This is a study of Irish-born Richard Cantillon, eighteenth century banker and economist whose Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en General (1755), published twenty-one years after his death, remains a significant contribution to the development of monetary theory. Cantillon's life was an exciting story of involvement in high-level international banking, and speculation in foreign exchanges, commodities and stocks at the time of the South Sea Bubble. His death occurred in mysterious circumstances.

About the Author
Antoin E. Murphy is a retired Professor of Economics and Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin. He was a visiting scholar at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard, the Institut d'Etudes Demographiques in Paris, the Hoover Institution, and the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His special interests are in macroeconomics, monetary economics, and the history of monetary thought. He was one of the founding and joint managing editors of the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought.

Reviews
It is a remarkable story, and the complexities of Cantillon's affairs are unravelled by Antoin Murphy with marvellous lucidity. Read it as an account of high finance in an age when financial sophistication was galloping ahead of the appropriate codes of business ethics. It must surely establish Cantillon's biographer as a master of this difficult genre of historical writing. * Business History *
This is a fascinating piece of historical detective work. Anyone who is interested in the mercantile, monetary and financial history of the period, should read this study which corrects many of the simplistic notions that enjoy academic currency. * Michael S. Moss, University of Glasgow *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198823476
Author Antoin E. Murphy
Format Paperback
Page Count 358
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 157mm * 20mm