------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Published by EH.NET (October 2008)

Istvan Hont, _Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the 
Nation-State in Historical Perspective_. Cambridge, MA: Harvard 
University Press, 2005. xviii + 541 pp. $50 (hardcover), ISBN: 
0-674-01038-8.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Stephen Meardon, Department of Economics, Bowdoin 
College.


?Why do we need,? asks Istvan Hont in his introduction, ?to rediscover 
repeatedly? what was already understood about Adam Smith by his first 
biographer over two centuries ago?  Smith was no doctrinaire liberal and 
?simplistic quasi-Physiocrat? -- as Dugald Stewart knew then and plenty 
of readers have found since.  As Herbert Stein once put it in a _Wall 
Street Journal_ op-ed, Smith ?did not wear the Adam Smith necktie.?[1]
At the 2007 meetings of the History of Economics Society, where Hont won 
the award for best book in the field, one of its most eminent 
practitioners, Warren Samuels, posed nearly the same question.  Samuels, 
though, was referring not to Hont?s book but instead to an older one by 
Donald Winch: _Adam Smith?s Politics: An Essay in Historiographic 
Revision_ (Cambridge, 1978).  The Society had just named Winch a 
Distinguished Fellow, in no small part for his manner of rediscovering 
the same thing three decades ago.  Samuels was one of the panelists in 
an honorary session.  ?How many times will people keep making this 
point?? he asked the audience ebulliently, more in the tone of an 
exclamation.

Samuels surely intended it as a tribute, but it was an awkward one. 
Unless he meant that the point is common knowledge only because Winch, 
at long last, revealed it -- which Dugald Stewart, among others, would 
not allow -- his question implied that among Winch?s book?s many virtues 
one could not count originality of its punchline. And if the question 
was awkward when Samuels applied it to Winch, whose book appeared over a 
quarter century ago, then Hont would seem to be courting some risk by 
inviting us to apply it to him, too.

Like Winch?s admirable book, after all, Hont?s is a record of 
rediscovery that does not challenge the basic image of its subject (or 
subjects) -- at least not the image that appears in the standard 
scholarly references, if not fashion accessories.  Thus Smith appears as 
one who saw extraordinarily keenly the ?blemishes? (as H. W. Spiegel put 
it) of an incipient capitalist society at the same time that he 
systematized its defense.  The image is accurate, Winch showed that this 
image is accurate, given the perspective from which it was drawn -- and 
yet the perspective is anachronous.  It sublimates Smith?s political 
philosophy; it reflects later generations? preoccupations with ?the 
strength and autonomy of a socio-economic realm [that] variously 
threatens, limits, or deflects the realm of the political,? and posits 
Smith as master of the first.[2]   Smith?s own preoccupations were 
different.  One may understand them better by revisiting the political 
dialogues in which he participated.  The reward is a more thorough 
acquaintance with a personage whom one recognized all along.

There lies Winch?s answer to the sticky ?Why again?? question.  It is 
worth keeping in mind while considering Hont?s.

Hont?s answer is bound to be at least a little different: the subject 
matter of _Jealousy of Trade_ overlaps that of Winch?s book but also 
extends well beyond it.  One could fairly say the subject matter 
sprawls.  Smith is front and center but is not given top billing.  That 
honor is reserved for a theme: ?the intersection of politics and the 
economy? in the eighteenth century, ?the constitutive moment of modern 
politics? (p. 10).

The book?s title is borrowed from an essay by Hume, who despaired of the 
new penchant for carrying old international rivalries into the arena of 
trade.  Smith, Hume, and their contemporaries, writes Hont, ?wanted to 
explain how the conflation of the logics of war and trade arose in the 
seventeenth century and why it was so difficulty to exorcise them 
afterward? (p. 8).  But the book ventures far afield from the conflation 
of war and trade per se. It embraces a lengthy introduction plus 
chapters grouped in three different sections, titled ?Natural Liberty 
and Global Competition,? ?Paradoxes of Reform and Transition,? and 
?Commercial Nation State.?  The first includes consideration of theories 
of man?s innate sociability and its relation to commerce; how changes in 
the pattern of trade fomented jealousy of trade in Britain and Europe; 
and the Scottish Enlightenment?s ?rich country?poor country? debate 
about the international distribution of the gains from trade.  The 
second section includes explorations of Hume?s aversion to public debt, 
which he believed fostered military adventurism; the centrality of 
Smith?s critique of Physiocracy to his science of the legislator; and 
(in this instance in co-authorship with Michael Ignatieff) the demands 
of ?justice? with respect to redistribution in Smith?s system.  The 
third section investigates the deeper roots of the idea of nationalism 
and ?nation-state? that grew out of the French Revolution.  All of the 
chapters were published elsewhere, mainly in edited volumes, between 
1983 and 1994.

