Physiocrats were a group of French economists who lived during the mid-1700’s. They made important contributions to the study of economics as a social science. The physiocrats’ broad outlook and use of the scientific method were influential in the development of modern economics.
The physiocrats believed that land was the single source of wealth. They thought that only in agriculture could the value of the products exceed the value of the materials used for production. Physiocrats regarded industry and trade as necessary occupations, but ones that did not increase wealth in the same way as did agriculture. Trade and commerce, they felt, changed only the form or location of wealth. These beliefs led the physiocrats to oppose the mercantile system of tariffs and trade restrictions. Mercantilists thought that a government should regulate economic activities in order to ensure that the country exports more goods than it imports (see Mercantilism ). In place of tariffs, the physiocrats proposed a single land tax. They supported laissez faire (freedom from government regulation).
Francois Quesnay was the leader and most important thinker of the physiocrats. He devised the Tableau Economique, a chart of the economy. This was the first attempt to picture a nation’s economy as an interrelated series of institutions through which capital moves in a continuous cycle. Another physiocrat, Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, later emigrated from France to the United States, where his descendants founded the Du Pont industrial empire.
