Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi
Encyclopedia
Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi (May 19, 1773 – June 25, 1842), whose real name was Simonde, was a writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

 born at Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

. He is best known for his works on French
History of France
The history of France goes back to the arrival of the earliest human being in what is now France. Members of the genus Homo entered the area hundreds of thousands years ago, while the first modern Homo sapiens, the Cro-Magnons, arrived around 40,000 years ago...

 and Italian
History of Italy
Italy, united in 1861, has significantly contributed to the political, cultural and social development of the entire Mediterranean region. Many cultures and civilizations have existed there since prehistoric times....

 history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

, and his economic ideas.

Early life

His father and all his ancestors seem to have borne the name Simonde, at least from the time when they migrated from Dauphiné
Dauphiné
The Dauphiné or Dauphiné Viennois is a former province in southeastern France, whose area roughly corresponded to that of the present departments of :Isère, :Drôme, and :Hautes-Alpes....

 to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 at the revocation of the edict of Nantes
Edict of Nantes
The Edict of Nantes, issued on 13 April 1598, by Henry IV of France, granted the Calvinist Protestants of France substantial rights in a nation still considered essentially Catholic. In the Edict, Henry aimed primarily to promote civil unity...

. It was not till after Sismondi had become an author that, observing the identity of his family arms with those of the once flourishing Pisa
Pisa
Pisa is a city in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the River Arno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...

n house of the Sismondi and finding that some members of that house had migrated to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, he assumed the connection without further proof and called himself Sismondi.

The Simondes, however, were themselves citizens of Geneva of the upper class, and possessed both rank and property, though the father was also a village pastor.
His uncle by marriage was the prominent pastor Jacob Vernes
Jacob Vernes
Jacob VernesNot to be confused with Jacob Vernet, a prominent theologian in Geneva around the same time. was a Swiss theologian and Protestant pastor in Geneva, famous for his correspondence with Voltaire and Rousseau.-Life:...

, a friend of Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...

 and Rousseau.
The future historian was well educated, but his family wished him to devote himself to commerce rather than literature, and he became a banker's clerk in Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

. Then the Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 broke out, and as it affected Geneva, the Simonde family took refuge in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 where they stayed for eighteen months (1793–1794). Disliking—it is said—the climate, they returned to Geneva, but found the state of affairs still unfavourable; there is even a legend that the head of the family was reduced to sell milk himself in the town. The greater part of the family property was sold, and with the proceeds they emigrated to Italy, bought a small farm in Pescia
Pescia
Pescia is an Italian city in the province of Pistoia, Tuscany, central Italy.It is located in a central zone between the cities Lucca and Florence, on the banks of the homonymous river.-History:...

 near Lucca
Lucca
Lucca is a city and comune in Tuscany, central Italy, situated on the river Serchio in a fertile plainnear the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Lucca...

 and Pistoia
Pistoia
Pistoia is a city and comune in the Tuscany region of Italy, the capital of a province of the same name, located about 30 km west and north of Florence and is crossed by the Ombrone Pistoiese, a tributary of the River Arno.-History:...

, and set to work to cultivate it themselves. Sismondi worked hard there, with both his hands and mind, and his experiences gave him the material of his first book, Tableau de l'agriculture toscane, which, after returning to Geneva, he published there in 1801. In 1803, he published his Traité de la richesse commerciale, his first work on the subject of political economy, which, with some differences of view, continued to interest him until death.

Main economic thoughts

As an economist
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...

, Sismondi represented a humanitarian protest against the dominant orthodoxy of his time. In his first book, he followed Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...

; but in his principal subsequent economic work, Nouveaux principes d'économie politique (1819), he insisted on the fact that economic science studied the means of increasing wealth too much, and the use of wealth for producing happiness, too little. For the science of economics, his most important contribution was probably his discovery of economic cycles. In refutation of other thinkers at the time (notably J. B. Say
Jean-Baptiste Say
Jean-Baptiste Say was a French economist and businessman. He had classically liberal views and argued in favor of competition, free trade, and lifting restraints on business...

 and David Ricardo
David Ricardo
David Ricardo was an English political economist, often credited with systematising economics, and was one of the most influential of the classical economists, along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. He was also a member of Parliament, businessman, financier and speculator,...

), Sismondi challenged the idea that economic equilibrium
Economic equilibrium
In economics, economic equilibrium is a state of the world where economic forces are balanced and in the absence of external influences the values of economic variables will not change. It is the point at which quantity demanded and quantity supplied are equal...

 leading to full employment would be immediately and spontaneously achieved. He wrote, "Let us beware of this dangerous theory of equilibrium which is supposed to be automatically established. A certain kind of equilibrium, it is true, is reestablished in the long run, but it is after a frightful amount of suffering." He was not a socialist; but, in protesting against laissez faire and invoking the state "to regulate the progress of wealth," he was an interesting precursor of the German Historical school of economics
Historical school of economics
The Historical school of economics was an approach to academic economics and to public administration that emerged in 19th century in Germany, and held sway there until well into the 20th century....

