The Doux Commerce Thesis in Action after World War II

Looking at how the architects of the postwar Recovery explained and enacted the civilizing potential of commerce (especially but not only in Germany), Kroen re-contextualizes both Marshall Planner Hirschman and the doux commerce thesis in the postwar period, and asks how Hirschman's 1970s think piece on doux commerce in the 18th century might help us to think better both about the postwar “arguments for capitalism before its re-triumph” and the many unintended consequences of that triumph (one of which was the stubborn endurance of a certain myth about doux commerce, even for historians of the 18th century).