CHINA'S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: DOMESTIC MARKETS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE

The most prominent aspect of Smith's engagement with China is his treatment of its economic development. On this front, Smith sees reasons for both celebration and concern. China's historical progress toward its current opulence is deserving of celebration. Yet potential humanitarian disaster threatens its future if its present policies are left unchanged. In developing this point, Smith presents China as his key empirical evidence for three of the central claims of his political economy: the utility of state initiatives to expand domestic markets via publicly funded internal improvements, the utility of international trade for amelioration of the conditions of the laboring poor, and the costs borne by the poor when government's interests are privileged over popular well-being. Taken collectively, Smith's treatment of these issues reveals both the moral grounds of his defense of commercial society and his conception of the indispensable though strictly demarcated role of the state in helping secure the benefits to the least well-off that efficient markets can bring.

Smith's account begins with his explanation for China's remarkable historical growth. This he credits chiefly to two causes: its fortuitous natural conditions and the wisdom of its policies. Smith explains that China's physical geography affords it a remarkably vast internal market, often noting the greater efficiency of water carriage over land carriage (e.g., WN I.iii.3–4); he claims that the river system “in the Eastern provinces of China. . .afford an inland navigation much more extensive than that either of the Nile or the Ganges, or perhaps both of them put together.” Indeed he credits China's “great opulence” and the low cost of its manufactures largely to “this inland navigation” (WN I.iii.7; I.xi.g.28). And regarding the wisdom of its policies, Smith explains that in China “the executive power charges itself both with the reparation of the high roads, and with the maintenance of the navigable canals” (WN V.i.d.17) and that “the sovereigns of China” have been historically “extremely attentive to the making and maintaining of good roads and navigable canals, in order to increase, as much as possible, both the quantity and value of every part of the produce of the land, by procuring to every part of it the most extensive market which their own dominions could afford” (WN V.ii.d.5).Footnote ⁴ These efforts of the Chinese sovereigns clearly exemplify the fulfillment of what Smith calls the third duty of the sovereign: “erecting and maintaining those public institutions and those public works” that are “in the highest degree advantageous to a great society” even though their expense precludes relying on private initiative for their completion— especially public works “facilitating the commerce of the society” such as “good roads, bridges, navigable canals, harbors, etc.” (WN V.i.c.1–2; V.i.d.1; see esp. Evensky Reference Evensky2005, 74; Millar Reference Millar2010, 729–30).

Yet this seemingly happy story of the sovereign's fulfillment of the third duty of government also has a darker side, which Smith presents in explaining why China's government supported the public works projects that extended its home market. On his account, the motive for these projects is not public well-being but the sovereign's self-interest. Noting that in China “the revenue of the sovereign arises almost altogether from a land-tax or land-rent,” Smith explains that “the great interest of the sovereign, therefore, his revenue, is in such countries necessarily and immediately connected with the cultivation of the land” (WN V.i.d.17; cf. IV.ix.46; Millar Reference Millar2010, 730, 733–34). This connection, Smith further insists, both explains why China supported that agricultural development so admired by the physiocrats and why its administration was so dedicated to supporting public works: “In China, the principal revenue of the sovereign consists in a tenth part of the produce of all the lands in the empire.” Thus it is precisely the prospect of increased land-tax revenue that will serve to “interest the sovereign in the improvement and cultivation of land” and render him “extremely attentive to the making and maintaining of good roads and navigable canals, in order to increase, as much as possible, both the quantity and value of every part of the produce of the land, by procuring to every part of it the most extensive market which their own dominions could afford” (WN V.ii.d.4–5).

Smith finds this emergence of a divide between the public interest and the government's interest problematic on several levels. First and foremost it invites potentially oppressive abuses in the methods of tax procurement. China's methods of taxation were of great contemporary interest and were admired by thinkers well known to Smith (e.g., Rousseau Reference Rousseau, Masters and Kelly1992, 166–68; cf. Hanley Reference Hanley, Grace and Kelly2012, 43–44). But Smith is decidedly critical of these methods, insisting that systems of centralized taxation in fact often fail to promote the sovereign's ultimate interest insofar as they invite “the abuse and depredations of his tax-gatherers” (WN V.ii.d.7; cf. V.i.d.4–6, 18). Yet his principal worry on this front concerned not the possible abuses of unscrupulous administrators, but the human costs that this divide between public interests and government interests seemed to portend. To see this concern, we need to shift focus from his analysis of China's past to his analysis of its present and future, and indeed from his explanation for China's growth to his argument for the policies most likely to preserve and extend these gains.

