『国富論』と「アメリカ」（メモ）

Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life

Nicholas Philipson Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life*1から少しメモ。

(…) In the Wealth of Nations*2 America was to provide him with the most striking and decisive illustration of the possibilities of the civilizing process in a part of the civilized world that had never been encumbered by feudal laws and institutions, and whose distance from Europe had ensured that the principles of natural liberty had already guided some aspects of its economic development. The book was completed against the background of worsening Anglo-American relations. The Tea Act, which American radicals saw as an attempt strengthen British fiscal rule over the colonies, had been passed shortly before Smith's arrival in London. The Boston Tea Party, the Coercive Acts of 1774, and the Quebec Act of 1774, which raised fears in the colonies that the British were determined to govern America without elected assemblies, the subsequent outbreak of hostilities at Lexington Concord in 1775, and the eventual outbreak of an initially popular war, were to give him a unique perspective on a crisis that suggested that Britain's future as a commercial power was at a turning point.(pp.211-212)

国富論 (1) (中公文庫)

国富論 (2) (中公文庫)

国富論 (3) (中公文庫)

*1:Mentioned in http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20120209/1328800795

*2:Mentioned in http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20090626/1245983724