Abstract

The following article deals with the formation of economic discourse in eighteenth century Spain. It argues that concepts such as common welfare or honorable businessman supported the establishment of economic thinking in the context of Bourbon Reformism – the predominant political current throughout the eighteenth century. A particular instance of this development are the Discursos mercuriales de Juan Enrique Graef: While Graef ran into serious trouble with censorship, he was also the first economic journalist and founder of the genre of economic press in Spain. With the introduction of liberal thought by Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos and others, the concepts mentioned lost their prevalence, whereas the opposing notion of individual economic interest became an important reference point of economic thinking at the end of Enlightenment Spain.