Smith’s Wealth of Nations and the economic past: setting the scene for economic history?

Although Adam Smith used history extensively in his Wealth of Nations, his contribution to economic history is neither systematised nor explicitly presented. The aimof this paper is to investigate the ways in which history is incorporated in Smith’s political economy and to elucidate the role of historical investigation in Smith’s Wealth of Nations. We propose a “four thematic” approach of Smith’s use of history, corresponding to four distinct ways in which Smith incorporates the historical element in his political economy. First, as method through a progressive version of proto-historical materialism, second, as illustration in order to verify his theoretical conclusions, third, as theory in the form of his stages theory, and, finally, as economic history to describe the emergence of modern Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire.