In his landmark study, Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the Age of Louis XV (The Hague, 1976), Kaplan argued that in the 1760s, the French government unleashed the first great experiment in economic liberalism by dismantling regulations governing grain supply. The policy, predicated upon a faith in self-regulating markets to achieve lower prices and a more plentiful distribution of goods, unleashed a crisis with profound political, economic, moral, and cultural effects. In The Stakes of Regulation, published as a companion volume to Anthem Press’ new edition of Bread, Politics and Political Economy (New York, 2015), Kaplan reflects on how scholarship pertaining to his interests has evolved during the past forty years. The result is an impressive historiographical and interdisciplinary discussion of scores of issues raised by the study of markets, food, and economic liberalism.
Kaplan addresses questions of methodology, definitions of key terms, underlying assumptions governing historical interpretations,...