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.

The Early History of Financial Economics, 1478–1776. By Geoffrey Poitras. Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2000. Pp. x, 522.

2002 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 268-269
Author(s):  
Larry Neal
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Financial Analysis ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Financial History ◽  
X 522 ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Simon Fraser University

Economic historians usually have to explain to their economist colleagues the difference between economic history, which focuses on facts, and history of economic thought, which focuses on ideas. Our colleagues in finance departments, typically fascinated by episodes in financial history treated by economic historians, are bound to be disappointed in the lack of attention given to the development of ideas in finance by historians of economic thought. Geoffrey Poitras, a professor of finance at Simon Fraser University, makes a valiant effort to remedy these oversights in his collection of vignettes that highlight the sophistication of financial instruments and analysts of financial markets well before the time of Adam Smith. Starting in 1478 with the publication of the Treviso Arithmetic, a typical textbook of commercial arithmetic for Italian merchants, and ending with brief snippets from the Wealth of Nations, Poitras treats the reader to a fascinating potpourri of excerpts from various manuals, brief biographies of pioneers in financial analysis, and historical discursions on foreign-exchange and stock markets.

scholarly journals Federal Aspects of Preferential Trade in the British Empire

1918 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. D. Allin
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Fiscal Policy ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Commercial Policy ◽  
New Era ◽  
Mother Country ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

The battle over the Corn Laws was fought out in Great Britain as a domestic issue. But it had nevertheless a great imperial significance. During the mercantilistic régime the colonies had been regarded as a commercial appanage of the mother country. The victory of the free traders opened up a new era in the economic history of the empire. The colonies were released from the irksome restrictions of the Navigation Laws. They acquired the right to frame their own tariffs with a view to their own particular interests. In short, they ceased to be dependent communities and became self-governing states.But the emancipation of the colonies was by no means complete. The home government still claimed the right to control their tariff policies. The colonies were privileged, indeed, to arrange their tariff schedules according to local needs; but it was expected that their tariff systems would conform to the fiscal policy of the mother land. The free traders, no less than the mercantilists, were determined to maintain the fiscal unity of the empire. There was still an imperial commercial policy; its motif only had been changed from protection to free trade. The colonies were still bound to the fiscal apron strings of the mother country; but the strings were no longer so short, nor the knots so tight as they had formerly been.

Epilogue

2019 ◽  
pp. 232-248
Author(s):  
James M. Vaughn
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Political History ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Ancient Regime ◽  
History Of ◽  
East And West ◽  
Wealth Of Nations

This chapter describes The Abbé Raynal's A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies, one of the Enlightenment treatises that blazed like a comet across the night sky of the ancient régime. Widely translated and published, twenty official and fifty illegal editions produced between 1770 and 1796. While the Philosophical History was a bestseller throughout the Atlantic world, it was particularly widely discussed and debated in Britain and its empire. The work was the most detailed and critical examination to date of European overseas expansion, and it was avidly read in Britain—where it most famously influenced Adam Smith while he was in the final stages of composing An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

On the issue of the British presence in Egypt: the business of “Thomas Cook and Son” in the assessment of contemporaries (the last third of the 19th century)

2021 ◽  
pp. 224-232
Author(s):  
Anna Y. Vasileva
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
English Language ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
Nile Valley ◽  
Civilizing Mission ◽  
Mass Tourism ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century

The purpose of the study is to determine how the development of the tourism business of Thomas Cook and Son in the Nile Valley influenced the perception and assessment of contemporaries of the British presence in Egypt at the end of the 19th century. The relevance of the analyzed problem lies in the fact that the study of the history of tourism in the era of New imperialism allows us to supplement our understanding of the representations of the empire and private busi-ness and their mutual influence. It is substantiated that, according to the views of contemporaries, the activities of the company contributed to the creation of conditions for the economic develop-ment of Egypt, opened these territories to the world, providing free movement along the Nile, and contributed to the spread of the English language, making this country more “civilized” in the eyes of Europeans. We conclude that, at the same time, the handbooks of the company broadcasted the achievements of the imperial policy of Great Britain, reinforcing the idea of the positive conse-quences of the British occupation for Egypt. It is concluded that the commercial success of private business became a visible manifestation of the success of the England’s civilizing mission. The research materials can be used to further study the relationship between the development of mass tourism and the colonial policy of Great Britain.

Britain, Commonwealth and the End of Empire

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Holland
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Due Process ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Commonwealth

This chapter examines the history of Great Britain, the British Commonwealth, and the end of the British Empire in the twentieth century, suggesting that the twentieth century ended in Britain as it began, with the constitutional structure of the United Kingdom a contested and vital subject of public discourse. It concludes that the transitions that characterised the Empire-Commonwealth over the twentieth century were ultimately constrained within the due process of British constitutionalism.

