ROUSSEAU AND CORSICA’S CASE

ECONOMIC SYSTEMS AND FORMS OF GOVERNMENT

Abstract

Based on the exchange of documents and correspondence between the Corsican captain Matteo Buttafoco and Rousseau, which will culminate with a government plan for Corsica written by the philosopher, this paper aims to analyze a little explored dimension in Rousseau’s thought: the relation of convenience that the Constitutional Project for Corsica establishes between the economic systems and the forms of government, especially democracy. To this end, we will also combine an analysis between the text of the Project and some excerpts from the manuscripts and workbooks, in order to see how the characteristic elements of modern political economy – such as the issues concerning population demography, territory, agriculture, labour, among others – are brought into play by Rousseau to formulate the idea of an économie bien entendue de la puissance civile. Reading critically the arguments of Buttafoco, founded on a praise to commerce and that had as inspiration the notion of “république commerçante” advocated by Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws, Rousseau suggests thinking the diversity and cohabitation of diverse economic systems, always in relation to governments and peculiarities of a particular people, that is, each system can be more or less convenient to a given historical, political and social context.