‘Una scienza dell'amor patrio’: Public economy, freedom and civilization in Giuseppe Pecchio's works (1827–1830)

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse the main economic and political writings of Giuseppe Pecchio (1785–1835), a Lombard economist and former Napoleonic civil servant who, after the failed uprising of 1821 in Milan, spent most of his life in exile in England. Against previous interpretations dating back to contemporary reviewers, it is argued that Pecchio was an admirer of English political economists and the English economic model, in spite of his advocacy of the historical primacy of Italian economic thought. Given the fact that widespread support to mechanisation backed by an intellectual elite committed to the radical transformation of Italian economies hardly existed in Restoration Italy, it is in Pecchio's unequivocal but often misunderstood support to this process that lies the significance of his work. Furthermore, Pecchio's economic and civic discourse reconciled several liberal‐moderate concerns: the need for independence, the desire to revalue the Italian intellectual tradition and a model of development endorsing social and economic inequalities. Hence the popularity and influence of his idea of economics as ‘scienza dell'amor patrio’ in the ideology of the Risorgimento, which was adopted, among others, by C. Cavour, A. Scialoja and F. Ferrara.