Abstract
Quesnay was born at Mère, Seine-et-Oise. He came from a family of humble origin, the eighth of 13 children. His father Nicholas was a small merchant, and the family also had a piece of land; thanks to these two activities they were comfortably off. François Quesnay had no systematic education; at ten he could not even read, but early on he developed an interest in medicine. In 1711 he went to Paris for formal training in medicine and surgery. There he read Descartes and Malebranche, and the latter’s Recherche de la verité had a profound impact on the young Quesnay. In 1717 he married Jeanne-Cathérine Dauphin, who gave him four children, two of whom survived. He began his career at Mantes, a small town not far from Paris, and in the 1720s and 1730s he made his reputation as a surgeon, particularly with respect to bleeding techniques. In 1736 he published l’Essai physique sur l’oeconomie animale, his first major work. Quesnay was deeply involved in the polemic between surgeons and physicians which took place in the 1740s. At that time he was also physician to the Duke of Villeroy and through him and the Comtesse d’Estrades he met Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV’s favourite. Quesnay became her private physician and established himself at Versailles. In 1752 he saved the Dauphin from smallpox, and in gratitude the King granted Quesnay a noble title and a sum of money which he used to buy an estate at Beauvoir in the Minervois for his son Blaise-Guillaume. In 1750 and 1751 Quesnay published the last of his medical works and became a member of the French Académie des Sciences and of the Royal Society in London.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Cartelier, J. 1976. Surproduit et reproduction – la formation de l’économie politique classique. Paris: Maspero.
Daire, E. 1846. Physiocrates. Paris: Librairie de Guillaumin.
Du Pont de Nemours, P.S. 1764. De l’importation et de l’exportation des grains. In Collection des économistes et des réformateurs sociaux de la France. Paris: Librairie Paul Geuthner, 1911.
Eltis, W.A. 1975. François Quesnay: A reinterpretation. 2. The theory of economic growth. Oxford Economic Papers 27: 327–351.
Eltis, W.A. 1984. The classical theory of economic growth. London: Macmillan.
Fox-Genovese, E. 1976. The origins of physiocracy. Economic revolution and social order in eighteenth century France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Gilibert, G. 1977. Quesnay, la costruzione della macchina della prosperità. Milan: Etas Libri.
Groenewegen, P.D. 1971. A re-interpretation of Turgot’s theory of capital and interest. Economic Journal 83: 327–340.
Groenewegen, P.D. 1983. Quesnay. Farmers (1756) and Turgot. Sur la grande et la petite culture (1766). Reprints of Economic Classics, Series 2, No. 2. Sydney: University of Sydney.
Hecht, J. 1958. La vie de François Quesnay. In INED (1958), vol. 1.
Herlitz, L. 1961. The Tableau économique and the doctrine of sterility. Scandinavian Economic History Review 9 (1): 3–51.
INED (Institut Nationale d’Etudes Démographiques). 1958. In François Quesnay et la Physiocratie, ed. L. Salleron, vol. 2. Paris: INED.
Kuczynski, M., and R.L. Meek. 1972. Quesnay’s Tableau Economique. London: Macmillan.
Marx, K. 1963. Theories of surplus value. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Meek, R.L. 1962. The economics of physiocracy: Essays and translations. London: Allen & Unwin.
Mirabeau, V.R. 1758–60. L’ami des hommes ou traité de la population. Reprinted Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1970.
Mirabeau, V.R. 1764. Philosophie rurale, ou économie générale et politique de l’agriculture. Amsterdam, chez les Libraires Associés. Reprinted Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1972.
Oncken, A., ed. 1888. Oeuvres économiques et philosophiques de François Quesnay. Paris: Jules Peelman.
Petty, W. 1662. A treatise of taxes and contributions. In The economic writings of Sir William Petty, vol. 1, ed. C.H. Hull. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1899.
Phillips, A. 1955. The Tableau Economique as a simple Leontief model. Quarterly Journal of Economics 69 (1): 137–144.
Schumpeter, J.A. 1954. History of economic analysis. London: Allen & Unwin.
Spengler, J.J. 1958. Quesnay philosophe, empiriste, économiste. In INED (1958), vol. 1.
Tsuru, S. 1942. On reproduction schemes. In The theory of capitalist development, ed. P. Sweezy. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Vaggi, G. 1987. The economics of François Quesnay. London: Macmillan.
Weulersse, G. 1910. Le mouvement physiocratique en France (de 1756 à 1770). Paris: Felix Alcan.
Woog, H. 1950. The Tableau Economique of François Quesnay. Berne: Franckle Verlag.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2018 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Vaggi, G. (2018). Quesnay, François (1694–1774). In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1734
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1734
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-95188-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-95189-5
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences