ABSTRACT
Adam Ferguson 1 is recognized as one of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, but historians of economics have rarely discussed him. His most important work. An Essay on the History of Civil Society ([1767] 1967; referred to hereafter as Essay) contains relatively little that could be called economic analysis in a conventional sense, 2 but it is built around a comparison between “rude” and “polished and commercial” nations (that is, between developed and less developed areas), which casts a revealing light on the state of thought regarding economic growth and development on the eve of the publication of the Wealth of Nations (Smith [ 1776 ] 1976; referred to hereafter as WN ). Ferguson’s account of the causes of economic development, sketchy though it is, was probably an advance on anything else that was available at the time and provides a distinctive counterpoint to Adam Smith’s emphasis on capital accumulation.
