Adam Smith, Settler Colonialism, and Limits of Liberal Anti-imperialism

Recent scholarship has claimed Adam Smith’s frontal attack on the mercantile system as a precocious expression of liberal anti-imperialism. This article argues that settler colonialism in North America represented an important exception and limit to anti-imperial commitments. Smith spared agrarian colonies from his invective against other imperial practices like chattel slavery trade monopolies because colonies’ evidentiary significance for “system natural liberty.” embrace involved him ideological conundrum insofar prosperity these settlements rested expansion seizure land Native Americans. navigated this problem by, first, predicating colonial “injustice” conquest, slavery, destruction and, second, describing American res nullius. Together, conceptual definitions made it possible imagine originating nonviolent acts “occupation without conquest” embodying “commerce empire.”