BrewerDP. Pdf



Yüklə 82,25 Kb.
Pdf görüntüsü
səhifə1/9
tarix08.08.2018
ölçüsü82,25 Kb.
#62018
  1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9


 

Adam Smith’s stages of history 



 

 

Anthony Brewer 

 

Discussion Paper No. 08/601 



 

 

 



 

March 2008 

 

 

 



 

 

 



Department of Economics 

University of Bristol 

8 Woodland Road 

Bristol BS8 1TN 

 

 



 

Adam Smith’s stages of history 

 

Anthony Brewer

1

 

Abstract 

The purpose of this paper is to examine Smith’s four stages theory of history as an account of 

economic and social development, with an emphasis on the arguments and evidence he used 

to support it. In his biographical account of Smith’s life, his friend Dugald Stewart described 

Smith’s method as ‘conjectural history’, initiating a debate which has continued ever since. 

Stewart meant that Smith used (informed) conjecture to fill the unavoidable gaps in the 

historical evidence, though hostile commentators have interpreted it as saying that Smith 

simply ignored the facts. This paper sets Smith’s account alongside the evidence available to 

him to try to establish how much of it is pure speculation, unconstrained by historical 

evidence, and how much is  rather  a matter of interpreting evidence which can never be 

complete, as any historian is bound to do. It emerges that Smith did not (usually) neglect or 

ride roughshod over the evidence as it was available to him, but  rather  that evidence about 

some aspects and periods of history simply did not  then  exist, leaving much in his account 

that is indeed pure conjecture. The focus of the paper is on Smith, not on contemporaries or 

predecessors who argued a similar case. It deals with the substance of Smith’s case, not with 

priority. 

JEL: B12 

Keywords: Adam Smith, history, four stages, conjectural history 



 

                                                 

1

 Dept of Economics, University of Bristol, 8 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TN, UK. A.Brewer@bristol.ac.uk. 




 



Introduction 

According to Adam Smith, history is divided into four stages: ‘1st, the Age of Hunters; 2dly, 

the Age of Shepherds; 3dly, the Age of Agriculture; and 4thly, the Age of Commerce’ (LJ(A) 

i.27).

2

 This theory, shared with other Scottish and French writers of the mid-to- late eighteenth 



century, is familiar enough, but there has been relatively little detailed discussion of Smith’s 

use of the four stages theory and of the arguments he used to justify it.  

Discussion of Smith’s treatment of history has often focused on the issue of economic 

determinism. Pascal (1938) and Meek (1971, 1976) saw the four stages as a form of 

economic determinism ancestral to Marx’s theory of history. This has provoked a continuing 

discussion which has focused mainly on the emergence of commercial societies (or, in 

Marxist terms, the transition from feudalism to capitalism) in western Europe.  Recent 

contributions to this debate have mainly rejected the charge that Smith was an economic 

determinist (e.g. Haakonssen 1981 181–9, Winch 1983, Salter 1992). Andrew Skinner (1975, 

1982) is sometimes included with Pascal and Meek among those interpreting Smith as an 

economic determinist (e.g. Salter 1992), but this seems to me to be unfair. Skinner’s 1975 

paper in particular gives a balanced reading and is still perhaps the best overall treatment of 

the subject.  Alvey’s important contribution (2003a, b) presents a wider view, but with the 

focus still mainly on the rise of commercial society. The debate over economic determinism 

in Smith has raised important issues. One aim of this paper is to widen the focus beyond 

medieval and post- medieval Europe. 

A second relevant literature deals with  the ancestry and development of the four stages theory 

in writings of the eighteenth century and before. Smith was, of course, not the only or the first 

to propose a four stage theory.  Meek (1976) speculated that although Smith was not first to 

publish, he may well have used the four stages  in his lectures sometime around 1750, giving 

him priority in the statement of the fully developed form of the theory.  More recently, 

however, discussion  has moved away from this kind of claim to priority.  For example, 

Pocock’s massive  early- modern historiography,  Barbarism and Religion  (1999, see also 

2006), does not emphasize the four stages theory as such but   stresses the development of 

what Pocock calls the ‘enlightened narrative’, which aimed to account for the emergence of 

the system of independent secular states in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth 

centuries.  

The purpose of this paper is to examine Smith’s four stages theory of history as an account of 

economic and social development, with an emphasis on the arguments and evidence he used 

to support it.  The focus of the paper, therefore, is on Smith. It is important to stress that by 

discussing Smith’s theory in isolation from his predecessors I make no claim of originality 

for Smith, nor do I deny any such claim. The origins of the theory are simply not on the 

                                                 

2

 Re ferences to Smith’s works are in the standard Glasgow format. 




Yüklə 82,25 Kb.

Dostları ilə paylaş:
  1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9




Verilənlər bazası müəlliflik hüququ ilə müdafiə olunur ©genderi.org 2024
rəhbərliyinə müraciət

    Ana səhifə