Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T03:45:01.578Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE LIMITS OF MERCANTILE ADMINISTRATION: ADAM SMITH AND EDMUND BURKE ON BRITAIN’S EAST INDIA COMPANY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2019

Gregory M. Collins
Gregory M. Collins*
Affiliation:
Yale University, Department of Political Science.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

It is often claimed that Adam Smith and Edmund Burke held similar views on matters relating to political economy. One area of tension in their thought, however, was the institutional credibility of Britain’s East India Company. They both argued that the Company corrupted market order in India, but while Smith supported the termination of the firm’s charter, Burke aspired to preserve it. This article examines why they arrived at such divergent conclusions. It argues that the source of Burke and Smith’s friction arose from the dissimilar frames of reference through which they assessed the credibility of the Company. Burke examined the corporation’s legitimacy through the lens of British prescriptive, imperial, and constitutional history, yet Smith evaluated it as part of his larger attack on the mercantile system. These different frames of reference were responsible for the further incongruities in their thought on the Company relating to the role of prescription and imperial honor in political communities, the qualifications of traders to rule, and the appropriate tempo of policy reform. This article concludes that, even with such differences, the two thinkers’ respective criticisms of the Company illustrate the threat that monopolies pose to the liberal order.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , September 2019 , pp. 369 - 392
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author would like to thank Jimena Hurtado, Sarah Johnson, David Bromwich, and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on this article, a version of which was presented at the 114th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.

