Bourgeois Moralists and Economists for Peace: Victor Hugo, Richard Cobden, and Frédéric Bastiat and the Congress of Universal Peace in Paris, 1849*

In 1849, novelist Victor Hugo and political economists Richard Cobden and Frédéric Bastiat collaborated on and presided over the Congress of Universal Peace in Paris. Three thousand attended. Many are perplexed by the collaboration and Hugo’s bourgeois and pro-capitalist arguments. This article documents how these men interacted in the years leading up to the congress and how they were part of a tradition that made moral and economic arguments for peace. We present the authors’ main moral and economic arguments for relying on peaceful market interaction rather than war. We conclude that Hugo, Cobden, and Bastiat provide a model of bringing together moral and economic arguments for peace and a better world.