 As Michel Foucault discerned in Les mots et les choses (The Order of Things, 1966 [1970]), there was a significant transformation in economic discourse circa 1800, but not for the reasons he gave. It was not that the concept of wealth was merely represented before 1800, and then gained materiality. What distinguishes early modern economics from the classical period that took hold in the early nineteenth century was that the latter organized their analysis around “the economy”. Prior to that, the various core phenomena were either treated separately or, if bundled together, were for the most part treated as part of the natural order (see Schabas 2005).