The regularity of these flare-ups suggests that the Hanoverian succession was far from bedded-down though disquiet with the effects of the Union is not conterminous with support for the Jacobite cause. The initial military success of the Jacobites was not matched by popular support from the bulk of the Scottish people and was soon reversed. After the battle of Culloden , which crushed the rebellion, it was deliberate Government policy to destroy the political separateness of the Highlands Youngson One of the motives behind the Union was the need for Scots to gain unrestricted access to English markets.
Eventually, by about mid-century, the Union began to have an economic pay-off and rapid change took place Devine The growth of Glasgow was the most remarkable of these changes. Its population grew from roughly 17, when Smith was a student to over 42, in Hamilton The city attracted numbers from the rural Western Highlands as a process of urbanization began. Excluding agriculture, the production of textiles, especially linen, was the chief Scottish industry Durie In Glasgow the crucial development was the growth in the tobacco trade as it overtook Bristol to become the major port.
Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations: Summary & Concept
What urbanization and textile production did require was a supportive infrastructure both physical and financial. Transportation was by horse Smith rode to Oxford and boat. While there was a reasonably efficient coach service between Edinburgh and London, cross-country travel was arduous. The only way to transport in bulk was by boat and to get from Glasgow to Edinburgh about 45 miles apart meant a long and hazardous voyage via the Pentland Firth well over miles.
A canal linking the estuaries of the rivers Forth in the east and the Clyde in the west was started in and completed in This was a considerable engineering achievement but clearly took extensive capital funding. The concomitant of this capital investment was the development of a banking system. There were a host of smaller banks, not all of them viable. One of the problems faced by the shareholders in the Forth-Clyde Canal was the depression in confidence caused by the crash of the Ayr Bank in This was not mere lip-service. In a year-old student Thomas Aikenhead was executed for blasphemy.
This confessional commitment lasted into the eighteenth century with attempts to remove for heresy the Professor of Divinity at Glasgow, John Simson father of Robert in and again in This was a murky business, a mixture of theology, doctrine, and politics—a cocktail that affected more than Simson Skoczylas Yet, here too, change was afoot at least at elite level. The loss of a Parliament at the Union enhanced the Kirk's role as the nearest equivalent to a national debating forum in the form of General Assembly Clark This salience made it the focus of political attention and this eventually helped the Scottish Church or elements of it and the Scottish Enlightenment to come to some sort of rapprochement, as manifest in the historian William Robertson, Principal of Edinburgh University —93 , becoming the Moderator of the General Assembly in succeeded by another professor—Alexander Gerard of Marischal College and author of a prize-winning Essay on Taste.
With the institutional centrality of its key members, this makes the Enlightenment in Scotland very different from that typically associated with the French situation.
Background of 'The Wealth of Nations'
Smith was friendly with the leading Moderates and this circle was sufficiently catholic as it were to include Hume. Many Smith scholars enlist him, with varying degrees of commitment, in the Stoic camp even if his own religious views are enigmatic see Ross With the exception of Hume and law-lords like Kames, the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment were, like Smith, university professors. For a country of Scotland's size and population the presence of five universities—St Andrews, Glasgow, and Kings College Aberdeen, which predate the Reformation, and Edinburgh and Marischal College Aberdeen, which were Reformation foundations—is striking.
The traditional task of these universities was to turn out ministers of religion and this continued throughout the century Cant We have already mentioned the establishment of law chairs, and medical schools were officially recognized in Edinburgh and Glasgow the provision of a medical education, p.
The system of regents whereby one teacher took the same class for all its subjects throughout its four years of study was abandoned only Kings College retained it through the century. A second change was the move from lecturing in Latin. The practical aspect of learning was clearly important. For example, William Cullen at Glasgow corresponded with Kames on the chemistry of fertilizers and gave special lectures on the principles of agriculture—he had a farm of his own where he put his own principles into practice Donovan Cullen also researched into the application of chemistry to linen-bleaching Guthrie But the universities were also open to intellectual developments in which Cullen also made his mark.
