Enlightenment in Italy and the Spanish World

The Enlightenment was not only French, British and German. In Italy, reformers addressed practical problems of law, economy and church power. In Milan, Pietro Verri and his circle published the journal Il Caffè (1764 to 1766), modeled on English periodicals, and nurtured Cesare Beccaria. In Naples, Antonio Genovesi held what is often described as Europe's first university chair in political economy, from 1754.

In Spain, the Benedictine monk Benito Jerónimo Feijoo wrote essays attacking superstition and promoting experimental science, and later reformers such as Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos urged agricultural and educational improvement. Spanish 'Economic Societies of Friends of the Country', starting in the Basque Country in 1765, spread across Spain and its American empire. Southern European Enlightenments were often Catholic, aiming to reform religion rather than reject it, which challenges the image of the movement as uniformly anti-religious.