Abstract: This article explicates Smith’s stadial theory, and through it his broader conception of history, by examining both his concrete deployment of the theory, namely through his stadial account of the history of Europe, and his broader polemical concerns. Smith’s actual use of stadial theory in his account of the development of Europe is doubly sufficient evidence against any simplistic whiggish interpretation, or a derived rejection of his actual belief in the theory. Smith’s account of the transition of ancient commercial society to the allodial form of agricultural society, its own transition to the feudal form, and the emergence of a new, modern commercial society without slavery is key to Smith’s belief in the unique potential of his age to surpass the ancient problems of slavery and trade, empire and freedom. Far from disproving grand theories of history, the roundabout, “retrograde,” path of history is necessary for both the robustness of any theory of history and its potential for that most enlightened goal, the amelioration of the condition of man.

 

Andrew Wilkins is the Postdoctoral Scholar in History at Ohio University. He specializes in British and Irish Economic History, the history of Political Economy, the emergence of social, economic, and political modernity, empire, industrialization, and the Enlightenment.