First Principles in Translation: The Axiom of Self-Interest from

nental Europe was very much tied to the fortunes of the French translation that Germain Garnier (1754–1821) published for the fi rst time in 1802. This translation was quickly accepted as authoritative. In 1803, Jean-Baptiste Say praised Garnier s ̓ translation as “the only one that is worthy of the original ” (xxiij, n. 1).1 The abundance of endnotes and the exten-sive preface clearly designated La richesse des nations as a canonical text. In the 1843 edition of the Garnier translation, Adam Smith s ̓ work reached the fi nal stage in the process of canonization. As Kenneth Car-penter (2002, lxi) puts it, this edition “served as a foundation work for the academic discipline of economics in France, no doubt to some extent eve