Enlightenment, Scottish

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Berry
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
William Robertson

This term refers to the intellectual movement in Scotland in roughly the second half of the eighteenth century. As a movement it included many theorists – the best known of whom are David Hume, Adam Smith and Thomas Reid – who maintained both institutional and personal links with each other. It was not narrowly philosophical, although in the Common Sense School it did develop its own distinctive body of argument. Its most characteristic feature was the development of a wide-ranging social theory that included pioneering ‘sociological’ works by Adam Ferguson and John Millar, socio-cultural history by Henry Home (Lord Kames) and William Robertson as well as Hume’s Essays (1777) and Smith’s classic ‘economics’ text The Wealth of Nations (1776). All these works shared a commitment to ‘scientific’ causal explanation and sought, from the premise of the uniformity of human nature, to establish a history of social institutions in which the notion of a mode of subsistence played a key organising role. Typically of the Enlightenment as a whole this explanatory endeavour was not divorced from explicit evaluation. Though not uncritical of their own commercial society, the Scots were in no doubt as to the superiority of their own age compared to what had gone before.

Arresting John Entick: The Monitor Controversy and the Imagined British Conquests of the Spanish Empire

2014 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 934-959 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Stiles
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Future Development ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Conservative Approach ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
The Future ◽  
Participatory Model ◽  
Legal Processes

AbstractThis article explores the events surrounding the Monitor controversy, which stemmed from radical criticism of the crown's conservative approach to the war between Spain and Great Britain in 1762. While some observers wished to quickly bring the war to an end, others expressed more radical plans for the destruction of the Spanish Empire. When the crown retaliated against prominent agitators with a round of arrests designed to silence their dissent, the result was a succession of legal cases that culminated with Entick v. Carrington in 1765. In their arguments, the plaintiffs expressed concern that the British Empire was seemingly in danger of evolving into an oppressive, allegedly “Spanish” style of polity. These legal processes and the precedents they set were critical to the development of protected space for political dissent in the British Empire, and affirmed a more broadly participatory model for the future development of imperial policy.

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.

Adam Smith: Moral and Political Philosophy

Philosophy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Smith
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Technical Details ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
The University ◽  
The 19Th Century

Adam Smith (1723–1790) has become known as the father of economics. His reputation as the author of the Wealth of Nations has eclipsed his contributions to other areas of philosophy. Smith was Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow and a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. His Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) was well-regarded at the time but faded from the philosophical canon in the 19th century and has only recently been subject to a revival of interest among philosophers. Smith’s thought was dismissed as moral psychology or as proto-utilitarian political economy until a revival in interest stemming largely from the publication of a critical edition of his works in the 1970s. Recent years have seen a renaissance in interest in Smith among moral philosophers. This has been accompanied by the first serious analysis of Smith’s thinking on rhetoric and the philosophy of science. This bibliography focuses on Smith’s moral and political philosophy. There is a very large literature on the technical details his economic theory and his contribution to the history of that discipline, but that will be mentioned here only when illuminating for discussions of his moral and political thinking.

The Brexitologic of Competitiveness

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (42) ◽  
pp. 147-171
Author(s):  
Denisa Čiderová ◽  
Dubravka Kovačević ◽  
Jozef Čerňák
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Global Competitiveness ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Competitiveness Index ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Boston Tea Party

Abstract Adam Smith finalised his magnum opus An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations between 1773 (Boston Tea Party) and 1776 (Declaration of Independence), and in its final paragraph Britain should “endeavour to accommodate her future views and designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances”. The Wealth of Nations was “aimed to influence British MPs [Members of Parliament] to support a peaceful resolution to the American colonies’ War of Independence”, A. Smith “urged legislators to awaken from the “golden dream” of empire and avoid “a long, expensive and ruinous war”“, and “rejection of the protectionist Corn Laws in favour of opening up to the world economy marked the start of an era of globalization which contributed to Britain’s prosperity”, as Yueh (2019, p. 16f) puts it. Over the years, industrialization brought about by the Industrial Revolution has been challenged by deindustrialization, globalization by deglobalization. So with the “Brexit issue” at stake, what has been the “Brexitologic of Competitiveness”? In an earlier relevant series of analyses published by Čiderová et al. between 2012-2014 our focus was on the Global Competitiveness Index (alias the GCI by the World Economic Forum) in a spectrum of territorial and temporal perspectives related to the European Union. Now, in this follow-up comparative study zooming out to globalization and zooming in to competitiveness, our focus is streamlined to the “openended Brexit issue” on the background of updates of the GCI (alias GCI 4.0) and the KOF Globalisation Index (the latter by ETH Zürich).

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