Curricula were changed and especially notable was the speed with which Newton's system was adopted and professed Shepherd Newton himself gave the Glasgow graduate Colin McLaurin—already a professor at Marischal College—a testimonial for his appointment at Edinburgh in Chitnis The apparently simple fact that the theorists of the Scottish Enlightenment were overwhelmingly university professors is prima facie evidence that in this system ability counted.
While it would be a mistake to deny that nepotism and cronyism was present, little was to be gained by appointing lazy incompetents if for no other reason than that they would not attract students to pay their fees another Scottish practice that Smith compared favourably to Oxford. Implicit in much of the above is the interweaving nature of the Scottish institutions of the law, the church and the academy. These can be characterized as interwoven strands because the intellectual elite were involved across the board. English periodicals like The Tatler and The Spectator were reprinted quickly in Edinburgh and widely circulated cf.
These aspects of his thought are explored in several of the chapters, especially in Part Three. The Enlightenment was a self-conscious movement. In Scotland, as we have observed, they were professionals, especially lawyers, doctors, and university professors and this is replicated elsewhere Kant, Linnaeus, Genovesi for example, were also professors. For all its popular association of the Enlightenment with France, France is in this regard something of an outlier, since with one or two exceptions, the philosophes were either professional men of letters or of independent means.
Nor was the Enlightenment a localized affair. There were family members throughout Europe as well as America. The literati genuinely were participants in an international dialogue, seeing themselves as engaged in the same debates. One form of this dialogue was direct engagement. A second form of dialogue was the widespread dissemination of works and translations. For example, the Italians typically knew WN via its French version and in his professorial days Smith had for a time —60 responsibility for the University Library and in that capacity purchased seven volumes of Diderot's Encyclopedie Scott Light implied that earlier times were comparatively benighted.
In less metaphorical terms this contrast between light and dark is the contrast between knowledge and reason over against ignorance, prejudice, and superstition. Hence any institutions such as slavery, torture, witchcraft, or religious persecution that still existed were to be opposed as relics, as creatures of the night. Smith's writings establish his subscription to this agenda see Samuel Fleischacker below for examples of Smith's commitment to equality. Even though Smith as a writer was not given to expressions of outrage he was clear that slavery is evil LJB Central to the lifting of darkness was the light shone by science.
The brightest star in that firmament was Isaac Newton. Newton was the hero of the Enlightenment. To speak generally, his achievement was to encompass within one comprehensive schema an explanation, derived from a few simple principles laws of motion plus gravity , of the range of natural phenomena, from the orbit of the planets to apples falling from trees. Crucially and decisively these laws were proved to be right. Newton's calculation that the earth was not, contrary to Descartes, elongated at the poles and flat at the equator but flatter around the poles was vindicated by expeditions to Lapland and the Equator.
His prediction that a comet would enter the solar system was duly borne out by its Halley's Comet arrival in Well before that date Newton's system had become accepted especially in Scotland. One hallmark of Newton's status was that to liken someone's work to his was to pay it the highest possible compliment. Though this declaration has been subject to debate—see Berry Others have been less confident that Smith himself carried out this project, though this is largely because of their more historically informed appreciation of what Newton's system in fact represented see for example Schliesser ; Montes As Raphael acknowledges, and as we have already noted, Smith himself is not very helpful—and despite his emblematic status, there are minimal references to Newton in his two major works.
The Scots for their part are believers in progress. This belief required a theory of history and much of the writing of the Scottish Enlightenment was of this cast Berry In this he was part of the Enlightenment mainstream. Others have been more sympathetic seeing in this period a new conception of history as universalist, including all of humanity and all facets of humanity in its scope see e.
Barraclough ; Trevor-Roper While they do maintain that it has advanced across a wide front and that the growth of knowledge is indeed a crucial ingredient in this advance, they are less confident than Frenchmen like Claude Helvetius, or Englishmen like Joseph Priestley, that it is automatic and necessarily always and in all respects an improvement. An important factor accounting for this less than wholehearted approach is that the Scots attach less weight to deliberative reason Forbes Here the Scots demonstrate their debt to Montesquieu. The Scots are fulsome in their praise of his Spirit of the Laws , though that is consistent with criticism of, for example, his climate theory.
