False Transparency. Disclosing Financial Data, between Enlightenment and Absolutism (Naples, 1780s)

Abstract

In the article, financial transparency is read as a potential manifestation of the Enlightenment, of its search for truth in every field of social living, and of its willingness of divulge it to civil society. The case studied is the publication of the public revenue and expenses made in the Kingdom of Naples in 1789 by the famous reformer Giuseppe Maria Galanti, by order of the King. The Neapolitan case shows that truth — the disclosure of data as such — is not self-transparent, and that a fundamental condition for transparency is the kind of relationship established between who divulges the data and the recipients of this disclosure. Transparency made in Naples was false because neither the King nor Galanti were truly addressing public opinion. The King, (clumsily) following the model of Necker’s Compte rendu, authorized the divulging of the data, but did not officially sanction it. As to Galanti, he saw the publication of financial data as an application of the new statistical approach to geography and of the collaboration between philosophes and enlightened rulers.