Adam Smith

Adam Smith
Born	Baptised 16 June 1723 (O.S. 5 June 1723)
Birthplace	Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland
Died	17 July 1790 (aged 67) Edinburgh, Scotland
Nationality	Scottish
Occupation	Philosopher, economist, author
Known for	The Wealth of Nations, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, founding principles of classical economics
Education	University of Glasgow; Balliol College, University of Oxford
Awards	Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow (1787)

Adam Smith (baptised 16 June 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher whose writings shaped classical economics and whose influence on how we think about markets, trade, and government endures to this day. Born in the small coastal town of Kirkcaldy in Fife, Scotland, Smith became a central figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, building close intellectual ties with David Hume and other leading thinkers of that era. He is best known for two major works: The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), which explores how humans develop ethical judgment, and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), commonly called The Wealth of Nations. The latter is considered the foundational text of modern economics. In it, Smith explained the division of labour, how self-interest drives economic growth, and absolute advantage in trade. He pushed back against the prevailing mercantilist orthodoxy of his time, grounding his analysis in natural, political, social, economic, legal, and technological factors rather than in the accumulated gold and trade surpluses that mercantilist doctrine prized. Often called the "father of economics" or the "father of capitalism," Smith's ideas still shape debates about free markets, trade policy, and government's role in economic life.

Early life

Adam Smith was baptised on 16 June 1723 in Kirkcaldy, a seaport town in Fife on Scotland's east coast. His exact birthdate isn't recorded, but historians have treated the baptism date as his approximate birth. His father, also named Adam Smith, worked as a lawyer and comptroller of customs in Kirkcaldy and died roughly six months before his son was born. Smith's mother, Margaret Douglas, raised him alone and remained a significant influence throughout his life. He was devoted to her, and they shared a household until her death in 1784.

Kirkcaldy, though small, was a centre of trade and commerce in the early eighteenth century. Growing up there exposed Smith directly to how mercantile activity worked. His father's work in customs administration connected the family to trade regulation and government policy, both of which would later become central to Smith's intellectual career.

Not much survives about his childhood. One famous story, though questionable in its accuracy, claims he was briefly abducted by travellers as a young boy before being rescued. He attended the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy, considered one of Scotland's better secondary schools at the time. He showed early talent in classical languages and mathematics. That schooling prepared him for the University of Glasgow, where he began studying philosophy at fourteen, an entirely typical age for Scotland in the 1730s.

Education

Smith entered Glasgow in 1737 at age fourteen. He studied moral philosophy under Francis Hutcheson, one of Scotland's most prominent philosophers. Hutcheson's lectures on ethics, natural jurisprudence, and political economy shaped Smith's thinking deeply, particularly on how human moral sentiments connect to economic behaviour. Hutcheson introduced Smith to the idea that moral reasoning could be analysed systematically, without relying on religious authority as its foundation.

In 1740, Smith won a Snell Exhibition, a scholarship established by John Snell for Scottish students at the University of Oxford. He enrolled at Balliol College and stayed for about six years. By most accounts, Oxford disappointed him. The teaching quality was far worse than what he'd found at Glasgow, and he spent much of his time reading on his own, working through classical and contemporary philosophy, literature, and political thought. Later, in The Wealth of Nations, Smith criticised English universities for their complacency, arguing that professors with guaranteed income had little reason to teach well. A pointed observation. Despite his dissatisfaction, Oxford gave him time for wide and undirected reading. He left around 1746 without earning a formal degree.

Career

Early academic career and Edinburgh lectures

Back in Scotland, Smith initially had no clear position. Starting around 1748, he gave public lectures on rhetoric and belles-lettres at the University of Edinburgh, thanks to patronage from Henry Home, Lord Kames. These lectures drew considerable attention and boosted Smith's reputation as a thinker and speaker. They covered literary criticism, language, jurisprudence, and related subjects, establishing him as an important figure in Scottish academic circles.

