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

Palen, Marc‐William

doi:10.1017/s0018246x13000101

Cited by 32 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…29-30). But during the crisis of British imperialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and in the context of a political backlash against Cobdenite trade policies, Smith had come to be seen by many as an advocate of at least some form of empire, largely as a result of his arguments about the desirability of an imperial federation as a solution to the problem of relations between Britain and her dominions (Palen, 2014; see also Nicolson, 1909).…”

Section: Colonialism and Adam Smithmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adam Smith, Colonialism, and Liberal Imperialism

Williams

2023

NIER

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Adam Smith had a longstanding interest in colonialism and more generally relations between Europe and the rest of the world. It was through engagement with these issues that he worked through some of the central elements of his thought. This paper examines both Smith’s contexts and our own and argues that Smith’s work provides an important resource for reflecting today on relations with distant and diverse others today. It identifies three aspects of Smith’s thought that are particularly relevant: the political and economic costs of colonial ventures to the colonisers themselves, the question of whether and how imperialism had encouraged ‘progress’, and the question of how social and cultural differences should be understood and judged. The paper teases out Smith’s sometimes uncertain arguments in these areas and suggests that they can contribute to our own reflections on the troubled practices of liberal imperialism.

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Section: Colonialism and Adam Smithmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adam Smith, Colonialism, and Liberal Imperialism

Williams

2023

NIER

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“…These adaptations lead to the prosperity of the colonies with varying degrees of success. Dispelling earlier images of Smith as an advocate of imperialism (cf. Palen, 2014), scholars have recently highlighted Smith’s criticism of imperialism (Buchan and Hill, 2007; Hall and Hobson, 2010; Pitts, 2009, 2015; Rothschild, 2012).…”

Section: Section 3: Smith’s Analysis Of Imperial Projectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adam Smith: So what if the sovereign shares in ignorance?

Marder

2017

Journal of International Political Theory

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Unfortunately, Adam Smith’s undeserved legacy as a proponent of laissez-faire and liberal institutions at the international scope inhibits profiting from his refined analysis of international affairs. I argue that the Wealth of Nations’ chapter on colonies contains Smith’s discussion of the sovereign’s adaptation to ignorance in global politics. I examine the sense in which the sovereign is ignorant according to Smith and how sovereigns adapt to ignorance with varying success. His comparative analysis suggests that reduction of one’s share in ignorance is not always desirable, and a priori rejection of ignorance is impractical because it deprives of a potentially advantageous resource. A careful reading of his work enables learning from his approach to global politics, without filtering it through his ideas on the free market.

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“…Contradictory interpretations surrounding the relationship between Anglo-American abolitionism and economic ideology, humanitarianism, and the capitalist marketplace all fall short of explaining the strong transatlantic connections between Victorian free-trade ideology and abolitionism. In contrast to the contention that the dominant abolitionist economic ideology was biblical rather than classical liberal, for instance, many abolitionists did indeed draw ideological inspiration from the latter, in particular the mid-century, cosmopolitan, free-trade ideology derived from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (Howe 1997; Palen 2014a). Famously espoused by Anti-Corn-Law League leader Richard Cobden (1804–1865), this Victorian free-trade ideology correspondingly came to be known as Cobdenism: the belief that international free trade and a foreign policy of non-interventionism would bring about domestic prosperity and world peace.…”

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Free-Trade Ideology and Transatlantic Abolitionism: A Historiography

Palen

2015

J Hist Econ Thought

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This essay seeks to trace the many-and often conflicting-economic ideological interpretations of the transatlantic abolitionist impulse. In particular, it explores the contested relationship between free-trade ideology and transatlantic abolitionism, and highlights the understudied influence of Victorian free-trade ideology within the American abolitionist movement. By bringing together historiographical controversies from the American and British side, the essay calls into question long-standing conceptions regarding the relationship between free trade and abolitionism, and suggests new avenues for research.Contradictions continue to surround the historical intersection of Anglo-American capitalism and slavery. The contested relationship between free-trade ideology and transatlantic abolitionism sits high among them. This historiographical essay seeks to ideas. For example, while granting that antebellum abolitionists "generally adhered to free trade economic ideas, sometimes radically so," James L. Huston has argued that "abolitionists possessed a biblical political economy, not a classical liberal one," a moral impulse that became diluted from the 1830s to the 1850s (2000, p. 488; 1990, p. 614). 2Paul Goodman has similarly portrayed American abolitionism as an oppositional religious response to the era's relatively unregulated capitalist marketplace: "Abolition was a struggle to impose on social and economic relations the moral principles that were rooted in Christian teachings" (1998, pp. xiv, 140). The typical evangelical historiographical tradition goes even further than these interpretations in suggesting that 1 For the wide variation in interpretations, see also Huston (2000 and 1990).2 K. R. M. Short, examining the English intersection of Christianity and antislavery, has drawn similar conclusions; British free trade was "firmly wed to anti-slavery," and contained "a decidedly religious imprimatur" (1965-66, p. 313). 3American abolitionists were Christian reformers whose evangelical morality was in inherent opposition to market capitalism. Barnes (1933, pp. 3-16), andRandall (1940). 4 See, for instance, Ashworth (1995, pp. 131-181), Davis (1987), Davis (1975, pp. 45-47), Temperley (1980. 5 See also Ashworth (1987). This interpretation bears some similarity to that of Seymour Drescher concerning the British marketplace. Although granting laissez-faire capitalism and abolitionism were 4 predominantly middle-class abolitionists in the United States subscribed to an economic individualism and anti-institutionalism that at times bordered upon anarchism (Perry 1973; Elkins 1958, pp. 147-157; Forster 2014 England, but also suggested that declining profits from the transatlantic slave system, not humanitarianism, brought about the end of the British slave trade and Caribbean slavery in the early nineteenth century. This humanitarianism-in-decline motif remains a point of closely connected, Drescher has contended that the market per se did not create the abolitionist humanitarian impulse; working-class soci...

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

Cited by 32 publications

References 53 publications

Adam Smith, Colonialism, and Liberal Imperialism

Adam Smith, Colonialism, and Liberal Imperialism

Adam Smith: So what if the sovereign shares in ignorance?

Free-Trade Ideology and Transatlantic Abolitionism: A Historiography

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