Les Ephemerides du citoyen et les Nouvelles Ephemerides economiques 1765-1788. Documents et table complete

Between 1750 and 1775, France was the world centre for economics publications, and during the years 1767–1775, the Éphémérides was its leading periodical in this field. During its greatest period, from 1767 to 1772, this journal dominated French economic debate. It had only a few hundred regular readers and even fewer subscribers, but was very influential. It was read in Russia, Poland, Sweden, Austria (notably by Karl von Zinzendorf, advisor to Joseph II), Germany, Scotland (among others by Adam Smith, who owned a substantial run of the journal), England (notably by Lord Shelburne, the Prime Minister of 1782–1783, and by Arthur Young), Switzerland, Italy (cf. Becagli, 2003). It included among its authors Benjamin Franklin (who was a subscriber), Quesnay, Turgot (who published in the Éphémérides his greatest work, Réflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses, in three instalments), Mirabeau, Du Pont de Nemours, all of the major and most of the minor Physiocrats, including the ruling Prince of Baden-Durlach (his Abrégé, published in the first tome of 1772, is called by Schumpeter ‘the best’ of ‘the four textbooks of physiocratic orthodoxy’: 1954, p. 225). From almost its beginning the Éphémérides was the Physiocrats' voice: the founder of the journal, N. Baudeau, was not originally a Physiocrat, but soon became an active one. He was replaced as editor in 1768 by P. S. Du Pont de Nemours, an even more zealous économiste. The journal was involved in controversies on both trivial and important points with almost anybody who counted at the time and disagreed with it, with the exceptions of Voltaire (who mocked the Physiocrats in his famous L'homme aux quarante écus, of 1768, but at the end of his life published a text sympathetic to the journal) and Rousseau (who had little empathy for the Physiocrats but had good relations with Mirabeau and possibly with Du Pont): Adam Smith, Beccaria, Galiani, Forbonnais, Graslin, Linguet, Mably, Necker, and others were subjected to mild or vitriolic attacks (in some cases, e.g. for Galiani, it was not the Physiocrats who initiated the fight), while the dictatorship—or ‘despotisme’—of Gustave III of Sweden and other ‘enlightened’ monarchs was supported. The journal very astutely tried to convince the world that all economic reforms in Germany, Italy, Russia, or Sweden were inspired by Physiocratic ideas (see Vardi, 2012)

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