This Edinburgh period mattered for Smith's own intellectual development. He formed a close friendship with David Hume, a historian and philosopher central to the Scottish Enlightenment. Smith and Hume shared broad intellectual interests, and their later correspondence and collaboration shaped both their work. Hume's empiricism and scepticism about conventional moral reasoning found clear echoes in Smith's own moral philosophy and political economy.

Professorship at Glasgow

In 1751, Smith was appointed to Glasgow's Chair of Logic. A year later, he moved to the Chair of Moral Philosophy, a more prestigious post that had belonged to his mentor Hutcheson. The chair covered ethics, jurisprudence, political economy, and rhetoric. Smith lectured on what he called "police, revenue, and arms," a framework that would ground his later economic writings. His teaching at Glasgow earned a strong reputation across Scotland and beyond.

He lectured on natural theology, ethics, jurisprudence, and the economic principles governing trade and wealth. This breadth reflected the character of the Scottish Enlightenment, which mixed philosophy, science, and practical knowledge in ways that English universities of the period generally didn't.

During his Glasgow years, Smith wrote and published his first major work. The Theory of Moral Sentiments appeared in 1759. It examined how humans form moral judgments, arguing that moral sentiments arise from a natural capacity for sympathy: the ability to imagine oneself in another's position and share their feelings. Smith proposed that each person carries an "impartial spectator" within, an internal judge that guides moral thinking by asking how a disinterested observer would evaluate one's conduct. The book was well received across Britain and Europe and made Smith known as a leading moral philosopher. He revised it several times during his life, with the most significant changes appearing in the sixth edition of 1790, published just months before his death.

Tutoring and European travel

In 1764, Smith left his Glasgow post to tutor Henry Scott, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch, a young nobleman. The position paid well and came with a pension that supported Smith for the rest of his life. It also meant accompanying the duke on a Grand Tour of continental Europe, the standard education for British aristocratic youth at the time.

Smith and his pupil spent roughly two and a half years travelling through France and Switzerland. Significant encounters followed. In France, Smith met members of the Physiocratic school, including François Quesnay and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, whose ideas about natural economic order and the central importance of agriculture influenced his developing economic thought. He met Voltaire in Geneva. Exposure to French economic thinking, especially Physiocratic support for free trade and opposition to mercantilist regulation, refined Smith's own emerging views on political economy in ways that would surface clearly in The Wealth of Nations.

The tour ended abruptly in 1766 after the Duke of Buccleuch's younger brother died suddenly. Smith returned to Kirkcaldy, where he spent the next decade working on his major economic treatise.

The Wealth of Nations

Smith spent roughly ten years writing An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, working mostly from his home in Kirkcaldy. The book was published on 9 March 1776 and is his masterwork. It appeared the same year as the American Declaration of Independence, a coincidence that has not been lost on historians who see both documents as expressions of the same broad intellectual shift away from inherited authority and toward individual agency and rational self-governance.

The book has five parts. They cover the division of labour, capital's nature and growth, the history of European economic policy, systems of political economy, and how governments collect revenue. Among its most discussed ideas is the division of labour. Smith's famous example involves a pin factory, where he showed how breaking production into specialised tasks could increase output enormously compared with a single craftsman doing all the work alone. That example became foundational to industrial economics.

Smith argued that when people pursue their own economic self-interest within competitive markets, the overall result tends toward general prosperity. This is connected to the "invisible hand" metaphor, though Smith used that phrase only briefly and in a specific context, not as the sweeping statement of market faith it later became in popular usage. He believed free trade between nations, grounded in absolute advantage, would benefit all parties. This position opposed mercantilist policies that protected domestic industries through tariffs and import restrictions.

The work attacked mercantilism directly. That economic doctrine held that nations grew wealthy by accumulating gold and silver through trade surpluses and by restricting imports. Smith argued that a nation's real wealth lay in its people's productive capacity. Government interference in markets often created waste and reduced overall prosperity. Still, he wasn't calling for completely unregulated markets. He saw a clear role for government in defence, justice, and certain public infrastructure that private business wouldn't build on its own. These qualifications are frequently overlooked in popular invocations of Smith's name.

