Content provided in partnership with
Business Services Industry
Carpenter, Kenneth E. 2002. The Dissemination of The Wealth of Nations in French and in France, 1776-1843
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Oct, 2004 by Yann Giraud
Carpenter, Kenneth E. 2002. The Dissemination of The Wealth of Nations in French and in France, 1776-1843. New York: Bibliographical Society of America. 318 pp. Index and bibliographical references. ISBN 0-914930-17-6
Formerly assistant director for research resources at the Harvard University Library, Kenneth E. Carpenter is a widely published library historian. The editor of the Harvard Library Bulletin since 1980, he edited Books and Society in History, a pioneering volume in the development of the field of the history of books in the United States, in 1983. The Dissemination of The Wealth of Nations in French and in France is the outcome of decades of bibliographical research all over the world.
- Most Popular Articles in News
- The Ten Best Laptop bags
- Tata plans cheapest-ever car for Indian market
- GLOBALIZATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT OF THE THIRD WORLD
- Corn is good for you; Corn is not only a tasty treat, but also a cereal that ...
- THE 50 BEST STYLISH HANDBAGS TO CARRY
- More »
This book, which stands on the borders of bibliographical analysis, books and publishing history, and the history of economic thought, may seem unusual for two reasons. First, the author brings a different point of view to the question of the French translations of WN. In France, the focus of former studies has not been the dissemination of Adam Smith's book, but the question of its translation itself. French historians and economists have focused on Garnier's translation. which is the most widespread version of the book in France. In doing, they drew attention to translation problems, especially to the way Gamier translated the terms stock and capital. Paulette Taieb, credited by Carpenter as an important collaborator to his book, conducted a new translation of WN that tries to get the matter settled without really generating a consensus. Carpenter's book does not enter the debate, as it's essentially focused on pre-Garnier translations; it explores the question of WN dissemination from a historical point of view only. The quality of the various translations is not what is at stake here. Rather, Carpenter's work deals with basic questions: Who translated WN into French? Why and how did these translations fail or succeed in gaining audiences? How did WN become a canonical book? Clearly, simple questions do not lead to simple answers, as they require an amount of research that only a few can undertake.
Something else that makes this book so unusual is its structure, which is far from linear. The book is divided into two parts. The first one is a 42-page preliminary essay presenting some of the results of Carpenter's research and sketching a history of WN dissemination in French and in France. The period covered by this study begins with the first French review of WN, which appeared a few months after its publication in Great Britain in 1776; it ends with the appearance of the definitive version of Germain Garnier's translation in 1843. The second part, which actually takes up the core of the book, presents all the pieces gathered by Carpenter in his research, from extracts and reviews of WN published in French or in French-language journals to prefaces and notes of every edition of WA in French. This structure implicitly invites the reader to go from the first part to the other and makes The Dissemination not only a definitive study on Adam Smith's work in France and in French, but also a real object of study in itself. As Carpenter notes in his introduction, "this study might be said to be the organized presentation of source material for others to use" (p. xxviii). Thus, more than half of the book is in French and accordingly requires a good knowledge of the language, as the style is often characteristic of 18th- and 19th-century literature.
"French Transformations of the Wealth of Nations," the introductory essay, presents a particular history of Adam Smith's book in France and in French, following its journey from marginality to centrality and from centrality to canonicity. By "marginality," Carpenter means that although a French translation of WN did exist, it was barely available in France. The first translation of WN is anonymous and its location, La Haye, probably an artefact. The absence of preface and notes show that the book wasn't meant to be widespread or attract interest. Then Carpenter describes the difficulties encountered by the first known translators, the Abbe Blavet and Francois Reverdil, in getting their translation published. He also mentions that another translator, the Abbe Morellet, failed to have an extract of his own translation published. Carpenter does not really explain what these translators' motivations were, merely noting that they made a living from various works of translation. It is also mentioned that publication of WN was unauthorized by the French authorities, as Adam Smith made several statements that could have been considered provocative to French royalty and Catholicism. That can explain in turn why WN has become a central text during the French Revolution.
By "centrality," Carpenter simply means that WN became available in Paris. At that point several reissues of Blavet's translation were released, while another translator, the French poet Jean-Francois Roucher, managed to publish his own. Carpenter describes the French publishing system during the revolutionary period, explaining how some editions sold out as others failed in reaching the Parisian market. The fact that Condorcet was interested in writing a translation proves that Smith's book was considered a part of the revolutionary cultural development.
