Richard Cantillon

Born in County Kerry in the late 17th century, Richard Cantillon was an Irish-French economist and financier who spent much of his career in France and later died in London in May 1734. Reliable sources agree on his importance, but not on every detail of his early life, which is still partly uncertain.

Cantillon is remembered above all for Essai sur la nature du commerce en général (Essay on the Nature of Trade in General), published after his death in 1755. The book is often described as one of the earliest major works of economics, and later writers praised it as a foundational text in political economy.

Before that, he had made a fortune as a banker and was closely connected to the turbulent financial world of the early 1700s, including the era of John Law's system. That practical experience seems to have shaped the sharp, realistic way he wrote about markets, money, and risk, giving his work an unusual mix of theory and lived financial insight.