Can someone please help me summarize these in own words. I need a few detailed paragraphs, if possible. Or help me start it please

Editors' Introduction Adam Smith was born in the Scottish town of Kirkcaldy in 1723 and died in Edinburgh in 1790. Although he spent some time at Oxford University he lived most of his life in Scotland and was a major figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. Smith was a friend of the philosopher, David Hume, and while he is often hailed as the father of modern economics he is best seen as a broad-ranging intellectual with particular interests in political economy and moral philosophy. His most famous works are The Theory of Moral Sentiments, first published in 1759, and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (published first in 1776 and generally known as The Wealth of Nations). The Wealth of Nations is best known for its suggestion that the rough and tumble of 'free markets' is guided (or should be guided) by an 'invisible hand' that ensures that resources are properly allocated to produce the goods and services that consumers demand. If a particular good is in short supply its price will rise, causing more people to produce it. Likewise, if there is no demand for a given product, a company will go out of business. But there is more to Smith's work than this simple if elegant idea. Smith critiqued Physiocrat ideas about the importance of land as a source of value. Smith placed his emphasis on labour and on the productivity of labour. He proposed that economic efficiency would be increased by specialisa- tion and extended divisions of labour. Smith also wrote The Wealth of Nations as an attack upon mer- cantilist doctrines. Smith became an advocate of free trade at a time when most governments still clung to the idea that countries should use foreign trade to build up large stores of bullion. Smith is well known for his advocacy of self-interest on the part of economic agents. 'It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.' It is perhaps less well known, however, and certainly less well publicised today, that Smith was wary of the tendency for private monopolies to be formed by the successful exercise of self-interest and 'greed'. In the reading that we reproduce here, from Book IV of The Wealth of Nations, we see Smith drawing a stark distinction between the possibilities for economic accumulation opened up after the discovery of a sea passage to the East Indies, and the ways in which these advantages were monopolised by officers of the English East India Company. The dominant voice is one of disgust, or atT least of disappointment. Smith ends, howe government' which allowed the East India Co in all sorts of ways. It raises issues related to questions to do with the management of larg ance. The reader will want to ask questions 3 Are there any modern-day equivalents of the the bill, and why? Key references THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA AND THE EAST INDIES' er, true to form, by calling for a change in the 'system of Mpany to behave as it did. The reading is thus contemporary wll1at we would now call globalisation (and trade), as well as e firms or corporations and regimes of good (or bad) govern- bout what has changed since the time that Smith was writing. East India Company? If so, which corporations would best fit Adam Smith (1993 [1776]) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Oxford: Clarendon Press. (2002[17589]) The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Cambridge: Cambridge University Pre&; ' (2004) Selected Philosophical Writings, edited by James Otteson, London: Imprint. J. Buchan (2007) The Authentic Adam Smith: His Life and Ideas, New York: W. W. Norton. E. Rothschild (2002) Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, [L.] The discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind. Their consequences have already been very great: but, in the short period of between two and three centuries which has elapsed since these discoveries were made, it is impossible that the whole extent of their consequences can have been seen. What benefits, or what misfortunes to mankind may hereafter result from those great events no human wisdom can foresee. By uniting, in some measure, the most distant parts of the world, by enabling them to relieve one another's wants, o increase one another's enjoyments, and to encourage one another's industry, their general tendency would seem to be beneficial. To the natives, however, both of the East and West Indies, all the commercial benefits which can have resulted from those events have been sunk and lost in the dreadful misfortunes which they have occasioned. These misfortunes, however, seem to have arisen rather from accident than from any thing in the nature of those events themselves. At the particular time when these discoveries were made, the superiority of force happened to be so great on the side of the Europeans, that they were enabled to commit with impunity every sort of injustice in those remote countries. Hereafter, perhaps, the natives of those countries may grow SiTOnger, or those of Europe may grow weaker, and the inhabitants of all the different quarters of the world may arrive at that equality of courage and force which, by inspiring mutual fear, can alone overawe the injustice of independent nations into some sort of respect for the rights of one another. But nothing seems more likely to establish this equality of force than that mutual communication of knowledge and of all sorts of improvements which an extensive commerce from all countries to all countries naturally, or rather necessarily, carries along with it. In the mean time one of the principal effects of those discoveries has been to raise the mercantile system to a degree of splendor and glory which it could never otherwise have attained to. It is the object of that system to enrich a great nation rather by trade and manufactures than by the improvement