Essay Archive - Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith, a brilliant eighteenth-century Scottish political economist, had the
advantage of judging the significance ol colonies by a rigorous examination
based on the colonial experience of 300 years. His overview has a built-in bias:
he strongly disapproved of excessive regulation of colonial trade by parent
countries. But his analysis is rich with insight and remarkably dispassionate in
its argument. Adam Smith recognized that the discovery of the New World not only
brought wealth and prosperity to the Old World, but that it also marked a divide
in the history of mankind. The passage that follows is the w....
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