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Political arithmetic, generally understood as an early form of political economy, was originally designed by Sir William Petty in the 1670s less as a method of quantitative analysis than as a program of government through the direct manipulation of demographic processes. In the context of the English colonization of Ireland, its goal was “the transmutation of Irish into English”; under the Catholic James II it briefly became a program for the catholicization of the three Stuart kingdoms. Both projects undermined the national and religious categories associated with traditional exclusionist policy and fostered a radical inclusionism. Only after 1688 did Petty's successors decisively rearticulate political arithmetic as a putatively apolitical analytical tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]