Thorstein Veblen
Review author to: Le "Relazioni Universali" di Giovanni Botero e le Origini della Statistica
e dell' Antropogeografia. Per ALBERTO MAGNAGHI.
(Torino: Carlo Clausen. 1906. Pp. viii, 371.)
The American Historical Review, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Jul., 1908), pp. 854-856.
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[854]
M. MAGNAGHI'S volume is an advocate's argument for Botero's priority in the science of statistics,
descriptive geography and doctrines of population. The chief document about which the argument
turns is, of course, the Relazioni Universali, but use is also made of the Ragione di Stato and the
Cause della Grandezza delle Cittą. The claims of this illustrious authority to the first place
among his contemporaries in these several lines of inquiry is argued with great skill and great
erudition; so much so, indeed, as to leave the merits of the case beyond the range of legitimate
opinion on the part of any but specialists in this [855] particular field. The great importance of
Botero for all inquiries into the range of facts with which he was occupied need not be questioned,
nor does it seem securely worth while to work out in detail the specific measure in which Botero
borrowed and was borrowed from, either in the information which he used or in his method of
presenting his materials. In neither respect does he himself enter a claim to exceptional originality
or priority, either explicitly or by insinuation; nor does he hesitate to take what comes to hand,
with scant acknowledgment and slight criticism (see, e.g. ch. XII.). That is not where the emphasis
falls, in Botero's apprehension or in that of his generation. The serious avowed purpose, the end of
the inquiry, with Botero as with the rest, is a practical, or rather a pragmatic one. What is sought
is a serviceable appraisement of the relative political - ultimately warlike - strength of the
several states or princely houses whose intenvory of forces is passed in review, analysed, scheduled
and summed up. In ths work Botero's unusually large, and often exceptionally detailed, information
gives him an advantage, which his equally exceptional insight turns to good account; although he is, 
according to modern notions at least, hampered and enfeebled in his inquiry by a diffuse and rambling
presenation and an insistent conclusion of irrelevant but authentic matter, and an excessive attention
to what would today be considered a trivial circumstantiality. The last mentioned feature,
reminiscent of scholastic erudition, may be illustrated by his enumeration of the causes of the growth
of cities, which are divided into the external circumstances and the causes dependent on man. As to the
external causes, men have come together to live in cities by force of authority, or by coercion, or for
pleasure, or for convenience and profit. Each of these causes of the growth of cities is impartially
treated, categorically and in extenso.
What gives Botero his indubitable value for historical students, and his chief interest for modern
students occupied with inquiries similar to his own, is his "modernism". It is highly probable, at least,
that the characteristics which M. Magnaghi refers to as "modern" were also the characteristics that
counted most substantially toward his exerting an enduring influence in the science, although his
expositor and critic makes relatively little of this matter in the volume here under review. It would
be no great stretch of language to say that Botero's work is "modern" and of enduring consequence by
force of mind-wandering. His avowed aim, like that of his contemporaries, is the working-out of a
useful statistical compendium of information, useful as a handbook for the politicians of his time.
But he is continually led afield from this pragmatic single-minded course by an exuberant curiosity,
which carries him beyond what is needful and into the region fo what is merely scientifically
interesting. This is true both of the range of information which he covers and of the theoretical
speculations and explanations which he offers in accounting for the facts that make up his report
[856] on the state of Christendom. It is by virtue of this pragmatically idle work of supererogation
that Botero had a large effect on the subsequent growth of statistics and demography as well as
a large claim on the respect of the modern spokesmen of the science. As an example of this
exuberant intellectual enterprise - excessive as judged from the pragmatic standpoint of the then
current political writers - may be cited his theory of population quite suggestive of Malthus's
Principle, as M. Magnaghi calls to mind (see ch. XXII.).
THORSTEIN VEBLEN