For many Enlightenment thinkers, discerning the relationship between commerce and peace was the central issue of modern politics. The logic of commerce seemed to require European states and empires to learn how to behave in more peaceful, self-limiting ways. However, as the fate of nations came to depend on the flux of markets, it became difficult to see how their race for prosperity could ever be fully disentangled from their struggle for power. On the contrary, it became easy to see how this entanglement could produce catastrophic results. This volume showcases the variety and the depth of approaches to economic rivalry and the rise of public finance that characterized Enlightenment discussions of international politics. It presents a fundamental reassessment of these debates about 'perpetual peace' and their legacy in the history of political thought.

'Commerce and Peace in the Enlightenment is a stimulating and well-crafted testament to the influence of a beloved mentor and colleague.' Paul Cheney, Journal of Modern History

Béla Kapossy is Professor of History at Université de Lausanne, Switzerland. He has been involved in a number of research projects on enlightenment political and economic thought and has written widely on Swiss, French and British intellectual history. Isaac Nakhimovsky is Assistant Professor of History and the Humanities at Yale University, Connecticut. Richard Whatmore is Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, where he is also the Director of the St Andrews Institute of Intellectual History. He has written a number of books and published articles in many of the major academic journals in intellectual history.