and culti- vation of land, rather by the industry of the towns than by that of the country. But, in consequence of those discoveries, the commercial towns of Europe, instead of being the manufacturers and carriers for but a very small part of the world (that part of Europe which is washed by the Atlantic ocean, and the countries which lie round the Baltick and Mediter- ranean seas), have now become the manufacturers for the numerous and thriving cultivators of America, and the carriers, and in some respects the manu- facturers too, for almost all the different nations of Asia, Africa, and America. Two new worlds have been 3 ___"_______'______*______._._--'_""_____q_'_'_"- ADAMSMITH opened to their industry. each of them much greater and more extensive than the old one, and the market of one of them growing still greater and greater i 4 day.... . In the trade to America every nation endeavours to engross as much as possible the whole market of its own colonies, by fairly excluding all other nations from any direct trade to them. During the greater part of the sixteenth century, the Portugueze endeavoured to manage the trade to the East Indies in rhe.same manner, by claiming the sole right of sailing in the Indian seas, on account of the merit of having first found out the road to them. The Dutch still continue to exclude all other European nations from any direct trade to their spice islands. Monopolies of this kind are evidently established against all other European nations, who are thereby not only excluded from a trade to which it might be convenient for them to turn some part of their stock, but are obliged to buy the goods which that trade deals in somewhat dearer, than if they could import them themselves directly from the countries which produce them. But since the fall of the power of Portugal, no European nation has claimed the exclusive right of sailing in the Indian seas, of which the principal ports are now open to the ships of all European nations. Except in Portugal, however, and within these few years in France, the trade to the East Indies has in every European country been subjected to an exclusive company. Monopolies of this kind are properly established against the very nation which erects them. The greater part of that nation are thereby not only excluded from a trade to which it might be convenient for them to turn some part of their stock, but are obliged to buy the goods which that trade deals in, somewhat dearer than if it was open and free to all their countrymen. Since the establishment of the English East India company, for example, the other inhabitants of England, over and above being excluded from the trade, must have paid in the price of the East India goods which they have consumed, not only for all the extraordinary profits which the company may have made upon those goods in consequence of their monopoly, but for all the extraordinary waste which the fraud and abuse, inseparable from the management of the affairs of so great a company, must necessarily have occasioned. The absurdity of this second kind of monopoly, therefore, is much more manifest than that of the first. Both these kinds of monopolies derange more or less the natural distribution of the _st'ock of the society: but they do not always derange itin the same way. Monopolies of the first kind always attrac.:t to the particular trade in which they are estab'hshecl a greater proportion of the stock of the society than what would go to that trade of its own accord. Monopolies of the second kind, may sometimes attract stock towards the particular trade in which they are established, and sometimes repel it from that trade according to different circumstances. In poor countries they naturally attract towards that trade more stock than would otherwise go to it. In rich countries they naturally repel from it a good deal of stock which would otherwise go toit. . .. The English and Dutch companies, though they have established no considerable colonies, ... have both made considerable conquests in the East Indies. But in the manner in which they both govern their new subjects, the natural genius of an exclusive com- pany has shown itself most distinctly. In the spice islands the Dutch are said to burn all the spiceries which a fertile season produces beyond what they expect to dispose of in Europe with such a profit as they think sufficient. In the islands where they have no settlements, they give a premium to those who collect the young blossoms and green leaves of the clove and nutmeg trees which naturally grow there, but which this savage policy has now, it is said, almost compleatly extirpated. Even in the islands where they have settlements they have very much reduced, it is said, the number of those trees. If the produce even of their own islands was much greater than what suited their market, the natives, they suspect, might find means to convey some part of it to other nations; and the best way, they imagine, to secure their own monopoly, is to take care that no more shall grow than what they themselves carry to market. By dif- ferent arts of oppression they have reduced the population of several of the Moluccas nearly to the number which is sufficient to supply with fresh provisions and other necessaries of life their own insignificant garrisons, and such of their ships as occasionally come there for a cargo of spices. Under the government even of the Portugueze, however, those islands are said to have been tolerably well inhabited. The English company have not yet had time to establish in Bengal so perfectly destructive a system. The plan of their government, however, has p ' |1.1&f exactly the same tendency. It hag ot 'Baen uncommon, I am well assured, for the chief that i the first clerk of a factory, to order a pea;sam ::, plough up a rich field of poppies, and sow it with rice or sOl:l'Ie other gT'?in, The pretence was, to prevent a scz_m:ny of provisions; but the real reason, to give the chief an