The economic doctrines in the wine trade and wine production sectors: the case of Bastiat and the Port wine sector: 1850-1908

The economic doctrines in the wine trade
and wine production sectors: the case of
Bastiat and the Port wine sector: 1850-
1908

ESHET 2006, Porto, Faculdade de Economia da Universidade do Porto

*

Marc Jacquinet

The history of economic ideas (or doctrines) has a long tradition of popularization activists,
usually, but not exclusively, defending some ideological precepts over others. This tradition
is particularly clear in the 19^th century and early 20^th century with economists, such as
Frédéric Bastiat, reaching a wide readership and get involved in polemical economic issues
and policies.

This is the case of the wine production and wine trade. Bastiat is involved in the defense of
free trade in the wine sector in France. His views are widely diffused in Europe. In the case
of Portugal, the ideas of Bastiat are used by several authors (and, inter alia, Joaquim Kopke)
to argue for free trade and the suppression of the restrictive system of the Port wine. This
defense is also based on the converging interests of wine merchants and landowners
(especially proprietors of large vineyards in the Upper Douro).

After treating the diffusion of economic ideas and the doctrine of Frédéric Bastiat in the first
and second sections, I will characterize in the third one, the setting of the wine sector. Finally,
I study the case of port wine with documents from archives, newspapers and pamphlets from
about 1850 to 1908.

Introduction

Who cares about Bastiat today? The “best economic journalist”, as Schumpeter put it
(1954: 500), is absent of the major references of the history of economic thought of the last
three decades. He sometimes appears mentioned in some studies of the Austrian tradition that
is fond of either the history of economic thought or the legitimatization of the virtues of the
market and the correlative suspicion of state regulation.¹ In other words, Bastiat seems to

Researcher, Universidade Aberta and Ph.D. student, ISEG-UTL, Portugal. Contact: [email protected].

¹ A good and balanced overview of Austrian economics can be found in Boettke (Boettke 2002). A good
illustration of the position of Austrian economists by the following argument of Israel Kirzner: “[...] the
propensity of government interventions to generate tendencies toward suboptimal equilibrium configurations has

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