When it comes to the early days of economic science, history tends to highlight a first school of thought: the Physiocrats, led by François Quesnay and his disciples. However, nearly a decade before their rise, there was another, less formal but equally important group centered around the economist Vincent de Gournay.

As we saw in the previous part, Gournay was fascinated by the example of foreign nations like England and Holland. He admired their economists—figures such as Josiah Child, Johan de Witt, and David Hume—just as much.

This admiration led him to translate, and assign translations of, their economic writings.

It turned out that his position in the senior administration allowed Gournay to come into contact with all the economic specialists known in France at the time. In this way, he assembled a group of extremely capable translators. He personally translated the works of Child and Culpeper. Abbot Le Blanc translated David Hume's Political Discourses. Véron de Forbonnais translated the Spanish economist Geronymo de Uztariz. Turgot worked on Josiah Tucker's writings, and Montesquieu's son translated Joshua Gee.

Thanks to the collaboration of several members of Gournay's circle, many authors were able to publish original works under their own names. These books, along with the translations, achieved remarkable success. Some notable examples include:

This last book, written around 1730, remained in manuscript after the author's death. Gournay, with the help of his economist friends, published it in 1755. According to the Abbot Morellet, a member of the circle, Gournay recommended it to every economist he knew.

The intellectual output of the Gournay circle had a major impact on the history of ideas. In this sense, they can be considered the founders of economic science in France. Christine Théré of INED, who has studied the history of economic publications, found that between 1750 and 1759, no fewer than 349 works on economics were published, compared to only 83 in the entire previous decade (1740–1749). This revolution in the 1750s is largely due to the Gournay circle.

To spread a taste for economic discussions among the French population, Gournay and his friends worked to make them accessible through novels. After the Memoir on the Trades, which criticized guilds, Gournay and Cliquot-Blervache helped Gabriel-François Coyer write a short satirical novel called Chinki: A Cochinchinese Tale Applicable to Other Nations.

The story follows the main character, Chinki, who is forced to leave his land due to excessive taxation and tries to find craft work for his children in the city. But all trades are closed to them because of abusive guild regulations, so the story portrays his growing disappointment through humorous tones.

Gournay's circle was therefore at the origin of an intense wave of publications. While this major contribution has been forgotten by historians of economic thought, it was very clear to contemporaries. The Physiocrats, who organized their school in the 1760s, would later present Gournay's group as their direct forerunners. In 1767, the economist Jacques Accarias de Serionne expressed this even more clearly in his tribute. He wrote: "A small number of Frenchmen, both philosophers and citizens, began a few years ago to imitate English writers. They first translated their models and soon surpassed them in many respects. They brought all the charm and richness of literature to the treatment of useful subjects; they sparked and spread the taste for the sciences that were most essential to the prosperity of the State".

And indeed, in the 1750s, economic questions became fashionable. Voltaire famously remarked that around 1750, the French gave up novels to discuss the freedom of the grain trade. This trend was also noted by the Mercure de France, which wrote in an issue from 1758, a few months before Gournay's death: "Political economy is now the science in fashion. Books dealing with agriculture, population, industry, commerce, and finance are now in the hands of countless people who, not long ago, only superficially read novels". One could hardly pay a better tribute to Gournay and the work of his circle of economists.