The Wealth of Nations arrived before modern economics existed as an academic discipline. It drew significant attention when published and influenced policymakers involved in British trade debates. It was controversial; some contemporaries, including Horace Walpole, mocked Smith's approach and style. But the book's influence grew steadily across the following decades and centuries.

Later career and Commissioner of Customs

In 1778, Smith was appointed Commissioner of Customs for Scotland, a government post based in Edinburgh. The irony of a critic of trade regulation taking a senior customs job was not lost on his contemporaries, and it isn't lost on historians either. He performed the duties carefully and conscientiously. He moved to Edinburgh, first living with his mother and cousin Janet Douglas on Panmure Close, then later moving to Canongate.

During his Edinburgh years, Smith continued revising his works. He made substantial changes to The Theory of Moral Sentiments for the 1790 sixth edition, adding entirely new material on the virtue of self-command. He also planned larger projects, including a comprehensive treatise on jurisprudence and a history of the liberal arts and sciences. Neither was completed. Before he died, Smith instructed his executors to destroy most of his unpublished manuscripts. Most were burned, though some survived and appeared in print later, including lecture notes reconstructed from student copies.

Smith also served as Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow in 1787, an honour that reflected his enduring connection to the institution where he had studied and then taught for years.

Personal life

Adam Smith never married and had no children. He lived with his mother, Margaret Douglas, to whom he was deeply devoted, until her death in 1784. After becoming Commissioner of Customs, he shared his Edinburgh household with his mother and his cousin Janet Douglas, who managed the house.

Contemporaries knew him for being absent-minded, talking to himself while walking, and sometimes drifting into apparent reverie mid-conversation. He had a wide circle of intellectual friendships, particularly with David Hume. When Hume died in 1776, Smith wrote a public letter about his friend's final months that caused real controversy. The letter sympathetically portrayed the openly irreligious Hume facing death with serenity, a characterisation that offended many readers who expected a deathbed conversion or at least distress.

Smith reportedly gave generously to charitable causes throughout his life, a fact that only became known after he died. He was private by nature, and his decision to have most of his unpublished papers burned meant that later scholars had far less to work with than they might have wished. He died on 17 July 1790 in Edinburgh and was buried in Canongate Kirkyard.

Recognition

Smith's contributions have been honoured in many ways since his death. His face appears on Bank of England banknotes, specifically the £20 note introduced in 2007. He was the first Scotsman to appear on an English banknote. A large bronze statue of Smith, erected in 2008, stands on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh near where he once lived.

The Adam Smith Institute, a free-market think tank founded in London in 1977, carries his name. The Adam Smith Prize, awarded by the University of Cambridge, recognises academic excellence in economics. The University of Glasgow runs the Adam Smith Business School in his honour. Kirkcaldy, his birthplace, has commemorated its most famous son in various ways, preserving sites connected to his life and work.

Smith's works remain in print and are freely available online. Public domain versions of The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments are accessible through Project Gutenberg. Audio recordings are available through LibriVox.

His intellectual legacy continues to be debated and reassessed. An essay in The Economist argued that Smith's ideas are often misunderstood and his influence on later economic thought is frequently exaggerated. Like Darwin or Newton in their respective fields, Smith's ideas have become so embedded in how we think that their original complexity tends to get flattened.

Legacy

Adam Smith's intellectual legacy rests on his two major works. Together they established a framework for understanding both the moral and economic dimensions of human social life. The Theory of Moral Sentiments offered an account of ethical behaviour grounded in human psychology rather than religious doctrine, anticipating developments in moral philosophy and social science that would follow across the next two centuries. The Wealth of Nations provided a systematic analysis of economic production, exchange, and policy, becoming the starting point for classical economics and influencing later thinkers including David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx.

Smith's explanation of the benefits of free trade, the division of labour, and competitive markets became central to classical liberalism. These ideas shaped economic policy debates from the late eighteenth century onward. His attack on mercantilism helped push trade policy toward liberalisation