The Wealth of Nations
19 Feb, 2015
330 Economics
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Adam Smith’s celebrated economic treatise The Wealth of Nations. Smith was one of Scotland’s greatest thinkers, a moral philosopher and pioneer of economic theory whose 1776 masterpiece has come to define classical economics. Based on his careful consideration of the transformation wrought on the British economy by the Industrial Revolution, and how it contrasted with marketplaces elsewhere in the world, the book outlined a theory of wealth and how it is accumulated that has arguably had more influence on economic theory than any other.
Guests
- Richard Whatmore
5 episodes
Professor of Modern History and Director of the Institute of Intellectual History at the University of St Andrews -
Donald Winch No other episodes
Emeritus Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Sussex - Helen Paul
8 episodes
Lecturer in Economics and Economic History at the University of Southampton
Reading list
-
The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment
Alexander Broadie (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2003) Google Books → -
Money and Political Economy in the Age of Enlightenment
Daniel Carey (ed.) (Voltaire Foundation, 2014) -
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations: New Interdisciplinary Essays
Stephen Copley and Kathryn Sutherland (eds.) (Manchester University Press, 1995) Google Books → -
The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith
Knud Haakonssen (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2006) Google Books → -
The Science of a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith
Knud Haakonssen (Cambridge University Press, 1989) Google Books → -
Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective
Istvan Hont (Harvard University Press, 2010) Google Books → -
Politics in Commercial Society: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith
Istvan Hont (Harvard University Press, 2015) Google Books → -
Adam Smith: A Moral Philosopher and His Political Economy
Gavin Kennedy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) Google Books → -
Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life
Nicholas Phillipson (Penguin, 2011) Google Books → -
Adam Smith
D. D. Raphael (Oxford Paperbacks, 1985) Google Books → -
A History of Economic Thought
Eric Roll (Faber & Faber, 1992) Google Books → -
History of Economic Analysis
Joseph Schumpeter (Oxford University Press, 1996) Google Books → -
The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and their Publishers in Eighteenth-century Britain, Ireland and America
Richard B. Sher (University of Chicago Press, 2007) Google Books → -
The Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith (First published 1776; Bantam Classics, 2003) Google Books → -
The Wealth of Nations Books I-III
Adam Smith (First published 1776; Penguin Classics, 1982) Google Books → -
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Adam Smith (First published 1759; Penguin Classics, 2010) Google Books → -
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Adam Smith (First published 1759; Cambridge University Press, 2002) Google Books → -
Adam Smith's Politics: An Essay in Historiographic Revision
Donald Winch (Cambridge University Press, 1978) Google Books → -
Riches and Poverty: An Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain 1750-1834
Donald Winch (Cambridge University Press, 1996) Google Books →
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Programme ID: b052ln55
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b052ln55
Auto-category: 330.15 (Economic theory)