It is in reference to the fifth and sixth chapters, on Smith?s 
understanding of Physiocracy and of justice, that Hont poses the ?Why 
again?? question.  (He claims (p. 111) to refer to the seventh chapter, 
but this appears to be a minor error.)  His answer is two-fold.  First, 
and echoing Winch, by drawing out painstakingly the intellectual and 
political context in which Smith wrote, we may ?look at the dilemmas 
Smith himself faced.?  Second, having taken a look, we will find that 
?they are often identical with our own predicament today? (p. 111).

If the second part of the answer signaled accurately an important 
purpose of several chapters, then it would mark a signal difference 
between Winch?s book and Hont?s.  To Winch, after all, reacquaintance 
with Smith on Smith?s terms was purpose enough.  But the second part of 
the answer misleads.  The purpose of drawing parallels with the present 
day, although avowed repeatedly in the introduction -- in one instance 
Hont professes to write with ?eyes firmly fixed on the challenges of 
today? (p. 5) -- is not only unmet, it is mostly untried.

The book is better for the omission.  Because Hont?s eyes are actually 
fixed firmly on Smith?s moment (specifically, on an astonishing quantity 
of literature and archival evidence generated from it), we do indeed 
learn, in superb detail, about the dilemmas Smith and his contemporaries 
faced -- and in those dilemmas, the forgotten origins or purposes of 
otherwise familiar ideas.  The instances are too various to distill to a 
paragraph or two, but an example is in order.  In chapter 5, ?Adam Smith 
and the Political Economy of the ?Unnatural and Retrograde? Order,? Hont 
tells the story of Smith?s dispute with the Physiocrats over the proper 
way to reintroduce the ?system of natural liberty? where it had been 
upended by Colbertism. Colbert had established in France an ?unnatural? 
economic order that promoted manufactures at the expense of agriculture; 
the ?four-stages theory? of history was the prop Smith used in common 
with Quesnay and his followers to debate the proper way to return to the 
natural order.  But it was only a prop; the theory showed how 
manufacturing naturally followed agriculture, but not (or at least not 
obviously) how to return to the agricultural stage of society after 
Colbert?s deviation.  The Physiocrats saw in the four-stages theory the 
need for an immediate and determined reorientation of the French economy 
toward agriculture.  Smith saw in it a gap that could be filled 
adequately only by the political deliberation and gradual actions of 
?future statesmen and legislators? (quoted on p. 383).  Thus Hont 
arrives, from one of several angles, at an insight into the intersection 
of politics and economics in the late eighteenth century. To Adam Smith, 
?the politics of natural liberty had to build on the existing unnatural 
order and the actual liberty it produced? (p. 375).

Insights like this are good enough; one need not believe that Smith?s 
predicament was identical to our own to be motivated to read it.  But 
while the inflated claims of the book?s purpose are unnecessary, one can 
also guess the reason for their presence.

Hont allows from the outset that ?Jealousy of Trade is not a monograph,? 
but adds immediately that its chapters ?are closely connected by their 
subject matter and argumentative purpose? (p. 5).  ?Closely? is a 
stretch, as the previous sketch of the contents of sections and chapters 
ought to show.  The claim of a present-day purpose seems a half-hearted, 
because unexecuted, effort to unify the book?s disparate parts.  A more 
earnest but equally regrettable effort is embodied in the one hundred 
and fifty-six page introduction.  At that length, why not keep writing 
and complete the missing monograph?

Jealousy of Trade is a compilation of glittering historical scholarship 
that creaks from the strain of the contrivances for compiling it.  Its 
value lies in bringing much-deserved attention to a number of essays 
that otherwise would not have received it.  That is value enough for an 
edited volume -- but this volume declares greater aspirations.  As ever, 
the peril of greater aspirations is greater disappointment.  Few will 
want to read this book front to back.  Those with a general interest in 
the subject will benefit from reading the introduction and identifying a 
chapter or two for more careful perusal.  Specialists will be pleased to 
have at hand, in convenient form, a set of extraordinary essays for 
selective reexamination.

Notes:
1. Herbert Stein. 1994. ?Remembering Adam Smith.? _Wall Street Journal_, 
April 6, p. A14.
2. Donald Winch. 1978. _Adam Smith?s Politics: An Essay in 
Historiographic Revision_. Cambridge University Press, p. 23.


Stephen Meardon is author of ?Postbellum Protection and Commissioner 
Wells?s Conversion to Free Trade,? _History of Political Economy_ 
(Winter, 2007) and ?From Religious Revivals to Tariff Rancor: Preaching 
Free Trade and Protection during the Second American Party System,? 
_History of Political Economy_ (forthcoming in supplement, 2008).

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