The Economist as Surveyor: Physiocracy in the Fields Loïc Charles and Christine Théré François Quesnay strove his entire life to better his social condition, leaving early on the modest rural neighborhood where his parents lived to try his luck in Paris, then Mantes, Paris again, and fnally Versailles. After turning sixty, he landed in the middle of what the French monar- chy could best afford in terms of luxury, privileges, and frivolity, in charge of Louis XV’s favorite mistress, the powerful Madame de Pompadour. Yet it was in this context that Quesnay began to investigate what he had quite consciously turned his back on in his youth: the countryside, the peasantry, and its rural and unpolished simplicity. Wealth was from the start the prime interest of Quesnay’s social inves- tigations. More precisely, Quesnay and the physiocrats believed that their theory of wealth was the only one that was able to go beyond appear- ances to uncover the true nature and source of wealth. While most people, including the most learned French intellectuals, believed that the splendor of the king’s palace and court was a convincing sign of the economic power of the French kingdom, Quesnay believed that the spectacular dis- play of luxuries, far from signaling an enduring wealth, presaged a rapid and violent downfall. 1 Indeed, the kind of economic theory Quesnay was building in the midst of a busy social life was conveying a straightforward History of Political Economy 44 (annual suppl.) DOI 10.1215/00182702-1631788 Copyright 2012 by Duke University Press 1. “Never had Rome been richer and more luxurious than when it devastated the provinces it subjugated to its rule, but its splendor was the fame of the fre that was consuming the forces of the Empire, and that in the end submitted it to the power of its enemies” (Quesnay 1757b, 315). Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are ours.