Smith typically is sparing in his published references to him but it is clear from the LJ editions that he had a close knowledge of the work. The natural law discourse stems ultimately from the system of Roman jurisprudence that was a staple of Scottish legal education, which Smith both received and delivered. A key ingredient in the curriculum was the re-formulated, post-Reformation, accounts of Natural Law. While there were home-grown authorities notably James Dalrymple, Lord Stair's Institutions , 1 the most notable of these formulations—and both picked out in this regard by Smith LJB 1.
The latter was especially influential, obtaining a central place in University curricula; with Scotland no exception see Chris Berry's Chapter. Hutcheson himself in his lectures followed the jurisprudentialist outlines. As subsequent chapters will explore, one of the significant contributions of Smith was to recast this tradition along what may be called more sociological or historical lines.
But for all its obvious importance, the jurisprudentialist talk of law and rights had no monopoly. An equally venerable vocabulary, with its roots in Aristotle, spoke of virtue and the political or civic life as the authentic expression of human nature see now classic exposition by Pocock Smith's relationship to this critique of commerce is a running theme in this volume and is explored in the chapters by Spiros Tegos and Ryan Hanley among others.
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Aside from the relative weight to be attributed to the twin presence in Smith of the language of ius and virtus Pocock Otteson ; Montes And the more recent treatments which take fully on board, even when they do not start from, TMS still accept the salience of WN in any assessment of Smith. Smith the economist was neither a lone voice nor without precedence. Within Scotland, Hume's Political Discourses contained important and influential essays on commerce, trade, money, tax, and interest.
In an uncharacteristic acknowledgement of the work of others, Smith commended Hume's argument in these essays that commerce gradually introduced good government and liberty WN III. He did not offer that compliment to another Scottish though exiled as a Jacobite sympathizer economist, Sir James Steuart.
Of his contemporaries, Smith engaged with the French Physiocrats. As we noted earlier, Smith met its leading proponents such as Quesnay and Mirabeau, when he was in Paris. As this suggests, WN is a notable work of polemics. He does not mince his words. Smith is not a negative figure; he makes the case for various reforms, as with the treatment of the American colonies but he is not sanguine that his advice will be heeded WN V. Of course this is a gross simplification of Smith's own position, as Amartya Sen argues in the concluding chapter of this volume. It is morally wrong to use the power of the state to direct individual actions, as in choice of employment or dress WN II.
It follows, too, that liberty can justifiably be restricted as with bank lending. Since unintended outcomes are not always benign, the government's responsibilities include ameliorating both the material and moral circumstances of its citizens. One example of this is Smith's argument for the provision of education to counteract the effects of repetitive work. WN was rapidly translated—it appeared Danish, French twice and German twice all before Smith's death in Campbell and Skinner The initial reception in Scotland was enthusiastic.
Hume who read it shortly before his death exclaimed his delight Corr Although there is dispute about the immediacy of Smith's impact or the depth of WN's penetration in the reading public for a critical survey see Sher , Smithian principles did percolate into the political, policy sphere. In contrast to Pitt's view, Samuel Whitbread cited Smith in Parliament in in support of bill for minimum wage legislation Rothschild One consequence of this was that in the early nineteenth century Smith was criticized from the Right.
It was much later in that century that he was criticized from the Left because he had by then become associated with the glorification of competition and self-interest. The history of TMS is far less eventful. As Glenn Morrow remarked in a lecture to mark the sesqui-centennial of WN, the same anniversary had not been celebrated for p.
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The bi-centennial by contrast was marked by conferences in Glasgow and Balliol and globally. The book, however, was far from ignored when it first appeared. Across the Enlightenment it received a warm reception, with eighteenth-century translations into French and German. Although editions continued to appear periodically through the nineteenth century, its impact was muted.
