The humbly-born François Quesnay trained himself in medicine, rising to become a physician in Louis XV's court and the leader of a sect of Enlightenment thinkers known as the Physiocrats or the économistes. The working-class boy who could not read until he was 11 was eventually elected to the Academy of Sciences and hailed as the "Confucius of Europe", the "modern Socrates", by his gentlemen-disciples.
Born in Méré to a family of laborers, Quesnay was orphaned at thirteen. He learned to read from a household medical companion and quickly acquired a voracious appetite for more books and more learning. After a brief apprenticeship, some schooling at Saint-Côme, and marrying a Parisian grocer's daughter (a huge step up in social status), Quesnay set himself up as a country barber-surgeon in Mantes. His (rapid) self-education and skills shone through and, recommendation upon recommendation, he gradually climbed up the greasy pole, entering into the service of local aristocrats. This gave him some time to do more reading, studying and writing.
Quesnay's numerous tracts on surgery cemented his reputation. He was particularly keen on elevating the status of surgery into a medical science (much to the medical establishment's horror). The King's edict of 1743 separating surgeons from barbers and the later creation of a royal college of surgeons was partly his doing.
In 1749, on the strength of a strong recommendation, Quesnay became the personal physician of the King Louis XV's mistress, the Madame de Pompadour. Quesnay settled in Versailles, finally entering the highest circle of power. He was elected to the Academié des sciences in 1751 and fell in with the philosophes, who curiously sought out the little country surgeon who had so bravely challenged the great doctors.
Quesnay's interest in economics arose in 1756, where, hoping to draw on his country background, he was asked to contribute several articles on farming to the Encylopèdie of Diderot and d'Alembert. Quesnay delved into the works of the Maréchal de Vauban, Pierre de Boisguilbert and Richard Cantillon and, mixing all these ingredients together, Quesnay gradually came up with his famous economic theory.
In 1757, he met the Marquis de Mirabeau, his first convert. He was followed by Mercier de la Riviere and DuPont de Nemours and several others. In 1758, Quesnay wrote his Tableau Économique -- renowned for its famous "zig-zag" depiction of income flows between economic sectors-- to explain his doctrine. It became the founding document of the Physiocratic sect -- and the ancestor of the multisectoral input-output systems of Marx , Sraffa and Leontief and modern general equilibrium theory. (See our analysis of Quesnay's Tableau).
Quesnay began with the axiom that agriculture is the only source of produit net (net product, or surplus of output above cost). He believed that manufacturing and commerce were "sterile" as (in his view), the value of their output was equal to the value of their inputs. Only land, Quesnay reasoned, produced more than went into it. The wealth of a nation, Quesnay argued, lies in the size of its net product.
Quesnay opposed the mercantilist doctrines of Colbert, which still held in the French court, believing that they concentrated too much on propping up industry and commerce rather than agriculture. Influenced by Vincent de Gournay, an advocate of laissez-faire, Quesnay wished to see many of the Medieval rules governing agricultural production lifted, permitting the economy to find its "natural state". The natural state of the economy was conceived as the balanced circular flow of income between economic sectors and thus social classes which maximized the net product. In these concepts, Quesnay saw analogies to the circulation of human blood and the homeostasis of a body.
Quesnay was largely responsible for the distinction between the ordre naturel (nature's order) and the ordre positif (positive, i.e. human-idealized, order). A good government, Quesnay argued, should follow a laissez-faire policy so that the ordre naturel could emerge.
Quesnay went on to write numerous articles on economics in 1766-8 in the Journal de l'agriculture, du commerce et de finances and in the Ephémérides du Citoyen under pseudonyms like M.N., M.H., M.A., M. de Isles, etc. (sometimes having his alter-egos enjoin in journal debates with each other). His 1766 formule article is perhaps his clearest presentation. However, it was presentations, commentaries and elucidations upon Quesnay's system by Mirabeau (1760, 1763), Mercier de la Riviere (1767) and DuPont de Nemours (1767) that gave Quesnay's ideas a more systematic feel. Their worship of Quesnay knew no bounds.
Major works of François Quesnay
Resources on François Quesnay