Pedro Rodriguez Campomanes (424)

Pedro Rodriguez Campomanes (1 July 1723–3 February 1802) was a statesman, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1784. Born in Austria, Campomanes became a lawyer and served as a crown-attorney on the Council of Castille in 1762. In both his writing and in his capacity as advisor to the Spanish King, Charles III, Campomanes campaigned for commercial and agrarian reforms. A notable figure in the Spanish Enlightenment, he put many of the movement’s ideals into practice: promoting the education of the working class, limiting the church’s landholdings, and founding the Royal Economic Society of Madrid in 1775. Nevertheless, Campomanes was a monarchist, and worked to weaken the power of the guilds and the Mesta, a corporation of sheep ranchers, by becoming its president in 1779, and weakening it from within. He also supported the Spanish expulsion of the Jesuits in favor of the Franciscans. His power was not to last, however, and Campomanes lost his position in 1793 upon the ascension of Charles IV to the Spanish crown.