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In this first podcast exploring the underlying assumptions of economics, Richard Whatmore discusses Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and shows how he has been misinterpreted as an advocate of unfettered free markets. Smith was more concerned to show that economic relations rely on ‘moral sentiments’, on empathy and the ability to understand the needs of other members of society. Equally, he shows how Friedrich Hayek is more nuanced that his critics allow. In a wide-ranging discussion, Richard Whatmore explores issues that informed the rise of economics in the eighteenth century and continue to resonate today – economic nationalism and internationalism, trade and warfare, debt and public spending.

Richard Whatmore studied history at the University of Cambridge, where he completed his doctorate on eighteenth and nineteenth century political economy. He joined the University of Sussex where he became Professor of Intellectual History before moving to his current post of Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews where he is also Director of the Institute of Intellectual History. His work has focussed on the intellectual history of the rise of European commercial empires and the enlightenment, now summed up in The End of Enlightenment: Empire, commerce, Crisis (2023).

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