Campomanes, Pedro Rodriguez de
Campomanes, Pedro Rodriguez de (1723-1802). Spanish, Statesman, Historiographer and Economist.
Pedro Rodriguez de Campomanes was born in Santa Eulalla de Sorribas, Spain. He was a prestigious statesman who wrote extensively about economics and politics. Campomanes believed in a well-ordered monarchy based directly on the productivity of the people. The people must be made happy by the intelligent application of the principles of political economy. He believed that traditional privileges, such as grazing rights held by the sheep-breeders’ corporation, as well as the prejudice of the nobility against the “mechanical trades” could not be allowed to stand in the way of greater prosperity for the state. He also wrote a critical political discourse on the state of Spanish literature and proposed a means of reforming universities and public education. As a historian he is famous for his Disertaciones historicas del orden, y caballería de los templarios on the Templars (1747), a biography of Padre Feijoo and the Antiguedad maritima de la Republica de Cartago (1756) and was eventually named President of the Royal Academy of History. As a statesman he became the treasurer of the Consejo de Castilla and later its governor. His principal contribution is in the area of economics with his Tratado de la regalía de amortización (1765), Discurso sobre el fomento de la Industria popular (1774) and Discurso sobre la educación popular sobre los artesanos (1775).
Further Reading:
F. Alvarez Requejo, El Conde de Campomanes. Su obra historica, 1954.
Christine Bridges-Esser
Lamar University