José Joaquín de Mora and the Dissemination of the Liberal Economic Doctrine in Latin America in the Early Nineteenth Century

José Joaquín de Mora (1783-1864) was a prominent Spanish economist who, during the first half of the nineteenth century, did a remarkable job disseminating the principles of liberalism and free-trade in Spain. He also had a significant presence in Latin America, where he became an outstanding popularizer of political economy, especially in the Republic of Chile. Indeed, this work analyses the articles written by de Mora in El Mercurio de Chile (1828-1829), which were intellectually indebted to classical political economy, in particular, to Smith-Mc- Culloch’s theory of economic growth, and embedded as a whole a complete institutional reform and an economic agenda that promoted the foundation of commercial banks, the introduction of direct taxation, public debt issuing and free trade. These Chilean articles give a new account of de Mora’s work on political economy, showing how he combined common doctrinal background and proposals of reform and policies with a modernized rhetoric over the course of almost three decades