.

His theory may more precisely be classed as one of periodic crises, rather than cycles per se. His theory was adapted by Charles Dunoyer
Charles Dunoyer
Barthélemy-Charles-Pierre-Joseph Dunoyer de Segonzac was a French liberal economist....

, who introduces the notion of cycling between two phases, thus giving a modern form of economic cycle.

Sismondi also contributed a great deal to economics with his thoughts on aggregate demand
Aggregate demand
In macroeconomics, aggregate demand is the total demand for final goods and services in the economy at a given time and price level. It is the amount of goods and services in the economy that will be purchased at all possible price levels. This is the demand for the gross domestic product of a...

. Observing the capitalist industrial system in England, Sismondi saw that unchecked competition both resulted in producers all increasing individual production (because of lack of knowledge of other producers' production) this was then seen as forcing employers to cut prices, which they did by sacrificing workers' wages. This yielded overproduction
Overproduction
In economics, overproduction, oversupply or excess of supply refers to excess of supply over demand of products being offered to the market...

 and underconsumption
Underconsumption
In underconsumption theory in economics, recessions and stagnation arise due to inadequate consumer demand relative to the amount produced. The theory has been replaced since the 1930s by Keynesian economics and the theory of aggregate demand, both of which were influenced by...

; with most of England's workforce suffering from depressed wages, workers were then unable to afford the goods they had produced, and underconsumption
Underconsumption
In underconsumption theory in economics, recessions and stagnation arise due to inadequate consumer demand relative to the amount produced. The theory has been replaced since the 1930s by Keynesian economics and the theory of aggregate demand, both of which were influenced by...

 of goods then followed. Sismondi believed that by increasing the wages of laborers they would have more buying power, be able to buy the national output and thus increase demand.

In his book On Classical Economics, Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social theorist, political philosopher, and author. A National Humanities Medal winner, he advocates laissez-faire economics and writes from a libertarian perspective...

 devotes a chapter to Sismondi, arguing that he was a neglected pioneer.

Italian history

Meanwhile, he began to compile his great Histoire des républiques italiennes du Moyen Âge, and was introduced to Madame de Staël
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein , commonly known as Madame de Staël, was a French-speaking Swiss author living in Paris and abroad. She influenced literary tastes in Europe at the turn of the 19th century.- Childhood :...

. He became very intimate with her, and after being regularly enrolled in the society of Coppet, he was invited or commanded—for Madame de Staël's invitations had something of command—to form one of the suite with which the future Corinne made the journey to Italy, which resulted in Corinne itself during the years 1804–1805. Sismondi was not altogether at ease here, and he particularly disliked Schlegel
August Wilhelm von Schlegel
August Wilhelm Schlegel was a German poet, translator, critic, and a foremost leader of German Romanticism. His translations of Shakespeare made the English dramatist's works into German classics.-Life and work:Schlegel was born at Hanover, where his father, Johann Adolf Schlegel, was a Lutheran...

 who was also a participant. But during this journey he met the Countess of Albany, widow of Charles Edward, who all her life was gifted with a singular ability to attract the affection (Platonic or otherwise) of men of letters. She was now an old woman, and Sismondi's relationship with her was of the strictly friendly character, but they were close and lasted long, and they produced much valuable and interesting correspondence.

In 1807 appeared the first volumes of the above-mentioned book about the Italian republics, which, though his essay in political economy had brought him some reputation and the offer of a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n professorship, first made Sismondi a prominent man among European men of letters. The completion of this book, which extended to sixteen volumes, occupied him, though by no means entirely, for the next eleven years. He lived at first in Geneva where he delivered some interesting lectures about the literature of southern Europe, which were continued from time to time and finally published. He held an official position: secretary of the chamber of commerce for the then department of Leman
Leman
Leman may refer to:People:*Albert Leman , Russian composer*Bob Leman , American science fiction and horror author*Daniel Leman , World class martial artist*Cory Leman , American football linebacker...

.

French history

In 1813, he visited Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 for the first time, lived there for some time, and mixed with many in literary society. Although a Liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

 and in his earlier days almost an Anglomaniac, he did not welcome the fall of the empire. During the Hundred Days
Hundred Days
The Hundred Days, sometimes known as the Hundred Days of Napoleon or Napoleon's Hundred Days for specificity, marked the period between Emperor Napoleon I of France's return from exile on Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815...

, he defended Napoleon's constitutional schemes or promises, and had an audience with the emperor himself, which is one of the main events of a not very eventful life. After the Restoration he left Paris.

