At the end of the 17th century capitalism had become the new social and economic order in northern Western Europe. Ever since the trading channels through which money and commodities change hands between the different agents, the actual sequence of these all-comprising monetary exchange...

The chapter goes over the main stages in the development of Quesnay’s Tableau Économique. The traditional interpretation of this development as a fundamentally continuous process of clarification and elaboration is confirmed. By discussing the opposite view, however, a clearer picture of the...