‘Less Abused than I had Reason to Expect’: The Reception of The Wealth of Nations in Britain, 1776–90

1987 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard F. Teichgraeber
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Economic Developments ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Economic Thinking ◽  
Limited Process

When Adam Smith set out to re-shape the dominant economic policies and assumptions of his time, he knew success in pressing for ‘free trade’ would depend on his ability to imprint his views on the minds of contemporary statesmen and legislators. But he was never confident that this operation might take place during his lifetime. In the Wealth of Nations, he declared that to expect freedom of trade to be accepted entirely in Great Britain was ‘as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it’, and this was by no means an offhand remark. Much of the massive book was coloured by Smith's awareness that liberal economic doctrines, whatever their considerable intellectual merits, ran far ahead of actual political and social attitudes in eighteenth-century Europe. In the first half of the nineteenth century, a variety of political and economic developments of course refuted Smith's view that ‘free trade’ was an unattainable ideal. But the historical verification of his economic thinking was a slow, difficult, and limited process.

The New World of Adam Smith

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
New World ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Standard Of Living ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Trade Competition

This chapter examines Adam Smith's theories during the Industrial Revolution, which came to England and southern Scotland in the last third of the eighteenth century. During the Industrial Revolution, the workers who previously had been producing goods in their cottages or food and wool on their farms moved to the factories and the factory towns. Merchants began to invest their capital in factories and machinery or in the far from munificent wages that kept alive the workers. This change was made possible by the industrialist, whose orientation was to the production of goods, rather than their purchase or sale. The chapter discusses Smith's views on a variety of subjects, which he articulated in the Wealth of Nations, including borrowing, capitalism, free trade, competition, credit, distribution, innovation, justice, labor, manufacturing, merchants, monopolies, political economy, prices, production and productivity, profit, public policy, rent, standard of living, and value.

The Tercentenary of Henry Martyn's Considerations upon the East-India Trade

2002 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Maneschi
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Economic Welfare ◽  
Real Cost ◽  
Classical Political Economy ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
The Impact

Henry Martyn's Considerations Upon the East-India Trade, published anonymously in 1701, stands out as a major contribution to the field of political economy that took root in Britain in the eighteenth century, and to the demonstration of the gains from free trade (Martyn 1701). Martyn provided one of the earliest formulations (and by far the clearest) of what Jacob Viner termed the “eighteenth-century rule” for the gains from trade, that “it pays to import commodities from abroad whenever they can be obtained in exchange for exports at a smaller real cost than their production at home would entail” (Viner 1937, p. 440). The numerical examples that Martyn used to illustrate it went even beyond the case for free trade advanced seventy-five years later by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. Martyn's tract contains other remarkable insights that became important features of classical political economy, such as the nature and advantages of the division of labor, the dependence of the latter on the extent of the market, the workings of a market economy, the role of money, and the impact of international trade on resource allocation, on productivity, and on economic welfare.

Two Intellectual Landmarks in the Year 1749

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-123
Author(s):  
Farhad Rassekh
Keyword(s):  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Considerable Extent ◽  
Monetary Theory ◽  
Economic Theories ◽  
Classical Economics ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Economic Thinking

In the year 1749 Adam Smith conceived his theory of commercial liberty and David Hume laid the foundation of his monetary theory. These two intellectual developments, despite their brevity, heralded a paradigm shift in economic thinking. Smith expanded and promulgated his theory over the course of his scholarly career, culminating in the publication of The Wealth of Nations in 1776. Hume elaborated on the constituents of his monetary framework in several essays that were published in 1752. Although Smith and Hume devised their economic theories in 1749 independently, these theories complemented each other and to a considerable extent created the structure of classical economics.

Carmichael, Gershom (1672–1729)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Moore ◽  
Michael Silverthorne
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
The University

Gershom Carmichael was a teacher and writer of pivotal importance for the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. He was the first Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, predecessor of Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith and Thomas Reid. Carmichael introduced the natural law tradition of Grotius, Pufendorf and Locke to the moral philosophy courses he taught at the University of Glasgow (1694–1729). His commentaries on Samuel Pufendorf’s work on the duty of man and citizen (1718 and 1724) made his teaching available to a wider readership in Great Britain and in Europe. He also composed an introduction to logic, Breviuscula Introductio ad Logicam, (1720 and 1722) and a brief system of natural theology, Synopsis Theologiae Naturalis (1729).

II. Adam Smith's Project of an Empire

1925 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. A. Benians
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Natural System ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
General Opinion

It is now nearly one hundred and fifty years since the publication of the Wealth of Nations and the Declaration of American Independence. The two events, closely associated in time, recall each other; for in his famous chapter on colonies Adam Smith predicted, with little apparent regret, the loss of the American colonies, and outlined the project of an empire which he thought could have been preserved and been worth preserving. That chapter, though it did not influence the course of the controversy which called it forth, nor, for a time, the colonial policy of Great Britain, has become, none the less, a landmark in the history of the British Empire. After Adam Smith had written, it was possible to think of colonies in a new way, though it was still not impossible to treat them in the old. The united empire of which he dreamed never became a fact, or even a political programme, but the ideas which he advanced bore their fruit in general opinion, and the spirit in which he wrote was in due course to animate a generation of colonial reformers and to bring forth a new and better colonial policy. Durham and his friends did not advocate Smith's imperial Parliament, the “States General of the British Empire,” and they did advocate imperial control of colonial trade, and not his “natural system of perfect liberty and justice”; but one may believe that the faith in the future of the British Empire which inspires the speeches of Molesworth and Buller, the Report on Canada and the Art of Colonization, owed some of its vitality to the courageous Utopia imagined in the Wealth of Nations.

