On March 9, 1776, exactly 250 years ago, a handsome book, over 1,000 pages long, priced at one pound sixteen shillings, appeared on the bookshelves in London. Its author, formerly professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, was already well known. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations enduringly altered thinking about freedom, power, prosperity, and justice. Like any great work, it defies easy political characterisation: Both left and right have pressed it into their service. It also resists confinement to a single genre. Although it revolutionised political economy, it ranges superabundantly across law, institutions, history, and, characteristically, moral psychology. Much of it is written in clinical, occasionally dry prose. Yet it is vividly thrilling: Unexpected in argument, generous and humane in spirit, alive with irony and paradox.

For Economics, the book consolidated a decisive shift: The wealth of nations is measured not by the balance of trade or the accumulation of bullion, but by the total productive capacity of society and its translation into rising standards of living for ordinary people. It moved attention from accumulation by the wealthy and the state to the diffusion of capabilities, democratising the idea of wealth. It then inquired into the conditions of productivity, above all the division of labour, itself a consequence of the extent of the market. Wages, rents, and profits were brought into a single analytic frame. The book’s sensibility is that of undogmatic inquiry, a sustained investigation into why societies prosper or stagnate.

But the deeper thrill lies in how thoroughly it unsettles........

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