Ryan D Walter

The University of Queensland, Australia, School of Political Science and International Studies, Faculty Member

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I am developing an alternative history of economic thought that by-passes the usual dead-ends of "mercantilism" and "classical political economy" in favour of connecting political economy with the "history of theory". The first step involves studying the ethoi and arts of reasoning that political economists were obliged to defend in early nineteenth-century Britain in response to widespread hostility to the very idea of their science, which was often treated as a form of philosophical enthusiasm. These defences were successful in the short and long run: the Bullion Controversy, and debates over the Corn Laws and Poor Laws, saw major victories for these self-styled "theorists" in reforming the British state, a process that seems to have continued through to Keynesianism, monetarism, and beyond. Provisional results have recently been published in Modern Intellectual History as "The Enthusiasm of David Ricardo", in Intellectual History Review as "The Bullion Controversy and the History of Political Thought", and in Journal of the History of Ideas as "Defending Political Theory After Burke".

The long-range hypothesis to test in future work is that the manner in which political economy emerged as a science in the nineteenth century - beholden to theological and political programs - made it exceedingly difficult to stabilise the office of the economist, hence the ongoing conflict over this persona today.

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Papers by Ryan D Walter

Before Method and Models: The Political Economy of Malthus and Ricardo

Before Method and Models, 2021

This Preface did not make the final cut of my book but offers a short introduction and summary.

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Defending Political Theory After Burke: Stewart's Intellectual Disciplines and the Demotion of Practice

Journal of the History of Ideas, 2019

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The Bullion Controversy and the History of Political Thought: Experience, Innovation and Theory

In 1797 the British government relieved the Bank of England of the obligation to pay specie for i... more In 1797 the British government relieved the Bank of England of the obligation to pay specie for its notes upon demand; then, after bitter
debate and sustained inflation, it restored this burden in 1821. The
episode is studied as the “Bullion Controversy”, and it is commonly
assigned high significance in the development of monetary theory.
Yet the Bank stood as an old target for so-called “country” thought,
which suspected commerce of corroding virtue and undermining
the proper functions of Parliament. Both the Bank and the Whig
regime that created it in 1694 had withstood such attacks, but in
the nineteenth century these critical voices were joined by
political economists who reworked the existing lines of attack,
above all by presenting themselves not as defenders of an ancient
virtue but as the champions of a modern, commercial society that
was being endangered by the government’s and the Bank’s
ignorance and self-interest. This paper thus examines the Bullion
Controversy in relation to the history of political thought, and
reveals how the return to convertibility represented an early
victory for political economy’s self-styled “theorists” in reforming
the state’s institutions in the nineteenth century.

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Adam Smith's Free Trade Casuistry

Smith held a low opinion of casuistry as a moral system because of its false precision and potent... more Smith held a low opinion of casuistry as a moral system because of its false precision and potential to corrupt our sense of duty. Yet Smith endorsed the basic premise of casuistical reasoning in relation to state administration – that the application of principles would need to take into account the circumstances of a given case, especially when principles conflicted. This paper recovers the casuistical character of Smith's exceptions to a policy of free trade, which he justified with reference to the statesman's higher duties of providing security and justice. The exercise has two key effects. The first is to direct attention to the manner in which Smith first isolated wealth as an analytical category distinct from strength, a precondition for his reintegration of strength and wealth as superior and inferior goals of statesmanship. This was a major disruption to existing argumentative conventions, one that reveals the dangers of accepting Smith's construction of a 'mercantile system' on his terms. The second effect is to highlight the implications of the disappearance of the statesman as an integrating site of reasoning with respect to multiple discourses of state administration. In short, the phrase 'free trade' is likely to mislead in relation to Smith.

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Slingsby Bethel's Analysis of State Interests

Seventeenth-century thinking on the relationship between trade and state power was routinely cond... more Seventeenth-century thinking on the relationship between trade and state power was routinely conducted using the concept of state interests, which enabled users to conceive a Europe of competing states that managed the balance of power through trade and war. Poor interest management could arise from ignorance, error, or the divergence between the private interests of rulers and a state’s true interests. The stakes of pursuing or neglecting true interest were high: the survival and prosperity of the state. The dominance of ‘mercantilism’ as a historiographical category has obscured the role of interest in early modern thought, and this paper treats the work of England’s most prolific interest writer, Slingsby Bethel, as an opportunity to improve our understanding. The two focuses are, first, how the rhetoric of counsel was used to defend an ordinary subject’s presumption to comment on state affairs and, second, the capacity for interest writers to construe the rise and fall of state power in terms of good laws and statesmanship.

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The Enthusiasm of David Ricardo

Britons viewed speculative thinking as a primary cause of the French Revolution and the disorders... more Britons viewed speculative thinking as a primary cause of the French Revolution and the disorders that followed. In this context, Edmund Burke and others identified a form of enthusiasm that was not religious but theoretical in nature, and which also corrupted reasoning to disastrous effect. This paper investigates how this accusation was made against David Ricardo and his political economy, and the variable defences that he deployed. The result is to uncover the language that was used to appraise political economy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, along with the intellectual disciplines that were prescribed to protect economic reasoning from falling into fantasy.

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