The Academy of Fisticuffs. Political Economy and Commercial Society in Enlightenment Italy

Abstract

ABSTRACT This is a review article of Sophus Reinert’s The Academy of Fisticuffs (Harvard, 2018). It is structured in four parts. The first section introduces Reinert’s book and its themes, and the second one provides a summary of its chapters. The third section situates the book in relation with Reinert’s previous scholarship, and with literature (both Italian and international) on eighteenth-century political economy and reformism. The final and fourth part pushes Reinert’s method one step further: it argues for the integration of the history of political economy and the history of scientific practices and practitioners, by advocating their fundamental and often neglected role in the enforcement of political economic ideas into real policies.