Smith's assessment of China's current condition is clear: Although it may be one of the world's most opulent countries, “it seems, however, to have been long stationary” (WN I.viii.24). Smith indeed often invokes China as a prime example of an economy “altogether stationary,” contrasting it both to the “rapidly progressive” colonies of North America and the “slow and gradual” growth of the economies of Europe (WN I.viii.40; I.ix.15). Smith's insistence on China's stagnation reiterated a claim often made by his contemporaries, and other scholars have rightly emphasized it (Chen Reference Chen2004, 193; Jones Reference Jones2001, 32; Marshall and Williams Reference Marshall and Williams1982, 135; Pitts Reference Pitts2005, 40; Whelan Reference Whelan2009, 30). But what have not yet received extended attention are the reasons why he regarded China's stagnation as such grave cause for concern and how the government's misunderstanding of its true interests exacerbated this stagnation.

Smith considered China's stagnation particularly worrisome because of its effect on the laboring poor. He introduces this concern with a maxim: “Though the wealth of a country should be very great, yet if it has been long stationary, we must not expect to find the wages of labor very high in it” (WN I.viii.24). Throughout this account he invokes wage rates as the proper standard for measuring growth, insisting that “the liberal reward of labor” is the “necessary effect” and “natural symptom of increasing national wealth” just as “the scanty maintenance of the laboring poor” is “the natural symptom that things are at a stand” (WN I.viii.27). This concern for “improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people” ultimately leads Smith to his important claim that “no society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable” (WN I.viii.36; Fleischacker Reference Fleischacker2004, 49, 131–32, 207). It is in this context that Smith makes his most arresting statement on China's current economic state:

Smith's highly charged account demands to be read in the context of his ethical and economic commitments, rather than in the potentially distorting context of 18th-century European Sinophobia. So far from being a mere critique of China vis-à-vis Europe, Smith's aim is rather to illuminate the plight of China's poor, especially the ways in which certain policies have given rise to certain inhumane effects. Thus he calls particular attention to the challenges faced by Chinese workers in their efforts to secure their and their families’ subsistence. So too Smith's mention of infanticide here—elsewhere called “so dreadful a violation of humanity” (TMS V.2.15; LJA iii.80–81; LJB 127; Paganelli Reference Paganelli, Berry, Paganelli and Smith2013, 334–35)—likewise evokes the extent of the tragedy of the conditions of China's poor, particularly in light of his reminders elsewhere of the disparity in the infant and child mortality rates of the rich and poor (LJA iii.133; WN I.viii.38). Most importantly, by describing the condition to which the laboring poor have been reduced in China in the language of beggary and desperation, Smith calls attention to the human cost of specific Chinese economic policies in a manner that has rightly been described as “indicative of his values” (Evensky Reference Evensky2005, 74n20); indeed this description parallels his critique of the British East India Company, which itself has been described as “straightforwardly a moral and humanistic critique” (Muthu Reference Muthu2008, 193, 198–202; cf. Ahmed Reference Ahmed2012, 119–25; Rothschild and Sen Reference Rothschild, Sen and Haakonssen2006, 325–26).

By juxtaposing China's present stagnation against its historical development, Smith brings to the foreground what he takes to be China's tragic irony; namely, the simultaneous coexistence of great wealth and widespread poverty. Smith is grateful that conditions are not even worse for the poor. Stagnant it may be, but China “does not seem to go backwards” and the “lowest class of laborers” can yet eke out a living (WN I.viii.25); China has not yet reached the worst stage of all—that of “want, famine, and mortality,” in which labor oversupply reduces wages “to the most miserable and scanty subsistence” and many must “either starve, or be driven to seek a subsistence either by begging, or by the perpetuation perhaps of the greatest enormities” (WN I.viii.26). Yet China is close to reaching this state, and Smith's awareness of such impresses on him the need to take action to avoid it, thereby raising China, for the sake of its laboring poor, to the “progressive state” of “advancing to the further acquisition” of wealth, because it is precisely here “that the condition of the laboring poor, of the great body of the people, seems to be the happiest and the most comfortable” (WN I.viii.43).

Smith makes clear that this move will require a dramatic policy shift. Given that China had long since “acquired that full complement of riches which the nature of its laws and institutions permits it to acquire” (WN I.viii.24; I.ix.15), further growth will require alteration of its “laws and institutions,” and particularly abandonment of its traditional hostility to foreign trade if it is to secure the well-being of its poor (Dawson Reference Dawson1967, 100; Lockwood Reference Lockwood1964, 349; Rasmussen Reference Rasmussen2008, 103n19; Whelan Reference Whelan2009, 36). Smith often notes that China has “never excelled in foreign commerce” or “been eminent for foreign trade,” relying instead on “cultivation of its own lands, and by its own interior commerce” (WN II.v.22; IV.iii.c.11; cf. I.iii.7). So too he often notes the prejudice of “the modern Chinese” who hold foreign trade “in the utmost contempt, and scarce deign to afford it the decent protection of the laws” (WN IV.iii.c.11; cf. IV.ix.40).Footnote ⁵ The consequence of this prejudice is that foreign commerce is “in China, every way confined within a much narrower circle than that to which it would naturally extend itself, if more freedom was allowed to it” (WN IV.ix.40).Footnote ⁶ Smith notes that China is fortunate that its natural situation largely mitigates the worst potential effects of this hostility. In this sense China exemplifies how “a fertile soil and happy climate” and “great abundance and cheapness of land” might serve to “compensate many defects in civil government” (WN I.xi.g.26; cf. esp. IV.ix.41). China thus serves as an example of how “the wisdom of nature has fortunately made ample provision for remedying many of the bad effects of the folly and injustice of man” (WN IV.ix.28)—a judgment Smith delivers explicitly as a retort to Quesnay (cf. WN IV.ix.27; IV.ix.38) and implicitly, one suspects, to his views on China.

Yet China, Smith thinks, needs to change. Increased foreign trade, he argues, will benefit both the government and the people. Smith insists that when an agricultural state such as China “oppresses either by high duties or by prohibitions the trade of foreign nations, it necessarily hurts its own interest” by sinking the value of its surplus produce and giving incentives to withdraw capital from agriculture; thus “agriculture is rendered less advantageous, and trade and manufactures more advantageous than they otherwise would be” (WN IV.ix.25). This has important implications for sovereign self-interest so long as China's revenue depends on agricultural production; in this way China exemplifies how states, “preferring agriculture to all other employments, in order to promote it, impose restraints upon manufactures and foreign trade, act contrary to the very end which they propose, and indirectly discourage that very species of industry which they mean to promote” (WN IV.ix.49). It is thus in the sovereign's interest to encourage freedom of trade specifically because it is capable of “raising the value of that surplus produce” on which its tax revenue depends (WN IV.ix.20; IV.ix.24; cf. I.ix.15).

However, it is not only in the government's interest to liberalize China's trade policies. Such a shift is also important for the well-being of the people, because foreign trade provides the only possible hope for transcending the “narrowness of the home market” that, even in so extensive a home market as China, necessarily limits growth and prevents ascent to the progressive state that benefits the poorest (WN IV.i.31). Such trade, Smith further suggests, “could scarce fail to increase very much the manufactures of China,” with obvious benefits to laborers and consumers alike (WN IV.ix.41). Yet at present, “though the rich or the owners of large capitals enjoy a good deal of security, the poor or the owners of small capitals enjoy scarce any, but are liable, under the pretense of justice, to be pillaged and plundered at any time by the inferior mandarins”—a system that not only restricts capital circulation in China but also encourages an “oppression of the poor” and “monopoly of the rich, who, by engrossing the whole trade to themselves, will be able to make very large profits” (WN I.ix.15).

In this sense, the justice that trade liberalization can bring to China is not merely the simulacrum of global justice that some of Smith's readers have rightly found in “that equality of courage and force” that free trade encourages and that Smith thinks “can alone overawe the injustice of independent nations into some sort of respect for the rights of one another” (WN IV.vii.c.80; cf. Arrighi Reference Arrighi2007, 2–3, 8; Lockwood Reference Lockwood1964, 354–55; Muthu Reference Muthu2008, 204–07; Pitts Reference Pitts2005, 56–57). More concretely and immediately, only the liberalization of trade, coupled with reforms capable of protecting the property rights of the poorest, can alleviate the threat of destitution and starvation and end the tragic cycle of the “monopoly of the rich” and “oppression of the poor” (cf. Ahmed Reference Ahmed2012, 127). Smith's treatment of China's economic development manifests both his fundamental concern for the promotion of human dignity through the spread of the markets and the degree to which he envisioned state action as capable of contributing to as well as inhibiting this end. By facilitating internal improvements that extended the home markets of such indispensable utility to China's poorest, China's sovereigns stand both as models for the emulation of Europe's statesmen and as principal examples of the “wisdom of the state” in action. Yet insofar as China's centralized administrations developed interests of their own that conflicted with the people's interests and used their power to inhibit access to international markets, they also embody the dangers of state action ungoverned by the responsibility to secure the benefits of markets for the poorest.

FREEDOM AND DEPENDENCE: LESSONS FROM TARTARY AND CHINA

Smith's second area of interest regarding China and Tartary concerned their systems of social relations. Here too his primary concern, as it was in his study of Chinese economic development, was the condition of the least well-off. But in this case Smith's focus was not the material condition of the poor, but instead the social conditions that determined their dependence on the wealthy and powerful and thus inhibited their freedom. In shifting focus from material concerns to concerns regarding freedom and dependence, he also expanded his examination of China to include Tartary.

