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This collection of essays examines the ways in which poverty was conceptualised in the social, political, and religious discourses of eighteenth-century Europe. It brings together experts with a wide range of expertise to offer pathbreaking discussions of how eighteenth-century thinkers thought about the poor. Because the theme of poverty played important roles in many critical issues in European history, it was central to some of the key debates in Enlightenment political thought throughout the period, including the controversies about sovereignty and representation, public and private charity, as well as questions relating to crime and punishment. The book examines some of the most important contributions to these debates, while also ranging beyond the canonical Enlightenment thinkers, to investigate how poverty was conceptualised in the wider intellectual culture, as politicians, administrators and pamphlet writers grappled with the issue.
An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.
'This volume makes an important and interesting argument about Enlightenment ideas of poverty, and will inspire future studies that probe its main arguments in broader European and even global contexts. The wish of the editors to stimulate discussion beyond intellectual history – with social and cultural historians and social scientists – is well justified'
Ere Nokkala, European History Quarterly
'Many of the studies collected in this volume provide enlightening examples of the value of bringing the methods and concerns of intellectual history to bear upon social historical terrain, and the various ways ideas informed practices of collective poor relief prior to the 1790s, setting the stage for further inquiry of the discussion of poverty in the European Enlightenment.'
Nicholas B. Miller, Intellectual History Review
'This excellent volume greatly improves our understanding of the continuities and differences in ideas of poverty between the eighteenth and the nineteenth century... an indispensable foundation for further research on poverty in Enlightenment thought.'
Thomas Ahnert, Histoire sociale/Social History
Niall O’Flaherty is Senior Lecturer in the History of European Political Thought at King’s College London
R. J. W. Mills is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Intellectual History, University of St Andrews
Ideas of poverty in an age of Enlightenment: an introduction – R. J. W. Mills
1 ‘Welfare for whom?’ The place of poor relief in the theory and practice of the enlightened absolutist state – T. J. Hochstrasser
2 Economic Bienfaisance and the Physiocratic rhetoric of charity – Arnault Skornicki
3 Poverty, rights and the social contract in Enlightenment Austrian-Habsburg Lombardy – Alexandra Ortolja-Baird
4 An economic regalism: poverty and charity in eighteenth-century Spain – Jesús Astigarraga and Javier Usoz
5 The embarrassment of poverty: Dutch decline, liberalism, patriotism and the duties of the state around 1800 – Koen Stapelbroek
6 Edmund Burke and Adam Smith on the ‘labouring poor’: an eighteenth-century debate – Anna Plassart
7 Beyond a charitable design? Robert Wallace as a theorist of poverty and population growth – Conor Bollins
8 Conceptions of Polish and Russian poverty in the British Enlightenment – Ben Dew
9 Desolation and abundance: poverty and the Irish landscape, c.1720-1820 – James Stafford
10 A new moral economy: the early reception of Malthus – Niall O’Flaherty
11 Poverty, autonomy and control: Patrick Colquhoun’s Treatise on Indigence (1806) - Joanna Innes