L'Economista Anglofilo. Paolo Balsamo e l'utopia liberale in Sicilia (1787-1816)

Abstract

Paolo Balsamo -economist and professor of University of Palermo from 1787 to 1812- was a traveller and expert in the most advanced and modern British and European agriculture. He wrote articles and essays, both in English and Italian, on agriculture and political economy and was a correspondent of important cultural and political circles of British Whiggism. As a member of the Sicilian Parliament, ideologist of the constitutional party and trusted collaborator of Lord Bentinck, he wrote the Sicilian Constitution of 1812 which reformed the old institution of the Kingdom of Sicily transforming it into a liberal State. This monography explores Balsamo's intellectual and political figure through the historiographical instruments of the Institutional history of economic thought.