References

REFERENCES

Agnani, Sunil M. 2013. Hating Empire Properly: The Two Indies and the Limits of Enlightenment Anticolonialism. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, Gary M., and Tollison, Robert D.. 1982. “Adam Smith’s Analysis of Joint-Stock Companies.” Journal of Political Economy 90 (6): 1237–1256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bisset, Robert. 1800. The Life of Edmund Burke. Volume II. London: George Cawthorn, British Library.Google Scholar
Bourke, Richard, 2015. Empire & Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Burke, William, and Burke, Edmund. 1760. An Account of the European Settlements in America. Two volumes. London: R. and J. Dodsley.Google Scholar
Campbell, Roy H., and Skinner, Andrew S.. 2010. Adam Smith. Volume II. Routledge: London and New York.Google Scholar
Canavan, Francis. 1973. “Burke on Prescription of Government.” Review of Politics 35 (4): 454–474.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canavan, Francis. 1995. The Political Economy of Edmund Burke: The Role of Property in His Thought. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Chapman, Richard A. 1970. The Higher Civil Service in Britain. London: Constable.Google Scholar
Coats, Alfred W. 1975. “Adam Smith and the Mercantile System.” In Skinner, Andrew S. and Wilson, Thomas, eds., Essays on Adam Smith. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 218–236.Google Scholar
Cole, Arthur H. 1958. “Puzzles of the ‘Wealth of Nations.’” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 24 (1): 1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Gregory M. 2017. “Edmund Burke on the Question of Commercial Intercourse in the Eighteenth Century.” Review of Politics 79 (4) (2017): 565–595.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cone, Carl B. 1964. Burke and the Nature of Politics: The Age of the French Revolution. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.Google Scholar
Copeland, Thomas W., gen. ed. 1958–1978. The Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Ten volumes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, Ralph. 1966. “The Rise of Protection in England, 1689–1786.” Economic History Review 19 (2): 306–317.Google Scholar
Dunn, William Clyde. 1941. “Adam Smith and Edmund Burke: Complementary Contemporaries.” Southern Economic Journal 7 (3): 330–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fay, Charles R. 1956. Burke and Adam Smith: Being a Lecture Delivered at the Queen’s University in Belfast, April 27, 1956. Belfast: Queen’s University of Belfast.Google Scholar
Fleischacker, Samuel. 2005. On Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations: A Philosophical Companion. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Frazer, Michael L. 2015. “Seduced by System: Edmund Burke’s Aesthetic Embrace of Adam Smith’s Philosophy.” Intellectual History Review 25 (3): 357–372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Gazetteer. 1782. “Committee on the Reports of the Secret Committee for East-India Affairs.” 16 April 1782.Google Scholar
Groenewegen, Peter D. 1983. “A New Catalogue of Adam Smith’s Library.” In Wood, John Cunningham, ed., Adam Smith: Critical Assessments. Volume IV. London and Canberra: Croom Helm, pp. 98–105.Google Scholar
Hanley, Ryan Patrick. 2014. “The ‘Wisdom of the State’: Adam Smith on China and Tartary.” American Political Science Review 108 (2): 371–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, Ron. 2000. Industrializing English Law: Entrepreneurship and Business Organization, 1720–1844. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herzog, Don. 1998. Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Himmelfarb, Gertrude. 1985. The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Himmelfarb, Gertrude. 2005. The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Ross J. S. 1956. Edmund Burke, New York Agent with his Letters to the New York Assembly and Intimate Correspondence with Charles O’Hara 1761–1776. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society.Google Scholar
Langford, Paul, gen. ed. 1981–. The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke. Nine volumes to date. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Lawson, Philip. 1993. The East India Company: A History. London and New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Lock, Frederick P. [1998] 2012. Edmund Burke. Volume I, 1730–1784. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Lock, Frederick P. [2006] 2009. Edmund Burke. Volume II, 1784–1797. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lucas, Paul. 1968. “On Edmund Burke’s Doctrine of Prescription; Or, an Appeal from the New to the Old Lawyers.” The Historical Journal 11 (1): 35–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mansfield, Harvey C. 2013. Statesmanship and Party Government: A Study of Burke and Bolingbroke. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mizuta, Hiroshi, ed. 2000. Adam Smith’s Library: A Catalogue. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mossner, Ernest Campbell, and Ross, Ian Simpon, eds. 1987. The Correspondence of Adam Smith. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
Muthu, Sankar. 2008. “Adam Smith’s Critique of International Trading Companies: Theorizing ‘Globalization’ in the Age of Enlightenment.” Political Theory 36 (2): 185–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Brien, Conor Cruise. 1993. The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography and Commented Anthology of Edmund Burke. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
O’Neill, Daniel I. 2007. The Burke-Wollstonecraft Debate: Savagery, Civilization, and Democracy. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
The Parliamentary History of England. 1813. Volume XVII, 1771–1774. London: T.C. Hansard.Google Scholar
Pitts, Jennifer. 2017. “Irony in Adam Smith’s Critical Global History.” Political Theory 45 (2): 141–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pitts, Jennifer. 2006. A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Pocock, John G. A. 2004. The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pocock, John G. A. 1960. “Burke and the Ancient Constitution—A Problem in the History of Ideas.” The Historical Journal 3 (2): 125–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rae, John. 1965. Life of Adam Smith. New York: Augustus M. Kelley.Google Scholar
Ross, , Simpson, Ian. 2010. The Life of Adam Smith. Second edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schumacher, Reinhard. 2015. “Adam Smith’s ‘Two Distinct Benefits’ from Trade: The Dead End of ‘Vent-for-Surplus’ Interpretations.” History of Political Economy 47 (4): 577–603.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, William Robert. 1912. The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720. Volume I, The General Development of the Joint-Stock System to 1720. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Skinner, Andrew Stewart. 1996. A System of Social Science: Papers Relating to Adam Smith. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1981. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, edited by Campbell, R. H., Skinner, A. S., and Todd, W. B.. Two volumes. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1982. Lectures on Jurisprudence, edited by Meek, R. L., Raphael, D. D., and Stein, P. G.. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
Stern, Philip J. 2016. “The English East India Company and the Modern Corporation: Legacies, Lessons and Limitations.” Seattle University Law Review 39: 423–445.Google Scholar
Sutherland, Lucy S. 1952. The East India Company in Eighteenth-Century Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Sutherland, Lucy S., and Woods, John A.. 1966. “The East India Speculations of William Burke.” In Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society (Literary and Historical Section). Volume XI, March 1964–April 1966. Leeds: W S Maney & Son, pp. 183–216.Google Scholar
Tucker, Josiah. 1756. Essay on Trade. Glasgow.Google Scholar
Weitzman, Sophia. 1929. Warren Hastings and Philip Francis. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Whelan, Frederick G. 1996. Edmund Burke and India: Political Morality and Empire. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
William, , Earl Fitzwilliam, Charles, and Richard Bourke, Sir, eds. 1844. Correspondence of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; Between the Year 1744, and the Period of His Decease, in 1797. Volume 4. London: Francis & John Rivington.Google Scholar
Winch, Donald. 1996. Riches and Poverty: An Intellectual History of Political Economy in Great Britain, 1750–1834. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar