Paris and the Anti-physiocratic Querelle (1759–1770)

The Chap. 7 reconstructs the ten-year stay in Paris. In his role as diplomatic representative of the Neapolitan court, Galiani came into contact with the core promoter of French (and thus European) Enlightenment culture, becoming an assiduous and admired frequenter of salons. His correspondence with the minister Bernardo Tanucci reveals the political and diplomatic issues that the abbot had to deal with during this period, using his particular skill to maintain the neutrality of the Neapolitan kingdom when faced with urging from the French to join the Pacte de Famille, designed to reunite the various branches of the Bourbon dynasty under French control. From Paris, Galiani observed the dramatic famine that hit the Neapolitan economy and became involved in the debate on the liberalisation of the grain trade, supported by the physiocratic school. However, after a careful analysis of the particular characteristics of the grain trade, the Neapolitan abbot, with his Dialogues, launched a polemic with physiocracy, destined to last many years and to intersect with the various agrarian crises that characterised the French economy in the 1770s. It was also a clash of a methodological nature, where Galiani’s Newtonianism was opposed to the Cartesianism of the conomistes. A diplomatic incident in which Galiani was involved interrupted his French sojourn.