<i>The Economic Legacy of José Joaquín de Mora: Spreading Classical Political Economy in the Hispanic World</i> by Jesús Astigarraga, Javier Usoz, and Juan Zabalza

For most spe cial ists in the his tory of polit i cal econ omy, the Span ish author Jos Joaqun de Mora (1783-1864) is largely unknown.This book reveals him as a key fig ure in the dis sem i na tion of eco nomic knowl edge in the Span ish-speak ing world dur ing the nineteenth cen tury, even if he was not an espe cially orig i nal thinker.However, this book is not only intended for a global audi ence of schol ars who are not spe cialized in the his tory of Spain or Latin America and who may have a mar ginal inter est in the region.In fact, Mora remains a rel a tively shad owy fig ure even for most his to rians of nineteenth-cen tury Spain and the Span ish Amer i can repub lics.In Spain today, he is pri mar ily remem bered for his lit er ary achieve ments as a jour nal ist and poet.In sev eral Latin Amer i can countries (Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Bolivia) he is con sidered an impor tant fig ure of the early days of those states due to the impact of the edu ca tional pro jects he pro moted and his polit i cal role in establishing repub li can insti tu tions, such as the Chilean con sti tu tion of 1828. 1 He arrived in Latin America in 1827 as a polit i cal exile, hav ing pre vi ously stayed in London to flee per se cu tion in Spain for his lib eral ideology.However, Mora's eco nomic pro file has largely been for got ten, if not ignored alto gether.Understandably, there are rea sons for this.Although he pro duced valuable digests such as Catecismo de economa poltica (London, 1825), he never wrote a com pre hen sive trea tise on polit i cal econ omy.He was also a pro lific con tribu tor to the entries on var i ous eco nomic top ics published by the Enciclopedia moderna in the 1850s.So, was he an econ o mist?This book cer tainly makes it clear that he was not a lead ing pro ducer of eco nomic the ory, yet it refers to him as an "enlightened econ o mist" (157).Many nineteenth-cen tury Span ish econ o mists cer tainly excelled in dis sem i nat ing eco nomic thought rather than in pro duc ing it.This book proves that Mora should be con sid ered along side the lead ing fig ures of early nineteenth-cen tury Span ish eco nomic thought, such as