Antoni de Capmany de Montpalau i Saurís

(Barcelona 1742- Cadiz 1813)

Born in a family that supported the House of Austria, Antoni de Campmany died while being a deputy in Cadiz, where he campaigned in favour of the reestablisment of the Catalan Constitutions which were abolished in 1714. He was a soldier who took part in the colonization of the Sierra Morena by Catalan settlers. Back to Madrid, he represented the City Council of Barcelona and the Board of Trade of the Principality of Catalonia. He was a life member and secretary of the Royal Academy of History.

His major work was the Memorias históricas sobre la marina, comercio y artes de la antigua ciudad de Barcelona, (1779 and 1792) about to be reprinted in its third edition**. This great work is an economic history of Catalonia, one of the most important ones in the eighteenth-century Europe. The work is based on a broad knowledge of the original documents, on which he worked with Jaume Caresmar, and presents a theoretical system of a notably democratic nature ("not dependent on the nobility") that stressed the importance of the "common homeland" of the Catalans, a strong foreign trade network based on luxury articles, the division into distinct social strata and the guilds, which received special praise in a work which was to reach a wide audience.

In the last years of his life he published Qüestiones críticas sobre varios puntos de historia económica, política y militar, reprinted in 1988.

Ernest Lluch i Martin (2000)

** The third edition was published in 2001 with a preface by Josep Fontana, in the collection 'Clàssics del Pensament Econòmic Català' directed by Ernest Lluch.