Smith's key discussions of the Tartars come in the course of his analyses of the stages of the historical progress of society. In the Wealth of Nations, this account is given in the context of his discussion of “the second duty of the sovereign,” namely “that of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it,” a duty requiring “very different degrees of expense in the different periods of society” (WN V.i.b.1). These “different periods of society” concern the progress from hunting to shepherding to farming to trading societies that Smith, as did many 18th-century theorists, employed to account for the historical progress of civilization (see, e.g., Meek Reference Meek1976; C. Smith Reference Smith2006, 48–54). For our purposes, the significance of this stadial theory concerns Smith's choice of data to illustrate his theory. Smith often returns to native North Americans as examples of hunters, and his fourth stage is exemplified by the civilized nations of Europe. Less well appreciated is that Smith's key example of the agricultural stage is China and that he regards Tartary as one of the “two great nations” exemplifying the pastoral stage (the other being Arabia) (LJA iv.36; i.28–29, 33–34; cf. Marshall and Williams Reference Marshall and Williams1982, 137, 147; Pocock Reference Pocock2001, 324; Reference Pocock2005, 388; Reference Pocock and Haakonssen2006, 281).

Smith uses the example of the Tartars to illustrate the important political developments that he associated with the shift from hunting to shepherding—a shift that he regarded as “of all others the greatest in the progression of society” (LJA ii.97). His appreciation of the “dynamic and creative” nature of this stage has been noted by several scholars who have called helpful attention to the extension of property that defined the shepherd age (Pocock Reference Pocock and Haakonssen2006, 280; cf. Haakonssen Reference Haakonssen1981, 157–59; Hont Reference Hont, Bourke and Geuss2009, 152–55; C. Smith Reference Smith2006, 51–52). As they have shown, where in the hunting age there could be neither surplus nor stable property rights, animal husbandry inaugurated both permanency and the surplus of property (e.g., LJB 150–51), which in turn gave rise to the emergence of inequality and thus the need to devise a means of guaranteeing the property rights of possessors from the depredations of the poor (LJA iv.7–9, 22; LJB 19–20). Herein lies the origin of government, Smith suggests, which has as its end the “security of property” (WN V.i.b.12; LJA iv.21–24).

Thus we arrive at Smith's essential formula: Shepherding begat property, property begat inequality, inequality instability, and instability the need for civil government. This theory of government's origins is noteworthy for its emphasis on the inequality of rich and the poor (WN V.i.b.2; LJA iv.22–23). This is the decisive and distinguishing feature of the shepherd age, and Smith uses the Tartars to illustrate both its positive and negative effects. On the one hand, the emergence of a propertied class that could perpetuate its eminence across generations established new grounds for authority; thus he notes that in a shepherd age, “descent gives one more respect and authority than perhaps in any other stage of society whatever,” specifically invoking “the vast respect paid to descent amongst the Tartars and Arabs” (LJA iv.43; cf. LJA i.134; LJB 161; WN III.iv.16; Hont Reference Hont, Bourke and Geuss2009). Yet there is also a decidedly darker side to the emergence of a propertied class. As Smith explains, the same inequality that gave rise to hereditary authority compels a dependence of the poor on the rich for their basic subsistence. Thus the age of the shepherds is that in which “men become in any considerable degree dependent upon others,” because once “the distinctions of rich and poor” are instituted, “those who have not any possessions” can “find no way of maintaining themselves but by procuring it from the rich.” Furthermore the rich in turn require the “service and dependence” of the poor, and thus in time “every wealthy man comes to have a considerable number of the poorer sort depending and attending upon him.” Smith thus concludes of the shepherd age that “in this period of society the inequality of fortune makes a greater odds in the power and influence of the rich over the poor than in any other” (LJA iv.7–9, 11–12)— for where luxury makes possible means of wealth expenditure that redistribute wealth to workers, in the age of shepherds, the rich “have no possible means of spending their property, having no domestic luxury, but by giving it in presents to the poor, and by this means they attain such influence over them as to make them in a manner their slaves” (LJB 20–21; cf. WN V.i.b.10–11). Smith uses the Tartars as a chief example of this phenomenon. Thus in illustrating this “considerable inequality of fortune” in the shepherding age, Smith notes that

Thus Tartar social organization is synonymous with dependence. Legal bribery provides some evidence of this (e.g., LJA iv.16, 32–33; LJB 307), but more important is the fact that the rude conditions of Tartar society afford only one avenue for the expenditure of surplus wealth, namely direct distribution, which renders the impoverished recipients of such charity “entirely dependent” on the wealthy for their subsistence.

Yet if the social organization of the pastoral Tartars represents to Smith a pernicious dependence, he hardly regards the East as a simple scene of unmitigated dependence. For in China itself Smith discovered a remedy for the dependence he diagnosed in Tartary. Smith hardly thought China free of all dependence, to be sure; his discussions of polygamy in particular describe the condition of women in China as one of “tyranny” and “abject subjection” (LJA iii.28–34, 47–48).Footnote ⁷ Yet China enjoys two advantages over the Tartars. As a landed society—specifically as one of the “rice countries” rather than “corn countries”—China enjoys an “abundance of food,” because rice can be harvested multiple times in a year and each harvest eclipses a typical grain harvest. This bounty not only furnishes the poor necessities at affordable prices but also “the rich, having a greater super-abundance of food to dispose of beyond what they themselves can consume,” are capable of “purchasing a much greater quantity of the labor of other people” (WN I.xi.g.28). Smith makes this claim in the context of his discussion of the advantages of European-Chinese trade in precious metals, but its force lies in its invitation to rethink the relationship of the rich and the poor. In particular, against the familiar Enlightenment critique of “Oriental luxury,” Smith seeks here to show the practical benefits of Chinese luxury insofar as it stimulates employment and leads the rich unwittingly to redistribute their wealth and authority.

These accounts of Tartar dependence and Chinese luxury are noteworthy for two reasons. The first concerns the degree to which Smith's accounts of the dependence characteristic of the shepherd Tartars and the relative independence of social conditions in China parallels his comparison of the social conditions of feudal Europe to those of modern commercial society. Smith's analysis of the breakdown of feudal dependence has been rightly called “the backbone of his history of modern Europe” (Hont Reference Hont, Bourke and Geuss2009, 153, 165–66, 168; cf. Hanley Reference Hanley2009, 19–24); Smith himself famously insists in this context that “by far the most important” effect of commerce is its capacity to establish the “liberty and security of individuals” by eradicating the “servile dependency” of the poor on the rich (WN III.iv.4). Yet the details of Smith's account of this transition closely track those of his account of the Tartar barbarians. Some instances of this tracking have been noted (see esp. the editors’ notes at WN V.i.b.7); especially noteworthy are the parallels between the feudal lords and those Tartar chiefs who both trade away their authority for “trinkets and baubles” (WN III.iv.5; III.iv.10–11; III.iv.15; V.iii.1–3; LJA iv.8–9; LJB 36) and the parallels between the notorious love of “diamond buckles” of the feudal lord that leads him to barter away his authority and of the Chinese who seek the “great objects of the competition of the rich” (WN I.xi.g.28; III.iv.10). These parallels are noteworthy for several reasons, not least because the fact that the landed agricultural states of feudal Europe exhibited precisely the same dependence that defined the nomadic barbarian Tartar shepherds attests to Smith's recognition that certain social ills transcend social stages; thus the progress of society is not strictly linear in any simple sense. But perhaps more importantly, given that Smith's interest in the Tartars dates at least to the early 1760s (as evident in early fragments of WN; see, e.g., FA 3; FB 3; ED 34), the many parallels between his account of the Tartars and those of feudal Europe suggest that his early engagement with the Tartars may well have decisively shaped his account of the transition from feudalism to commercial society in Western Europe, itself a foundational element of his defense of commercial society more generally.

The second significance of Smith's account of Tartar dependence concerns its implication for his conception of state action. Smith's account of the Tartars, when set next to the account of the demise of feudalism in WN III, helps clarify the specific type of state action that will best serve to minimize the dependence of the least well-off. On the one hand, Smith clearly recognizes an indispensable role for the state in guaranteeing property rights; indeed, the crux of his account of the Tartars is the need for government to provide security for property in ages of inequality. But herein lies the key claim in his nuanced account. On its face, a government primarily instituted to protect the property of the rich from the depredations of the poor may seem only to reify and indeed exacerbate inequality and dependence—an inequality and dependence that might themselves seem to require further political action for their amelioration. But Smith's own approach is quite different. As his accounts of feudal Europe and barbarian Tartary aim to show, the most efficient remedy for the dependence of the poor on the rich lies specifically in the opulence and luxury that promote redistribution of material resources through expanded labor markets. The role of government and the “wisdom of the state,” in this sense, are indispensable, but are limited to securing what has been described as “the effective operation of the wider market” (C. Smith Reference Smith2006, 67; see also 64–66). Smith's argument is that the ultimate remedy for the dependence of the poor on the rich lies not in further state action, but rather in the natural progress of opulence that government's initial security of property rights makes possible—a view that itself provides a helpful alternative to the conventional positions in the left–right debate.

TARTAR VIRTUE AND CHINESE CORRUPTION: CIVILIZATION AND ITS EXISTENTIAL THREATS

Smith's third area of interest regarding the history and conditions of the east and their lessons for the west concerns the existential threats to which advanced civilization was particularly susceptible. In explicating these threats, Smith shifts his focus in a slight but significant way. Whereas his treatments of both the Chinese and the Tartars profiled earlier focus on their domestic institutions, here Smith's explicit focus lies on the interrelations—indeed, the historically hostile relations—between the Chinese and the Tartars. In the story of these relations, Smith finds a crucial set of lessons concerning both the nature of the threats that barbarism poses to opulent societies and the normative remedies that such societies would do well to adopt to mitigate these threats. In this sense, Smith's account of these remedies emerges as an account of the specific type of state action that commercial societies require to mitigate the negative externalities consequent to the otherwise welcome production of opulence and luxury afforded by commercial progress.

Smith's account begins with his insistence that barbarian shepherds pose a greater threat to civilized and opulent societies than do savage hunters. “A nation of hunters can never be formidable to the civilized nations in their neighborhood,” he argues, because “the precarious subsistence which the chase affords” prevents them from forming large groups (WN V.i.a.5; cf. LJA iv.39). Where groups of hunters are limited to “two or three hundred,” groups of shepherds “sometimes amount to two or three hundred thousand” (WN V.i.a.5; LJA iv.38–39; LJB 28). Yet it is not only their ability to sustain large groups that makes shepherds formidable. First, their ordinary occupations and “common pastimes” are all “images of war” and prepare them well to take the field (WN V.i.a.4). Second, their nomadic life renders them mobile, and thus their entire nation, “being accustomed to a wandering life, even in time of peace, easily takes the field in time of war” (WN V.i.a.3; cf. LJA iv.77; LJB 29, 335). Third, they have an incentive to win their wars because they carry the whole of their nation and all of their property into battle, and thus “if they are vanquished, all is lost”—herds and flocks, women and children alike (WN V.i.a.3–4; cf. LJA iv.39–40).

Smith's evidence for each of these claims is Tartary. For evidence that when barbarians “are vanquished they will lose their all” he invokes the example of a “clan of Tartars” (LJA iv.39; cf. WN V.i.a.4), emphasizing that all their men are warriors and that “among the Tartars, even the women have been frequently known to engage in battle” (WN V.i.a.3). To show that the ordinary occupations of the shepherd prepare him for war, Smith describes “the ordinary life, the ordinary exercises of a Tartar or Arab” (WN V.i.a.4). To illustrate the superior mobilization of the shepherds, Smith describes how “the Tartars live in a sort of wagons” and “have all their property in what is properly to be called moveables” (LJA iv.47–48; cf. LJA iv.77, LJB 30, 335; WN V.i.a.3). In so doing he not only gives empirical evidence of the formidable military power of shepherds but also calls repeated attention to the role played by the Tartars in world history as a consequence of this power (LJA iv.40, 51–55, 60; WN V.i.a.5; TMS VI.iii.30).

Yet it is not only the strength of the Tartars that renders them so formidable. Equally important as the strength that distinguishes shepherds is the weakness that characterizes opulent civilizations and renders them susceptible. In diagnosing this weakness, Smith calls attention to two forms of weakness: one institutional and one moral. Regarding institutional weakness, he explains that, just as the ordinary employments of shepherds prepare them for war, those of citizens of commercial societies disincline them to military service. “Every hour a smith or a weaver is absent from his loom or his anvil his work is at a stop,” he explains, because one can hardly devote “a single hour” to military exercises “without some loss, and his attention to his own interest naturally leads him to neglect them altogether” (LJA iv.79; WN V.i.a.15; cf. V.i.a.9). Such citizens come to see service in the military not merely as an “inconvenience” but also as a “great hardship,” with the result that it is left to “the lowest ranks” and “the dregs of the people” (LJA iv.88; cf. LJA iv.83–84, 93–94, 99; LJB 40; see esp. Montes Reference Montes and Young2009, 325). Further, in advanced societies it is not only not in the individual's interest to go to war but it is also not in the state's interest. Smith notes that in all nations that depend on taxation of manufactures for revenue, if manufacturers were to be sent to the battlefield, “the public revenues would have been greatly diminished”—and hence it is “no longer the interest of the government to press its subjects to go to war” (LJA iv.99–100), because such service would be “both difficult and prejudicial to the state” (LJA iv.103).

The “progress of manufactures” thus causes a weakening of military strength in an institutional sense (WN V.i.a.8; cf. LJA iv.76–77, 85; LJB 37, 47). Yet Smith also identifies a moral cause of this diminution of strength. In a key passage he describes “another bad effect of commerce,” namely “that it sinks the courage of mankind, and tends to extinguish martial spirit.” Smith traces this effect to the division of labor; just as “in all commercial countries the division of labor is infinite, and everyone's thoughts are employed about one particular thing,” so too “war comes to be a trade also” in which a few specialize, with the result that “among the bulk of the people military courage diminishes” and luxury leads them to “grow effeminate and dastardly” (LJB 331). This stands in sharp contrast to Britons of only two centuries earlier, animated by “spirit and vigor,” “brave and warlike” with minds “not enervated by cultivating arts and commerce” (LJB 332). Thus Smith reaches his notorious conclusion regarding the “disadvantages of a commercial spirit”: “Heroic spirit is almost utterly extinguished” (LJB 333), the citizen is rendered “incapable of defending his country in war” (WN V.i.f.50), and “military exercises” are neglected as “the great body of the people becomes altogether unwarlike” (WN V.i.a.15).

These claims are now relatively familiar. What demands particular notice in that in developing them Smith again cites Tartary and China as his chief empirical evidence:

The coexistence of barbarian shepherds and opulent civilizations as exemplified by the Tartar conquest of China—elsewhere described by Smith in his gloss on Voltaire as a clash between “Chinese virtue” and “Tartar barbarity” (LER 17; cf. TMS VI.ii.2.1)—reveals a tragic irony: namely, that the very opulence that marks the progress of commercial nations also “provokes the invasion of all their neighbors,” and thus “a wealthy nation, is of all nations the most likely to be attacked; and unless the state takes some new measures for the public defense, the natural habits of the people render them altogether incapable of defending themselves” (WN V.i.a.15; cf. LJB 32). This situation is worrisome partly because it impedes progress; thus “nothing can be more an obstacle to the progress of opulence” than the fact that “among the Tartars and Arabs, great bands of barbarians are always roaming from one place to another in quest of plunder” (LJB 288). Yet even more worrisome to Smith is the possibility of the existential annihilation of the civilized state as a direct consequence. Commerce, he insists, will “necessarily undo the strength and cause the power to vanish of such a state till it be swallowed up by some neighboring state” (LJA iv.81), because it is the very improvement in the arts that causes a state's strength to be “greatly diminished” to the point that “it falls a sacrifice to some of its neighbors” (LJA iv.91; cf. LJB 43).

Smith thus thinks that his Western readers would do well to attend to the story of the conquest of civilized China by barbarian Tartary for two reasons. First, the story of the unpreparedness of civilized China to confront and resist the invasions of their neighbors helps clarify the unique responsibilities of the modern state in helping secure the conditions of stability. Smith quite forthrightly insists in the Wealth of Nations that “the security of every society must always depend, more or less, upon the martial spirit of the great body of the people,” yet “in the present times” this “martial spirit alone” if “unsupported by a well-disciplined standing army, would not, perhaps, be sufficient for the defense and security of any society” (WN V.i.f.59). Smith famously identifies “the first duty of the sovereign” as “protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies” (WN V.i.a.1; cf. V.i.a.42; IV.ix.51), and his conviction on this front led him, as is well known, to advocate for the public support of a standing army (cf. WN V.i.a.16–18). On this basis, it would seem that his call for the necessity of a publicly funded standing army was not merely an intervention in the debate over the relative merits of armies versus militias in which he had earlier participated from the other side (see esp. Montes Reference Montes and Young2009, 326–28) but was also the fruit of his reflection on Chinese civilization and the existential threat posed to it by the Tartars. Indeed, his key piece of evidence for the superiority of a standing army to a militia is “the frequent conquests of all the civilized countries in Asia by the Tartars.” Such conquests, especially the Manchu Tartar conquest of China, “sufficiently demonstrate[s] the natural superiority” of barbarian armies to civilized militias and thus the need for civilized states to adopt standing armies, the only means by which “the civilization of any country can be perpetuated, or even preserved for any considerable time” (WN V.i.a.39; cf. V.i.a.36). In short, the Tartars, distinguished by military strength, warlike natures, and great mobility, represent an immense threat—indeed one that requires a certain type of state action to mitigate. In particular, the potential force of the enemy is too great to wait for it to arrive at the gates, and on such grounds Smith insists on the need for government to take the primary role in advance planning:

The story of the depredations of the Tartars thus served to convey the lesson that the natural division of labor directed by private self-interest needs guidance by the “wisdom of the state” in matters of national defense if commercial societies hope to optimize the chances of “the preservation of their existence.”

But for Smith this concern with existential threat preparedness was hardly a matter of pure theory; hence the second reason for his drawing our attention to the story of the Manchu conquest. China's fate was not a one-off event somehow distant from the dangers faced by contemporary Europe; on the contrary, Smith saw evidence of this threat in both the recent past and possible future of his own nation. Thus he offers several examples to illustrate his claim that “when a civilized nation depends for its defense upon a militia, it is at all times exposed to be conquered by any barbarous nation which happens to be in its neighborhood,” and that “it is only by means of a standing army, therefore, that the civilization of any country can be perpetuated” (WN V.i.a.39). In Scotland's recent past, Smith clearly saw similarities between the Manchu invasion that sacked Peking in 1644 and the Highland invasion that reached Edinburgh in 1745 (see esp. Millar Reference Millar2010, 725; Whelan Reference Whelan2009, 10); hence in making his claim that the vulnerability of rich civilizations is shown by “universal experience,” he cites alongside the Tartar conquest of China the events of “the year 1745” in which “four or 5 thousand naked unarmed Highlanders took possession of the improved parts of this country without any opposition from the unwarlike inhabitants” (LJB 331; cf. WN V.i.a.26; TMS VI.ii.1.12). Far from minimizing the significance of this threat, Smith makes clear that it was only the standing army that stood between the Highland invaders and the fall of the Crown: “They penetrated into England and alarmed the whole nation, and had they not been opposed by a standing army they would have seized the throne with little difficulty” (LJB 332). So too he notes that the British army plays a similarly indispensable role farther afield; even as he disparages the relative threat posed by the native North Americans (WN V.i.a.5), Smith is aware of what might well happen were the colonies to be “deserted by Britain and left to defend themselves against the savages” (LJA iv.102).

Beyond the Highlanders and the native North Americans, Smith also presents the Tartars themselves as a threat to civilized Britain and Europe more generally. In part he appeals to history to argue this point, reminding his students and readers that not only did China fall to the Tartars but so too did Rome; his account of “the fall of the western empire” is thus presented not only to support his claim with regard to “the irresistible superiority which the militia of a barbarous, has over that of a civilized nation” (WN V.i.a.36) but also to argue that the barbarians who sacked Rome were of Tartar descent (WN V.i.a.35; cf. I.iii.8; V.i.a.5). Yet the Tartar threat to Europe is for Smith hardly a mere matter of historical interest only. Students at one of his jurisprudence lectures were invited to participate in the following striking thought experiment:

Thus the possibility of the existential annihilation of Britain at the hands of the Tartars was sufficiently present to Smith to have led him to imagine its possibility and to ask his students to imagine it as well. Elsewhere he suggests that this possibility is not only on British minds; hence, his story of the returned ambassador who reported “that the Tartars used frequently to ask him, if there was plenty of sheep and oxen in the kingdom of France?” because “they wanted to know if the country was rich enough to be worth the conquering” (WN IV.i.2). Perhaps most significantly, reminding his audience that “the present Sultans, Grand Seignors, Mogulls, and Emperors of China are all of Tartarian descent,” he observes that

Smith's assessment serves as a précis of both his theory of commercial corruption and his historical account of civilized Europe's engagement with the East. On the former front, it reiterates his long-standing concern, noted earlier, with the ways in which industry and commerce enervate military might and can lead to potentially fatal reliance on barbarian mercenaries (see LJA iv.100–03). On the latter front, his narrative of the overthrow of the caliphate stands not only as another Tartar-driven upheaval but also marks the moment that the Tartars, via the Ottoman Empire, were brought to Europe's door (cf. Wheatcroft Reference Wheatcroft2009, 47–54).

Such claims attest to Smith's interest in Tartary and his concerns regarding the threat they might pose to Europe. Yet care should be taken not to overstate his concerns regarding the Tartars or indeed any specific extant group. This is in part for practical reasons; Smith himself insists that the present superiority of European military technology significantly minimizes the barbarian threat in the short term, given the conditions of “modern war” (WN V.i.a.44; cf. V.i.a.14, V.i.a.25)—a claim now standard in accounts of the relations of the Ottoman Empire to Europe in the 18th century (e.g. Quataert Reference Quataert2005, 37–38). More importantly, Smith's intention was less to identify possible future threats than to diagnose specific present ills. Rather than prognosticate about an uncertain future, Smith sought to gain clarity about the current problem of commercial corruption, as well as the specific institutional actions that civilized states, in their wisdom, ought to take to guard against any and all future threats, foreseen and unforeseeable. It is for this reason that Smith frames his account not as a call for preparation for war with the Tartars but as a theoretical analysis of the ways in which “improvement in arts and cultivation unfit the people from going to war” and diminish strength until “it falls a sacrifice to some of its neighbors” (LJA iv.91; cf. LJA iv.85, 93; LJB 37)—“unless,” of course, “the state takes some new measure for the public defense” (WN V.i.a.15). China's fall to the Tartars thus represents not merely the fate of a distant land but also the possible fate of civilized European states if they fail to take preemptive action. Smith's claim is that the existential threat that barbarism poses to civilization, in conjunction with the corruption endemic to commercial society, demands that states anticipate and plan for the possibility that their gains could be erased if they fail to adopt certain practical measures, specifically maintenance of a standing army at public expense—lest “that fated dissolution that awaits every state and constitution whatever” come sooner rather than later (LJB 46).