Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk: Review of Luigi Cossa’s Introduzione allo studio dell’economia politica (1892)

Böhm-Bawerk’s review presents Cossa’s substantially revised introduction to political economy as both a mature methodological inquiry and an exceptionally comprehensive history of the discipline. Its praise rests on a consistent principle: scientific authority emerges from breadth, rigorous inquiry, and impartial judgment, rather than allegiance to a school. The review moves from Cossa’s influence as a teacher to the book’s two-part structure, concluding with a comparison of competing approaches to economic historiography.

Cossa’s international reputation as a textbook writer supplies the opening context, but Böhm-Bawerk locates his deeper achievement in the regeneration of Italian economics. Pavia became a centre of economic education whose influence extended across historical research, theoretical analysis, criticism, and engagement with foreign—especially German—scholarship. What distinguishes this intellectual leadership is its refusal to impose a single research direction:

Cossa's erzieherisches Wirken ist von solcher Einseitigkeit bemerkenswert frei geblieben.

English translation: Cossa's educational work has remained remarkably free of any such one-sidedness.

The diversity of Cossa’s pupils becomes evidence of an education directed toward scientific standards rather than doctrinal conformity. Böhm-Bawerk consequently treats Cossa’s record as a teacher as the strongest qualification for writing a guide to the discipline.

The revised Introduzione, he argues, exceeds its modest title. Its first part comprises eight chapters over 130 pages on economics’ definition, boundaries, divisions, character, and significance, with particular attention to terminology, definitions, and method. Böhm-Bawerk explicitly endorses Cossa’s conception of economics as an empirical science requiring both induction and deduction, whose functions and relative importance vary across its branches. His approval emphasizes the restraint with which Cossa enters a contentious debate:

Ueber dieses letztere, in neuerer Zeit bis zum Ueberdruss viel erörterte Thema, das sich gleichwohl oft und insbesondere in einem Werke vom Charakter des Cossa’schen nicht umgehen lässt, spricht sich unser Autor mit einer ungemein wohlthuenden Mässigung und Unparteilichkeit aus.

English translation: Upon this last-named theme, in recent times discussed to the point of tedium, and which nevertheless often, and especially in a work of the character of Cossa's, cannot be avoided, our author expresses himself with an uncommonly agreeable moderation and impartiality.

Methodological pluralism here is not indifference to method: it assigns different procedures to different scientific tasks. This complements the pedagogical openness praised earlier.

The much longer historical part traces a “fragmentary” epoch through antiquity and the Middle Ages into parts of the seventeenth century, followed by empirical systems and monographs, the scientific systems of the Physiocrats and Adam Smith, and a contemporary critical period organized by country. Böhm-Bawerk’s central historiographical distinction concerns how such a history distributes attention. Dühring, Eisenhart, and Ingram foreground a supposed main line of development, leaving other contributions in shadow. Their conception of progress consequently governs both the selection of figures and the allocation of praise or blame. Cossa instead pursues comprehensive, proportionate coverage:

Er verhimmlt nichts und niemanden, und er unterdrückt nichts und niemanden.

English translation: He exalts nothing and no one to the skies, and he suppresses nothing and no one.

This impartiality does not exclude criticism. Cossa expresses judgments but does not let them become passionate advocacy. Böhm-Bawerk acknowledges the resulting sacrifice of dramatic force while making clear why it is worthwhile:

Seine Art der Geschichtsschreibung ist infolge von alldem gewiss nicht so pikant oder dramatisch bewegt als die einiger seiner Vorgänger, aber sie ist dafür musterhaft objectiv, getreu und vollständig; so vollständig, wie sie von einem Manne erwartet werden konnte, der wahrscheinlich unter den jetzt lebenden Nationalökonomen der gründlichste Literaturkenner ist; und so vollständig, dass sie geeignet ist, zugleich auch als Bibliografie unserer Wissenschaft zu dienen.

English translation: His manner of writing history is, in consequence of all this, certainly not so piquant or dramatically animated as that of some of his predecessors, but it is in return exemplarily objective, faithful, and complete; as complete as could be expected from a man who is probably the most thorough connoisseur of the literature among economists now living; and so complete that it is fitted to serve at the same time as a bibliography of our science.

The concluding recommendation—that every economist needs the book, and that it deserves a German translation—follows from this combination of methodological judgment and bibliographical reach. The review’s broader relevance lies in the scholarly ideal it articulates: economics advances through exacting but inclusive inquiry, while its history should preserve the diversity of contributions rather than arrange them solely around a historian’s preferred trajectory of progress.