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The expression "robber barons" is used for American business  
men of the turn of the century by unfriendly critics. The term was  
taken from medieval Europe, when the dukes and counts refused to  
submit any feudal obligation to the king, administered and taxed  
their own regions independently, and frequently looted merchant  
caravans that passed under the walks of their castle. The US  
political and economic commentator Matthew Josephson, in 1934,  
used this term instead of the more friendly "captain of industry", in  
order to stress the idea "that their wealth was in no sense of their  
own creation, but was like a tax levied upon the productive workers  
and craftsmen of the American economy" ("Robber Barons", by J.  
Bradford DeLong, 1998). The expression, and the meaning, has  
been since then important to popular economics and also to how  
theoretical economist think about the entrepreneur. But what  
happened to this expression during so many centuries?    
 
Manuel Santos 
 
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