In a period of crisis of both economies and ideologies like the one we are currently traversing, a book that explores the nature of capitalism and particularly its connection with markets and competition is surely a welcome read. Alessandro Stanziani succeeds in presenting us with a work that, while exploring a specific time period (eighteenth to early twentieth century) and focusing on a single case (France, although placed in a comparative perspective including other countries and particularly the United States, Great Britain, Italy, and Germany) asks questions of very general interest. Furthermore, the author challenges much received wisdom, convinced as he is that “most historical interpretations of capitalism are anachronistic and oversimplified” (p. 308).

At the root of these faulty interpretations would lay a mistaken understanding of both the idea (or ideal) of competition, and of the interaction between rules and markets. About the first, Stanziani bluntly states in the opening words of Rules of Exchange that, “The ideal of competition (…) is an intellectual invention that bears little resemblance to the way economic systems actually work” (p. 1). Consequently, one of his aims in the book is to find the origins of this intellectual construct as well as to show how capitalism really worked, including by means of valuable new archival research. About regulations and markets, in Fernand Braudel's tradition Stanziani argues that there is not opposition between rules and markets, not only because markets are always regulated, but also because capitalism, and particularly industrial capitalism, demands rules.

The latter consideration brings into focus a second key point in Stanziani's argument: the First Industrial Revolution would have happened within a regulatory framework, and involved economic actors, that were the same already present in the Ancien Régime: the rules of competition being inspired by regulations against hoarding of foodstuffs, and the actors being essentially family-based firms. It would be only at the end of the nineteenth century, with the Second Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the welfare state, that a real break with the past would occur, with the appearance of new actors (like the “consumers”) and of new rules (about the protection of industrial and intangible property; product quality; consumer protection; and so on).

To demonstrate his views, Stanziani gave Rules of Exchange a solid structure. The first part of the book includes a very interesting chapter on economic thought about competition, in which it is argued that it was only with Jeremy Bentham, and not with Adam Smith, that the idea that there is an opposition between self-regulating market and regulation developed. According to Stanziani, the association of Smith with laissez-faire would be “in large part a myth invented in the nineteenth century” (p. 22), but Smith would be in good company as those whose thought was “reinterpreted” by later economists would include Ricardo, Walras, and Marx. According to Stanziani, reinterpretation of thought was connected to reinterpretation of the reality of the nineteenth century. A second chapter, then, is dedicated to legal systems, a field in which this would be particularly apparent. In fact, case law-based common law systems, like that of Great Britain, and the centralized civil law systems of continental Europe would have, from the point of view of the regulation of markets and competition, much more in common than is normally thought, and particularly, the centrality of judicial interpretation. It would be only at the time of the Second Industrial Revolution, with the social instability and economic uncertainty that it caused, that new forms of regulation were introduced, both in common law and centralized law systems, and answering the requests of the majority of the business world.

The second part of the book concerns the locations and methods of exchange, with a chapter each dedicated to covered markets, shops, and to intangible trade. The third part is dedicated to transactions, with chapters about contracts; trademarks and reputations; product specification; and finally, the rules of international trade. The fourth and final part explores the rules regulating competition, first in France and then in the West in general in an interesting last chapter in which competition laws and the definition of unfair competition in Great Britain, the United States, and Germany are compared.

All the chapters are well-organized and are rich in interesting details, especially about France, providing much material that will surely be helpful to other researchers. It should be noted, however, that the examples and the sources used by Stanziani tend to give a strange impression of the areas of activity of nineteenth-century capitalism, especially when the Second Industrial Revolution in concerned. It seems that, in the book, there is too much food, and decidedly too much wine, while textiles are mentioned only occasionally and other important sectors seem to be entirely absent. In part, this can be explained with the fact that key innovations, for example regarding consumer protection or labelling, originally tended to regard foodstuffs. Also regulation about competition has at its roots rules against hoarding of foodstuffs. However, the impression is that this preference is mostly due to earlier research by the same author (such as the, excellent in its own regard, Histoire de la qualité alimentaire. France XIX^e–XX^e siècles, Paris: Seuil, 2005), and anyway, the reasons for this choice of materials are never satisfyingly explained.

The other weak point of the book lies in the complementary materials. In particular, the two-page index is poorly done. Names are entirely missing (not only regarding cited authors, but also key characters like Ricardo and Smith), and also the chosen subjects do not fully satisfy, unless one has a special interest in foodstuffs, which are indexed in considerable detail. The weakness of the index also makes the absence of a final bibliography particularly regrettable, since this would have made it much easier for the reader to form an idea of Stanziani's source materials. These are, however, minor faults in what is overall an excellent book, which presents in convincing ways bold arguments that will not fail to generate discussion and to stimulate further research.