ADAM SMITH AS ADVOCATE OF EMPIRE, c. 1870–1932

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARC-WILLIAM PALEN
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Economic Downturns ◽  
Wealth Of Nations

ABSTRACTThis article examines howThe wealth of nations(1776) was transformed into an amorphous text regarding the imperial question throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Adam Smith had left behind an ambiguous legacy on the subject of empire: a legacy that left long-term effects upon subsequent British imperial debates. In his chapter on colonies, Smith had proposed both a scheme for the gradual devolution of the British empire and a theoretical scheme for imperial federation. In response to the growing global popularity of protectionism and imperial expansionism, the rapid development of new tools of globalization, and the frequent onset of economic downturns throughout the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, turn-of-the-century proponents of British imperial federation formed into a formidable opposition to England's prevailing free trade orthodoxy – Cobdenism – a free trade ideology which famously expanded upon the anti-imperial dimensions ofThe wealth of nations. Ironically, at the turn of the century many advocates for imperial federation also turned to Smith for their intellectual inspiration. Adam Smith thus became an advocate of empire, and his advocacy left an indelible intellectual mark upon the burgeoning British imperial crisis.

scholarly journals Beyond Utilitarianism: Nineteenth Century South Asian Economic Crises and Sleeman’s (1788-1856) Necessitarianism

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Shafique ◽  
Muhammad Yasir Ali ◽  
Imtiaz Ahmad Warraich
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
Economic View ◽  
Agriculture Industry

Emerging out of eighteenth-century enlightenment, utilitarianism led a view of earth and human centric economic view of society, resulting not only in the formation of theories of racial superiority and legitimacy of imperialism, but also in the development of modern theories of economy grounded in Adam Smith (1723-1790), Malthus (1766-1834) and Recordo (1772-1823). However there were a few people those tried to fix the challenges beyond utility into the concept of instinctual and evolutionary necessity or priority. Sleeman (1788-1856) was one fundamental exponent of the theory against tyrant colonial economic policies to plunder the colonial subjects and destroy the colonized political elites. He not on challenged the Recordian theory of Revenue but also tried to convince the colonial policy makers for the development of a policy of agriculture, industry and taxation and revenue based on and keeping in considerations the needs and necessities and priorities of the colonized subjects.

Richard Harris, Slave Trader Spokesman

1991 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Rawley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
International Market ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
The West ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Record ◽  
American Trade

“So little is known of the separate traders,” lamented the historian of the Royal African Company, K. G. Davies, that he was reduced to perceptive speculation about their activity. The authority, Basil Williams, writing about the period 1714–1760, asserted, “The traffic in negro slaves was carried on mainly by the Royal African Company.…“ In actuality a great deal can be discovered about the separate traders and their activity. The papers of Humphry Morice provide a rich source for a merchant who was perhaps London's and Great Britain's foremost slave trader in the 1720s. The assertion that the traffic in Negro slaves was carried on mainly by the Royal African Company is easily refuted by materials in the Public Record Office. London separate traders dominated the trade for the first three decades of the eighteenth century giving way to Bristol traders in the 1730s, who in turn gave way to Liverpool ascendancy in the 1740s.The English slave trade between 1699 and 1729, energized by the end of monopoly and the booming international market for slaves in America, grew prodigiously. In these years England accounted for nearly one-half of all slaves exported from the west coast of Africa. London alone accounted for two-thirds of all slaves delivered by English ships.Although the period falls half a century and more before the classic exposition of the advantages of free trade over monopoly by Adam Smith, an English free trade doctrine had found expression in Sir Dudley North's pamphlet, Discourses upon Trade (1691), and parlimentary proceedings. Interlopers in the slave trade, smugglers in the lucrative Spanish-American trade who opposed parliamentary restriction on their activity, separate traders whose participation in the trade became legalized in 1698, and a variety of commercial, industrial, and planting interests all contributed in their fashion to an outlook favoring free trade in slaves.

scholarly journals A Brazilian Adam Smith

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulo Roberto Almeida
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Trade ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Colonial Economy ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Economic Thinking ◽  
Conceptual Evolution ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Brazilian Ports

Adam Smith’s seminal work, The Wealth of Nations, was introduced to Brazilian readers by an autodidatic “economist”, José da Silva Lisboa, at the beginning of the 19th century. The paper intends to reconstruct the reception of Smith’s ideas in Brazil (and Portugal), through the early works of José da Silva Lisboa. He was a remarkable intellectual, liberal by instinct besides a government official, who was largely responsible for the “economic opening” of Brazilian ports to foreign trade (decreed by the Portuguese Regent, Prince D. João, in 1808, at his arrival in Brazil). He was honored with the title of Viscount of Cairu (who became the patron of the Brazilian economists in the 20th century). He translated, incorporated, copied and transformed many Smithian ideas in his books (published in Portugal and Brazil, by Imprensa Régia), adapting them to a colonial economy and a backward agricultural environment. He suggested, among other original features, the existence of a fourth factor of production (besides land, labor and capital): knowledge, which could be considered an anticipation of modern conceptual evolution in economic thinking.

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