Abstract
In this chapter I explore Adam Smith’s international thought by examining his conception of the ideal global regime of commercial strangership and his attitudes to imperialism, global integration, American independence, Stoic cosmopolitanism, war, mercantilism, the changing character of international relations under commercialism, patriotism and his own alleged nationalism. There is a special focus on his attitude to British control over America because it offers insight, not only to his views on international affairs, but to his skill as a political strategist and navigator of public opinion. It shows that Smith was extremely well equipped to engage with the realities of political life.
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Notes
- 1.
The time of globalisation’s birth has been contested. Flynn and Giraldez ‘propose that globalisation began when the Old World became directly connected with the Americas in 1571 via Manila’ (2004). Smith also dates the beginnings of globalisation from the discoveries of America and ‘a passage to the East Indies, by the Cape of Good Hope’ (WN, II.V.i.32–3: 448–49).
- 2.
Smith does note, however, that imperial conquest can hasten development and stimulate population growth among the indigenous population (WN, IV.vii.b: 568–69). David Williams has argued, however, that ‘Smith’s opposition to colonial rule derived largely from its impact on the metropole, rather than on its impact on the conquered and colonised’ (Williams 2014: 285).
- 3.
For an excellent and detailed discussion of arguments made in this vein prior to Smith see Hont (2005).
- 4.
- 5.
Oikeiosis roughly translates as ‘belonging’ and implies a natural orientation towards one’s own good; social oikeiosis is the social process of ‘making akin to’.
- 6.
Notwithstanding the Imperial Parliament he proposed as a last-ditch measure to resolve the American conflict and whose membership was limited to the British Isles and America (see below).
- 7.
In spite of all this rhetoric of ‘justice’ in international relations, as Pitts notes, Smith nowhere specifies ‘what rights nations should be understood to have: whether rights not to be interfered with, or perhaps simply not to be robbed and destroyed’ (Pitts 2005: 57).
- 8.
Condorcet dreamed, meanwhile, of a kind of international court to preside impartially over ‘the execution of laws of commerce, seizures of foreign vessels, violations of territory, the interpretation of treaties, successions, etc.’ (Rothschild 2004: 12).
- 9.
Smith gives as his example the ‘horrible, and therefore intolerable, practice of infanticide’ (TMS, V.ii.13–16: 209–11).
- 10.
According to Ian Ross, the ideas expressed in the Memorandum ‘are similar to those of the WN’ (Ross 1975: 14–15). However, there are some differences and omissions, as I show below.
- 11.
Morrison contests late readings of Smith’s influence here by refuting the ‘materialist’ thesis that the latter’s ideas were only ‘embraced’ retrospectively ‘because they fit Britain’s new circumstances, namely, the loss of the American colonies’. Morrison instead ‘defends the ‘ideographic’ counterfactual that if Shelburne had not engaged Smith’s ideas, the American Revolutionary War would have ended on vastly different terms (Morrison 2012: 401–402).
- 12.
Skinner notes that, objectively, there had been considerable mutual benefit in the arrangement since ‘the colonists [were] confined to the production of primary products and the British to manufactures, thus creating a system of complementary markets’ (Skinner 1977: 75; see also Skinner 1996 and Stevens 1975: 212).
- 13.
According to Andrew Skinner, the acts of trade and navigation that Smith saw as ‘unjust violations of natural liberty, were not at the same time seen in this light by the colonists themselves’ and ‘neither the Declaration of Colonial Rights and Grievances not the Declaration of Independence (which included a comprehensive indictment of British Policy) contained any critical reference to them’ (Skinner 1996: 127).
- 14.
The document is dated February 1778 and ‘was first published by G.H. Guttridge in the American Historical Review, 38, 1932–33’ (Skinner 1976: 68).
- 15.
See Fergusson (1934) for Dempster’s letters to Sir Adam Fergusson of 26 January 1775 and 4 February 1778.
- 16.
However, by 1778 Pownell is reported to have told the House of Commons: ‘Until you shall be convinced that you are no longer sovereigns over America, but that the United States are an independent sovereign people … it is of no consequence at all, what schemes or plans of conciliation this side the House or that may adopt’ (see Stephens in Corr. App.B: 379–80).
- 17.
- 18.
Others agreed that under a Union, America would eventually be dominant, among them, Thomas Pownell, as well as Benjamin Franklin, the latter of whom wrote to Lord Kames: ‘Scotland and Ireland are differently circumstanced. Confined by the sea, they can scarcely increase in numbers, wealth and strength, so as to overbalance England. But America, an immense territory, favoured by Nature with all advantages of climate, soil, great navigable rivers, and lakes, etc. must become a great country, populous and mighty; and will, in less time than is generally conceived, be able to shake off any shackles that may be imposed on her, and perhaps place them on the imposers’ (cited in Ross 1972: 340–41). John Adams thought the scheme practicable only if eventually ‘Crown and legislature’ ‘migrate[d] to America’ (Adams 1856: 119; Benians 1925: 263).
- 19.
Smith’s use of the term ‘project’ requires some explanation here. Going by his use of the term in comparable contexts, ‘projectors’ are mere speculators who get behind projects that they are ill-equipped to manage and conclude (e.g. WN, I.x.b.42:131; WN, II.ii.69: 310–12). Hence, when Smith refers to the Empire as a mere ‘project’ he means it pejoratively as a speculative scheme ill-executed and unrealised.
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Hill, L. (2020). Adam Smith’s International Thought. In: Adam Smith’s Pragmatic Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19337-9_6
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