Keywords

• The eighteenth century was without doubt a period in which Spain witnessed a period of relative modernisation. A late generation of enlightenment emerging during the 1780s and 1790s began to claim a set of wider and deeper reforms than those demanded by previous generations of the Spanish enlightened. This issue was particularly significant in economic and political spheres. Ramón de Salas' work
• still formally unpublished
• is an illustrative example of this reformism. During the second half of the 1780s
• as a distinguished Professor at the University of Salamanca
• Salas penned an enormous work in which he carried out a wide-ranging and thoroughgoing criticism of A. Genovesi's Lezioni di Commercio. This article overviews their profound differences on social issues