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Use of the ‘states and markets’ pair to conceptualise the international is pervasive. This article narrates the intellectual genesis of this dyad in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British political œconomy. Adam Smith's arguments in Wealth of Nations are central, for there the analysis of strength is uncoupled from the analysis of wealth, de-politicising the international and making the economic denunciation of war possible. In the process the international economy is elaborated as a new theoretical object.
1 C. K., Some Seasonable and Modest Thoughts Partly Occasioned by, and Partly Concerning the Scots East-India Company (1696), p. 4.
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34 Ibid., pp. 119–20.
35 Ibid., pp. 127–8.
36 Ibid., p. 120.
37 Ibid., p. 135.
38 Ibid., pp. 139–45.
39 Ibid., p. 148.
40 Ibid., pp. 151–4.
41 Ibid., p. 153.
42 Ibid., p. 155.
43 Armitage, David, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 149CrossRefGoogle Scholar .
44 This was significant in the ideological context that Armitage has so skilfully mapped: the republican fear that empire corroded liberty, which was activated forcefully in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain, could be assuaged when empire was conceived as maritime and commercial in nature. See Ibid., chaps 5 and 6.
45 Smith, Adam (ed.), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (eds), Campbell, R. H., Skinner, A. S., Todd, W. B. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1976 [1776]), Vol. I, p. 10Google Scholar .
46 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 330.
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48 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 10.
49 Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 14–5.
50 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 16.
51 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 31.
52 See Tribe, Keith, ‘Reading Trade in the Wealth of Nations’, History of European Ideas, 32 (2006), pp. 58–79, esp. pp. 65–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar .
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54 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 362. Emphasis added.
55 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 366.
56 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 372.
57 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 364.
58 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 368.
59 Idem.
60 Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 368–71.
61 Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 368–9.
62 Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 372, 447.
63 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 372.
64 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 428.
65 Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 429–51. Smith's description therefore does violence to the mode of analysis he disrupts, and his construction of mercantilism is one we still labour under.
66 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 453.
67 Idem.
68 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 456.
69 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 457.
70 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 463. Support of the Navigation Acts in the name of national defence is, on the surface, a continuation of old arguments. What has changed is that now the analysis must be interrupted, through the device of exceptions, to bring the question of national defence into the argument. Arguments in the analysis of wealth before Smith already geared towards defence, since strength and wealth are interintrusive; in WoN their analysis is separate and strength has become an add-on consideration, since the categories of capital and annual produce do not directly speak to it.
71 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 465.
72 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 468.
73 Idem.
74 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 469.
75 Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 469–72.
76 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 489.
77 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 495.
78 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 496.
79 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 497.
80 Idem.
81 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 564.
82 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 564–5, 572.
83 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 591.
84 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 575–77.
85 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 595–7, 600–1, 604.
86 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 604–5. Smith is referring here to ‘the contest with America’. Fortunately for Britain, the ‘disorder’ caused by American independence and the resulting loss of that trade was mitigated by five unforeseen and compensating events, see pp. 606–7.
87 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 612.
88 Here is one of the several particular conditions required for Smith's ‘invisible hand’ to work to national advantage, namely, the right setting of the merchant's variable character.
89 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 609–10.
90 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 616–7.
91 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 624.
92 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 625–6.
93 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 626.
94 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 626–7.
95 The more well known typology is Smith's stages of society, and it more directly underwrites imperialism, as when, in Chapter I of book V, Smith argued that trade ‘with barbarous and uncivilized nations’ will often need to be facilitated by fortified outposts. Ibid., Vol. II, p. 731.
96 Mill, James, Commerce Defended (New York: A. M. Kelley 1965 [1808]), p. 105Google Scholar .
97 Ibid., p. 13.
98 Ibid., p. 29.
99 Torrens, Robert, The Economists Refuted and Other Economic Writings, (ed.) Groenewegen, P. D. (Fairfield, NJ: A. M. Kelley), p. 2Google Scholar .
100 Ibid., pp. 7–9.
101 Ibid., p. 13.
102 Ibid., p. 22.
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105 Ibid., p. 32.
106 Torrens added that this is not a benefit that can be expected unless the colonies are settled by Europeans, since the indigenous peoples do not have the skill or industry to create a beneficial division of labour, Ibid., p. 26.
107 Ibid., pp. 25–7.
108 Ibid., p. 28.
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110 Ibid., p. 36.
111 Ibid., p. 116.
112 Ibid., p. 47.
113 Ibid., pp. 51–2.
114 Ibid., p. 74.
115 Ibid., p. 122.
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117 For a classic statement see Marcuse, Herbert, One Dimensional Man (London: Sphere 1968)Google Scholar .
118 Consider Duncan Snidal's comment: ‘The relative gains hypothesis applies to economy as well as security. In part, this is because economic gains can ultimately be transformed into security gains, so that in the long run, security and economics are inseparable.’ Snidal's ‘long run’ is elusive because security and economy are now apprehended by separate discourses. Snidal, Duncan, ‘Relative Gains and the Pattern of International Cooperation’, in Baldwin, David A. (ed.), Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate (New York: Columbia University Press 1993), p. 173Google Scholar . Kenneth Waltz suggested that ‘When faced with the possibility of cooperating for mutual gain, states that feel insecure must ask how the gain will be divided’. An analogous premise also guided the old analysis, a premise that is challenged by the image of a self-regulating and mutually-enriching international economy. Waltz, Kenneth N., Theory of International Politics (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 105Google Scholar .
119 Hont, Istvan, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press 2005), p. 155Google Scholar .
120 See Helliwell, Christine and Hindess, Barry, ‘“Culture”, “Society” and the Figure of Man’, History of the Human Sciences, 12 (1999), pp. 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar .
