Editing Adam Smith (section)

===In British imperial debates===
Smith opposed empire. He challenged ideas that colonies were key to British prosperity and power. He rejected that other cultures, such as China and India, were culturally and developmentally inferior to Europe. While he favoured "commercial society", he did not support radical social change and the imposition of commercial society on other societies. He proposed that colonies be given independence or that full political rights be extended to colonial subjects.<ref>{{cite book |last=Pitts |first=Jennifer |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=szeU8olEDewC |title=A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France |date=2005 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-1-4008-2663-6 |pages=39–58 |language=en}}</ref>

Smith's chapter on colonies, in turn, would help shape British imperial debates from the mid-19th century onward. ''The Wealth of Nations'' would become an ambiguous text regarding the imperial question. In his chapter on colonies, Smith pondered how to solve the crisis developing across the Atlantic among the empire's 13 American colonies. He offered two different proposals for easing tensions. The first proposal called for giving the colonies their independence, and by thus parting on a friendly basis, Britain would be able to develop and maintain a free-trade relationship with them, and possibly even an informal military alliance. Smith's second proposal called for a theoretical imperial federation that would bring the colonies and the metropole closer together through an imperial parliamentary system and imperial free trade.<ref>E.A. Benians, 'Adam Smith's project of an empire', ''Cambridge Historical Journal'' 1 (1925): 249–283</ref>

Smith's most prominent disciple in 19th-century Britain, peace advocate [[Richard Cobden]], preferred the first proposal. Cobden would lead the [[Anti-Corn Law League]] in overturning the [[Corn Laws]] in 1846, shifting Britain to a policy of free trade and empire "on the cheap" for decades to come. This hands-off approach toward the British Empire would become known as [[Cobdenism]] or the [[Manchester Liberalism|Manchester School]].<ref>Anthony Howe, ''Free trade and liberal England, 1846–1946'' (Oxford, 1997)</ref> By the turn of the century, however, advocates of Smith's second proposal such as [[Joseph Shield Nicholson]] would become ever more vocal in opposing Cobdenism, calling instead for imperial federation.<ref>J. Shield Nicholson, ''A project of empire: a critical study of the economics of imperialism, with special reference to the ideas of Adam Smith'' (London, 1909)</ref> As Marc-William Palen notes: "On the one hand, Adam Smith's late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Cobdenite adherents used his theories to argue for gradual imperial devolution and empire 'on the cheap'. On the other, various proponents of imperial federation throughout the British World sought to use Smith's theories to overturn the predominant Cobdenite hands-off imperial approach and instead, with a firm grip, bring the empire closer than ever before."<ref>Marc-William Palen, [http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9159669&fileId=S0018246X13000101 "Adam Smith as Advocate of Empire, c. 1870–1932,"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150522065644/http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9159669&fileId=S0018246X13000101 |date=22 May 2015 }} ''Historical Journal'' 57: 1 (March 2014): 179–198.</ref> Smith's ideas thus played an important part in subsequent debates over the British Empire.