Ideas of poverty in the Age of Enlightenment

Niall O’Flaherty is Senior Lecturer in the History of European Political Thought at King’s College LondonR. J. W. Mills is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Intellectual History, University of St Andrews

'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

• Ideas of poverty in an age of Enlightenment: an introduction – R. J. W. Mills1 ‘Welfare for whom?’ The place of poor relief in the theory and practice of the enlightened absolutist state – T. J. Hochstrasser2 Economic Bienfaisance and the Physiocratic rhetoric of charity – Arnault Skornicki3 Poverty, rights and the social contract in Enlightenment Austrian-Habsburg Lombardy – Alexandra Ortolja-Baird4 An economic regalism: poverty and charity in eighteenth-century Spain – Jesús Astigarraga and Javier Usoz5 The embarrassment of poverty: Dutch decline, liberalism, patriotism and the duties of the state around 1800 – Koen Stapelbroek6 Edmund Burke and Adam Smith on the ‘labouring poor’: an eighteenth-century debate – Anna Plassart7 Beyond a charitable design? Robert Wallace as a theorist of poverty and population growth – Conor Bollins8 Conceptions of Polish and Russian poverty in the British Enlightenment – Ben Dew9 Desolation and abundance: poverty and the Irish landscape, c.1720-1820 – James Stafford10 A new moral economy: the early reception of Malthus – Niall O’Flaherty11 Poverty, autonomy and control: Patrick Colquhoun’s Treatise on Indigence (1806) - Joanna Innes