Keywords

JEL Classifications

Born in Limoges, 13 January 1806; died in Paris, November 1879. Undoubtedly one of the most eminent 19th-century French economists, Chevalier belongs to that most typical brand of engineer-economists. First in his class (major) at the Ecole Polytechnique in 1830 and member of the Corps des Mines as an economist, Chevalier came very early under the spell of Saint-Simon’s utopian doctrine. From his early editorship of the Saint-Simonian newspaper Le Globe (1830–2) and his subsequent sentence to a year in jail (for ‘outrage to morals’ for publishing advanced ideas on the liberation of women, sexual liberty and the need for communal life) to a made-to-measure niche as economic adviser to Napoleon III and ‘éminence grise’ to the Second Empire business and banking establishment, Chevalier applied his brilliant mind to various current problems and policy issues without managing, however, to escape completely from the Saint-Simonian mystique. His main claim to fame, the Anglo-French Treaty of 1860 (the Cobden–Chevalier Treaty), an important if short-lived interruption in the general protectionist policy of France, is one of the best illustrations of these twin components of Chevalier’s approach to economics and economic policy: weak on the analytics and very strong on the factual analysis with a touch of Saint-Simonian idealism.

Together with public works, cheap bank credit and education, free trade is one of the articles of faith he took over from the Saint-Simonian doctrine. Chevalier returned to these issues throughout his life (notably in his penetrating analysis of the American economy and banking system in the early 1830s which earned him later the nickname of ‘Economic Tocqueville’). Binding these various elements with a quasi-philosophical concept of association (as the cornerstone of social order), Chevalier suggests a broad theory of economic growth which he considered flexible enough to be applied to different times and countries.

His Saint-Simonian antecedents and his extensive travelling (to England, Egypt and foremost to the United States) rendered Chevalier suspicious of all ‘absolutist’ economic theory. In fact, in his most technical chapters (particularly on money) Chevalier never digs beneath the surface of things and contributes very little, if anything, to analytic economics. His only systematic work, his Cours (1843; 1844; 1850) delivered at the Collège de France offers little more in the field of theory than a lengthy (and flat) apology for Say’s brand of ‘vulgar’ liberalism. With Rossi, his predecessor, and Leroy-Beaulieu, his successor at the Collège de France, Chevalier was in fact largely responsible for introducing and perpetuating in academic circles the liberal orthodoxy that was to bar Walras from getting an appointment in the 1860s and that dominated French economics for so long that as late as 1939 Keynes could still quip about its lack of ‘deep roots in systematic thought’ (1939, p. xxxii).

Selected Works

  • 1843, 1844, 1850. Cours d’économie politique. 3 vols. Paris: Capelle.