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.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

  • Richard Whatmore 6 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 →

Related episodes

Programme ID: b052ln55

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b052ln55

Auto-category: 330.15 (Economic theory)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello. At the height of the Enlightenment in the second half of the 18th century, few places in Europe could match the flood of intellectual accomplishment that came from Scotland.