On completing (1817) his great book about the Italian republics, he undertook (1818) a still greater work, Histoire des Français, which he planned on a long period, and of which during the remaining twenty-three years of his life he published twenty-nine volumes. His untiring industry enabled him to compile many other books, but it is on these two that his fame mainly rests. The former displays his qualities in the most favourable light, and has been least injuriously affected by subsequent writings and investigations. But the latter, as a careful and accurate sketch on a grand scale, has now been superseded. Sainte-Beuve
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was a literary critic and one of the major figures of French literary history.-Early years:...

 has, with benevolent sarcasm, surnamed the author "the Rollin
Charles Rollin
Charles Rollin was a French historian and educator. He was born in Paris.-Biography:He was the son of a cutler, and at the age of twenty-two was made a master in the Collège du Plessis. In 1694 he was rector of the University of Paris, rendering great service among other things by reviving the...

 of French History," and the praise and the blame implied in the comparison are both perfectly well deserved.

Later life

In April 1819, Sismondi married an English lady, Jessie Allen, whose sister, Catherine Allen, was the wife of Sir James Mackintosh and another sister, Elizabeth Allen, was the wife of Josiah Wedgwood II
Josiah Wedgwood II
Josiah Wedgwood II , the son of the English potter Josiah Wedgwood, continued his father's firm and was Member of Parliament for Stoke-upon-Trent from 1832 to 1835...

 and mother of Emma Wedgwood
Emma Darwin
Emma Darwin was the wife and first cousin of Charles Darwin, the English naturalist, scientist and author of On the Origin of Species...

. This marriage appears to have been a very happy one. His later years were mainly spent in Geneva; in the politics of that city he took a great—though as time and changes went on, waning—interest. Indeed, in his later days he became a kind of reactionary.

In 1826, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...

.

Other works

Besides the works mentioned above he did many others, never working less than eight hours a day for many years. The most important ones are: Littérature du midi de l'Europe (1813), a historical novel entitled Julia Severa ou l'an 492 (1822), Histoire de la renaissance de la liberté en Italie (1832), Histoire de la chute de l'Empire romain (1835), Précis de l'histoire des Français, an abridgment of his own book (1839), and several others, mainly political pamphlets.

Sismondi's journals and his correspondence with Channing
William Ellery Channing
Dr. William Ellery Channing was the foremost Unitarian preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century and, along with Andrews Norton, one of Unitarianism's leading theologians. He was known for his articulate and impassioned sermons and public speeches, and as a prominent thinker...

, with the countess of Albany and with others have been published mainly by Mlle Mongolfier (Paris, 1843) and M. de Saint-René Taillandier
Saint-René Taillandier
Saint-René Taillandier was a French writer and critic.He was born René Gaspard Ernest Taillandier, in Paris. He completed his studies in Heidelberg, and then became professor of literature successively in Strasbourg, Montpellier and at the Sorbonne, where he was nominated to the chair of French...

 (Paris, 1863). The latter work serves as the main text of two admirable Lundis of Sainte-Beuve (September 1863), republished in the Nouveaux Lundis, vol. VI.

Historiographical position and political stance

He was a historian whose economic ideas passed through different phases. The acceptance of free trade principles in De la richesse commerciale was abandoned in favour of a critical posture towards free trade
Free trade
Under a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...

 and industrialisation
Industrialisation
Industrialization is the process of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial one...

.

Nouveaux principes d'économie politique attacked wealth accumulation both as an end in itself, and for its detrimental effect on the poor. His critique was noticed by Malthus, Ricardo
David Ricardo
David Ricardo was an English political economist, often credited with systematising economics, and was one of the most influential of the classical economists, along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. He was also a member of Parliament, businessman, financier and speculator,...

 and J. S. Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...

. He indicated contradictions of capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

. He can be said to have criticized capitalism in a sentimental way, from the viewpoint of the petty bourgeois. Despite his favorable attitude towards the poor, he was himself attacked by Marx, Lenin, and other socialists for lacking positive aims. Marx, for example, said he "dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern production" but that his recommendations were reactionary, only wanting to restore the old means of production.

Main publications

  • Tableau de l'agriculture toscane (1801)
  • De la richesse commerciale (1803)
  • Histoire des républiques italiennes du Moyen Âge (1809–1818)
  • The History of the Italian Republics in the Middle Ages, Sismondi's most important historical work. The first volume appeared in 1807, the sixteenth and final volume in 1818. The focus on Italy's republican past proved an inspiration to nineteenth-century Italian nationalists.
  • De l'intérêt de la France à l'égard de la traite des nègres (1814)
  • Examen de la Constitution française (1815)
  • Political Economy (1815)
  • Nouveaux principes d'économie politique, ou de la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population (1819)
  • Histoire des Français (1821–1844)
  • Les colonies des anciens comparées à celles des modernes (1837)
  • Études de sciences sociales (1837)
  • Études sur l'économie politique (1837)
  • Précis de l'histoire des Français (1839)
  • (1857)
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK