ABSTRACT
There are solid reasons for this tendency to merge activities which Adam Smith found it convenient to separate. It is enough to look at the Cortds expedition of 1519 to the coast of Mexico, which was authorized as an expedition for rescate (trade and barter) and was transformed by its commander into an expedition of conquest, to appreciate the fineness of the line dividing one form of activity from another. Attempts at classification therefore tend to look artificial, and would have appeared largely meaningless to many of the sixteenth-century Europeans who ventured overseas in pursuit of profit. But in spite of this, it is not immediately apparent why so much European activity in the non-European world should have taken the particular formof the seizureand settlement of other peoples* territories. Adam Smith himself seems to have been father puzzled: it 'arose from no necessity*.