In Britain, neither of the two nineteenth-century mainstream approaches—Utilitarianism and Idealism—paid it much attention. Regarding the former, J. Mill does not refer to him though he does receive a careful and respectful exegesis in Henry Sidgwick's History of Ethics even if the concluding assessment is lukewarm Sidgwick Regarding the latter, T. A brief volume on Smith by R. Leslie Stephen's late nineteenth-century survey History of English Thought does devote several pages to TMS but treats him as unoriginal and the book as the publication of an ambitious professor's lectures Stephen In his compendious The Scottish Philosophy the President of Princeton, James McCosh, despite seeing William Hamilton's development of Reid as the high point, gives a reasonable overview of TMS though concludes it is likely now to be read for its style rather the theory it expounds McCosh The most informed account is by L.
While John Rae's Life and W. The same thing would happen with prices. Producers would set a price and if customers paid that price, then the value was set. If producers tried to charge too much, customers wouldn't buy. If producers sold things too cheap, they wouldn't be able to keep up with demand, so they could increase prices to slow down demand. All of these transactions and considerations would work together, as the invisible hand, to put the market in equilibrium.
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Since , The Wealth of Nations , written by Adam Smith, has been a must-read for anyone interested in or studying economics. Philosophers that were contemporaries to Smith and those that have worked since Smith have expanded his work to create an entire field of economics. There are three popularized ideas that can be credited back to Smith; those are division of labor, productivity, and free markets. For over two hundred years, there has been debate about how correct Smith was with his ideas he wrote in The Wealth of Nations.
But, one thing that everyone can agree on is that The Wealth of Nations stands tall as the cornerstone of modern economics. To unlock this lesson you must be a Study. Did you know… We have over college courses that prepare you to earn credit by exam that is accepted by over 1, colleges and universities. You can test out of the first two years of college and save thousands off your degree. Anyone can earn credit-by-exam regardless of age or education level. To learn more, visit our Earning Credit Page. Not sure what college you want to attend yet?
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Students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. Explore over 4, video courses. Find a degree that fits your goals. Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations: Try it risk-free for 30 days. An error occurred trying to load this video. Try refreshing the page, or contact customer support. Register to view this lesson Are you a student or a teacher? I am a student I am a teacher. What teachers are saying about Study.
Introduction: Adam Smith: An Outline of Life, Times, and Legacy
Are you still watching? Your next lesson will play in 10 seconds. Add to Add to Add to. Want to watch this again later? The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: Reflections on the Revolution in France: Invisible Hand in Economics: Two Treatises Of Government by Locke: On Liberty by John Stuart Mill: Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. Discourses on Livy by Machiavelli: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson: Division of Labor In The Wealth of Nations , Adam Smith uses the process of making pins to introduce the idea of division of labor , or breaking down processes into specific steps so one person could develop a specialty.
Productivity Generating more output with the same amount of inputs - productivity - is the second primary concept from The Wealth of Nations. Try it risk-free No obligation, cancel anytime. Want to learn more? Select a subject to preview related courses: Free Markets Perhaps the concept Smith is most famous for, and the reason he is considered by many to be the father of capitalism, is the idea of free markets.
Lesson Summary Let's review! The Three Popularized Concepts Division of Labor Productivity Free Markets The concept of breaking down processes into specific steps to develop workers' specializations The notion that performance should be measured by the amount of output for a given amount of input The idea that markets didn't need external interference or regulation to function properly because customers would help balance prices, supply, demandand business survivability Learning Outcomes Once you are finished, you should be able to: Provide a brief summary of what The Wealth of Nations is and name its author Discuss the three popularized economic concepts that originated from the book.
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Introduction: Adam Smith: An Outline of Life, Times, and Legacy - Oxford Handbooks
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Job Description, Duties and Salary Economists: You are viewing lesson Lesson 8 in chapter 16 of the course:. Help and Review 17 chapters lessons 1 flashcard set. The Production Possibilities Curve Demand, Supply and Market Aggregate Demand and Supply: