napoletana di commercio e meccanica era stata inaugurata.
Workshop on N. I. Sieber at Université de Lausanne, Lausanne Switzerland (22 Sept. 2017) organise... more Workshop on N. I. Sieber at Université de Lausanne, Lausanne Switzerland (22 Sept. 2017) organised by François Allisson and Federico D'Onofrio
Rural History 2017 Conference (11-14 September 2017, Leuven, Belgium) Panel 8 (Wednesday 13 Septe... more Rural History 2017 Conference (11-14 September 2017, Leuven, Belgium)
Panel 8 (Wednesday 13 September 2017, 08:30-13:00).