Adam Smith and agriculture: the political economy of the “unnatural and retrograde” order revisited

Lasse Andersen

doi:10.1080/01916599.2025.2554462

Adam Smith and agriculture: the political economy of the “unnatural and retrograde” order revisited

Lasse Andersen^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

School of History

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

This paper provides a reinterpretation of Adam Smith's distinction between the natural and the unnatural and retrograde order of progress. In doing so, the paper explores Smith's idea of the division of labour and its limitations; the agrarian assumptions underlying his political economy; the significance of transportation costs to his understanding of the effects of free trade; and his desire to see the customs and laws supporting primogeniture and entails undermined in Great Britain and throughout Europe.

Original language	English
Article number	2554462
Journal	History of European Ideas
Volume	Latest Articles
Early online date	10 Sept 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2025.2554462
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 10 Sept 2025

Keywords

Adam Smith
Jealousy of trade
Land reform
Political economy
Primogeniture
Parental affection

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10.1080/01916599.2025.2554462Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Anderson_2025_HEI_Adam-Smith-agriculture_CCBYNCND
Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Final published version, 1.38 MBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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Adam Smith and agriculture: the political economy of the “unnatural and retrograde” order revisited

Abstract

Keywords

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