page_title: History of economic thought
section_title: Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations
hierarchical_section_title: History of economic thought / Classical (18th and 19th century) / Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations
context_page_description: The history of economic thought deals with different thinkers and theories in the subject that became political economy and economics, from the ancient world to the present day in the 21st Century. This field encompasses many disparate schools of economic thought. Ancient Greek writers such as the philosopher Aristotle examined ideas about the art of wealth acquisition, and questioned whether property is best left in private or public hands. In the Middle Ages, scholasticists such as Thomas Aquinas argued that it was a moral obligation of businesses to sell goods at a just price.
  In the Western world, economics was not a separate discipline, but part of philosophy until the 18th–19th century Industrial Revolution and the 19th century Great Divergence, which accelerated economic growth.
context_section_description: Adam Smith (1723–1790) is popularly seen as the father of modern political economy. His 1776 publication An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations happened to coincide not only with the American Revolution, shortly before the Europe-wide upheavals of the French Revolution, but also the dawn of a new industrial revolution that allowed more wealth to be created on a larger scale than ever before.
  Smith was a Scottish moral philosopher, whose first book was The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). He argued in it that people's ethical systems develop through personal relations with other individuals, that right and wrong are sensed through others' reactions to one's behaviour. This gained Smith more popularity than his next work, The Wealth of Nations, which the general public initially ignored. Yet Smith's political economic magnum opus was successful in circles that mattered.
caption: Adam Smith (1723–1790), father of modern political economy.
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