An example of The importance of translations for the history of economic thought

What is it about?

This article is about the Portuguese translation of the Eléments du commerce de Véron de Forbonnais, published in 1766, 14 years after the original. The translator was a certain José Manuel Ribeiro Pereira, who would soon become the Secretary of the Companhia Geral do Grão-Pará e Maranhão, a commercial company created by the Marquis of Pombal, the king's "prime minister", to promote the exclusive trade of Portuguese ships with Brazil, at the time a colony of Portugal.

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Why is it important?

The history of the translator is fascinating, because he became an influential representative of the economic policies of the Marquis of Pombal, and he translated other works, like Fénelon's Aventures de Télémaque. Significantly, as Fénelon put in the mouth of the famous Mentor a vision of commercial policy that was much more laissez-fairist than that of Pombal, Pereira decided to add to the book a "third volume", in which he put in the mouth of Ulysses a more mercantilist vision of the economy