https://earlymoderneurope.hist.sites.carleton.edu/files/original/03c95bb349d4a2611e054a555ab34bdc.jpg e3ebb718fbdea3775ccf1c54742f58d9 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Wealth of Nations Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Smith Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1776 Description An account of the resource Adam Smith’s quintessential work of classical economic philosophy, Wealth of Nations, is seen as one of the most influential philosophical works of the entire Enlightenment era. In it, Smith bashes Mercantilist economic policies for their backward, unproductive effect on economies. Instead, he advocates for what he calls Laissez-Faire economics, meaning that the government plays a minimal, if not non-existent, role in their state’s economy. These theories could be seen as the birth of economic Liberalism, building off of John Locke’s treatises which advocate minimal government involvement in the everyday lives of its citizens. Smith goes further to say that the government should not touch the economy in any way in a capitalist system to have a genuinely productive and Liberal economy. Though Smith’s arguments could be seen to have developed in, and only in, a period of intellectual vitality such as the Enlightenment, it could be argued the period preceding the enlightenment had enough intellectual virtue to incubate Smith’s philosophical developments. Historian, Joel Mokyr argues that the developments and intellectual exuberance of the Scientific Revolution, which occurred before periods of liberal economic theory when mercantilism still reigned chief, were vital in setting the stage for the Industrial Revolution, which has a direct correspondence with the enlightenment in England based on their time periods (roughly the second half of the 18th Century)(1). 1. Mokyr, Joel. “Accounting for the Industrial Revolution.” Chapter. In The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, edited by Roderick Floud and Paul Johnson, 1:1–27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521820363.002. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Wikimedia Commons Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Public Domain