Abstract
In 1824 Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832), the Adam Smith of France, undertook to forecast the future of the British Dominion in India. He did this in an essay entitled Essai historique sur I'origine, les progrès et les résultats probables de la souveraineté des Anglais aux Indes (Paris, 1824), subsequently included as a chapter in his definitive Cours complet d'economie politique pratique, first published in 1828–29. This essay thus appeared eleven years after the East India Company was given a new charter in 1813, but one stripped of its former trade monopoly, and six years before the transformation of the Company's dominion into what subsequently became the British Indian Empire. The officers of this new dominion would “have been much surprised to see the Indian flag hoisted in Delhi only a hundred and twenty-nine years later.” But would Say have been surprised?
