Markets for Knowledge. The Institutionalisation of Economics, the Rationalisation of Language Learning and the Brazilian Translation of Luigi Cossa's Primi Elementi di Economia Politica

This paper studies the Brazilian translation of Luigi Cossa’s primi elementi di economia politica (1875), made on the 6th Italian edition (1883) by Carlos Soares Guimarães, and published in Rio de Janeiro in 1888. This translation is an interesting case of circulation of economic ideas that goes hand in hand with the circulation of tools for the learning of modern languages. The success of Cossa’s textbook can be explained by institutional factors concerning political economy (its institutionalisation in Brazilian universities), and by institutional and social factors relating to the learning of modern languages (the spread of innovative methods for conversing in, and translating from, Italian). A “market for political economy” and a “market for modern languages” appear as parallel phenomena, connected to the rise of a modern publishing industry and, more broadly, to the growing circulation of labourers and goods across borders.