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Adam Smith and Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

William W. Lockwood
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Extract

The great Chinese philosopher Ch'eng Hao (1032–1085) once set forth in a A memorial to the throne a three-point training program for statesmen. His formula for success is as valid today as it was for the Sung emperors nearly a thousand

years ago:

understand the principles taught in books;

find out the right and wrong in history;

know how to deal with men;

—more briefly, knowledge and wisdom.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , May 1964 , pp. 345 - 355
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1964

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References

1 A free translation of a passage from Ts'ung-shu chi-ch'eng, ts'e 1831, Erh Ch'cng wen-chi, (Shanghai, 1936), Chüan I, I.

2 Munshi, K. M. and Aiyer, N. C., eds., Indian Inheritance 111, Science and Society (Bombay, 1956), p. 85.Google Scholar

3 The End of Laissez-Faire (London, 1927), p. 16.

4 Marx on China, 1813–60 (London, 1951), p. 7.

5 William the Silent (New Haven, 1944), p. 32.

6 China: Being ‘The Times’ Special Correspondence from China in the Years 1857–58 (London, 1859), p. 169.

7 The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money (New York, 1936), p. 383.

8 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (New York: Modern Library), P. 431. All subsequent references are to this Cannan edition.

9 Fay, C. R., The World of Adam Smith (Cambridge, 1960), p. 94.Google Scholar

10 Wealth of Nations, p. 728.

11 Ibid., pp. 68, 79.

12 Yanaihara, Tadao, A Full and Detailed Catalogue of Books which Belonged to Adam Smith Now in the Possession of the Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo (Tokyo, 1951).Google Scholar

13 Rae, John, Life of Adam Smith (London, 1895), pp. 188–190, 202–206Google Scholar; Maverick, Lewis A., China a Model for Europe (San Antonio, 1946), pp. 35, 44–58Google Scholar; “Questions sur la Chine adressées à MM. Ko et Yang,” in Oeuvres de Mr. Turgot, Ministre d'État, Précédés et Accompagnées de Mémoires et de Notes sur la Vie, son Administration et ses Oeuvrages (Paris, 1808), V, 140–165. C. R. Fay remarks that the Chinese students should have had in their valise a copy of the Wealth of Nations, marked at the passage (pp. 644–645) in which Smith offered some advice on economic policy to the Chinese. They would improve the productivity of their manufacturing industry, he observed, if they would resort to more extensive foreign trade and technological borrowing abroad. “Upon their present plan they have little opportunity of improving themselves by the example of any other nation, except that of the Japanese.” Adam Smith and the Scotland of his Day (Cambridge, 1956), p. 160.

14 Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, I (Philadelphia, 1771), i–xiv. Jacob Viner, indefatigable student of this era, has called my attention to this all-but-forgotten motive for the founding of Franklin's famous Society.

15 Vol. III (Philadelphia, 1793), 8–10.

16 Du Ponceau, Peter S., A Dissertation on the Nature and Characteristics of the Chinese System of Writing (Philadelphia, 1838).Google Scholar

17 There is a legend that Smith brought Franklin the Wealth of Nations to read, chapter by chapter, as he wrote it. Their views were very similar but C. R. Fay suspects mat this story is apocryphal. Adam Smith, p. 127.

18 Wealth of Nations, p. 688.

19 I am indebted to Howard C. Rice, of the Princeton University Library, for turning up this eighteenth-century curiosity.

20 Ibid., pp. 95, 205–207, 462, 644–647, 687–688, 789.

21 China, pp. 25, 32.

22 Smith might have found himself still more at home with the great historian of early Han, Ssu-ma Ch'ien, to judge from Robert Crawford's recent essay, “The Social and Political Philosophy of the Shih-chi,” Journal of Asian Studies, XXII (August 1963), 401–416.

23 Wealth of Nations, pp. 388–389.

24 Ibid., pp. 460, 250, 128.

25 Ibid., pp. 688–689.

26 Ibid., p. 605.

27 See Rosenberg, Nathan, “Some Institutional Aspects of the Wealth of Nations,” Journal of Political Economy, LXVIII (December, 1960), 557–570CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also the essays of Clark, J. M. and Viner, Jacob in Clark and others, Adam Smith, 1776–1926 (Chicago, 1928), pp. 53–76, 116–155.Google Scholar

28 See, for example, Berna, James J., Industriai Entrepreneurship in Madras State (New York, 1960).Google Scholar

29 Wealth of Nations, pp. 581–590.

30 Ibid., pp. 590–591.

31 Wint, Guy, Spotlight on Asia (London, 1955), p. 73.Google Scholar