opportunity of selling at a better price a large quantity of opium, which he happened then to have upon hand. Upon other occasions the order has been reversed; and a rich field of rice or other grain has been ploughed up, in order to make room for a plantation of poppies; when the chief foresaw that extraordinary profit was likely to be made by opium, The servants of the company have upon several occasions attempted to establish in their own favour the monopoly of some of the most important branches, not only of the foreign, but of the inland trade of the country. Had they been allowed to go on, it is impossible that they should not at some time or another have attempted to restrain the production of the particular articles of which they had thus usurped the monopoly, not only to the quantity which they themselves could purchase, but to that which they could expect to sell with such a profit as they might think sufficient. In the course of a century or two, the policy of the English company would in this manner have probably proved as compleatly destructive as that of the Dutch. Nothing, however, can be more directly contrary to the real interest of those companies, considered as the sovereigns of the countries which they have con- quered, than this destructive plan. In almost all coun- tries the revenue of the sovereign is drawn from that of the people. The greater the revenue of the people, therefore, the greater the annual produce of their land and labour, the more they can afford to the sovereign. It is his interest, therefore, to increase as much as possible that annual produce. But if this is the interest of every sovereign, it is peculiarly so of one whose revenue, like that of the sovereign of Bengal, arises chiefly from a land-rent. That rent must necessarily be in proportion to the quantity and value of the pro- duce, and both the one and the other must depend upon the extent of the market. The quantity will always be suited with more or less exactness to the consumption of those who can afford to pay for it, and the price which they will pay will always be in proportion to the eagerness of their competition. Itis the interest of such a sovereign, therefore, to open the most extensive market for the produce of his country, THE DISCOVERY OF AMERIGA AND THE EAST INDIES' to allow the most perfect freedom of commerce, in order to increase as much as possible the number and the competition of buyers; and upon this account to abolish, not only all monopolies, but all restraints upon the transportation of the home produce from one part of the country to another, upon its exportation to foreign countries, or upon the import- ation of goods of any kind for which it can be exchanged. He is in this manner most likely to increase both the quantity and value of that produce, and consequently of his own share of it, or of his own Tevenue. But a company of merchants are, it seems, incapable of considering themselves as sovereigns, even after they have become such. Trade, or buying in order to sell again, they still consider as their principal business, and by a strange absurdity, regard the character of the sovereign as but an appendix to that of the merchant, as something which ought to be made subservient to it, or by means of which they may be enabled to buy cheaper in India, and thereby to sell with a better profit in Europe. They endeavour for this purpose to keep out as much as possible all competitors from the market of the countries which are subject to their government, and consequently to reduce, at least, some part of the surplus produce of those countries to what is barely sufficient for supply- ing their own demand, or to what they can expect to sell in Europe with such a profit as they may think reasonable. Their mercantile habits draw them in this manner, almost necessarily, though perhaps insensibly, to prefer upon all ordinary occasions the little and transitory profit of the monopolist to the great and permanent revenue of the sovereign, and would gradually lead them to treat the countries sub- ject to their government nearly as the Dutch treat the Moluccas. It is the interest of the East India company, considered as sovereigns, that the European goods which are carried to their Indian dominions, should be sold there as cheap as possible; and that the Indian goods which are brought from thence should bring there as good a price, or should be sold there as dear as possible. But the reverse of this is their interest as merchants. As sovereigns, their interest is exactly the same with that of the country which they govern. As merchants their interest is directly opposite to that interest. But if the genius of such a government, even as to what concerns its direction in Europe, is in this manner essentially and perhaps incurably faulty, that 3 ADAM SMITH of its administration in India is still more so. That administration is necessarily composed of a council of merchants, a profession no doubt extremely respectable, but which in no country in the world carries along with it that sort of authority which naturally over-awes the people. and without force commands their willing obedience. Such a council can command obedience only by the military force with which they are accompanied, and their govern- ment is therefore necessarily military and despotical. Their proper business, however, is that of merchants. [t is to sell, upon their masters account, the European goods consigned to them, and to buy in return [ndian goods for the European market. It is to sell the one as dear and to buy the other as cheap as possible, and consequently to exclude as much as possible all rivals from the particular market where they keep their shop. The genius of the administration, therefore, so far as concerns the trade of the company, is the same as that of the direction. It tends to make government subservient to the interest of monopoly, and con- sequently to stunt the natural growth of some parts at least of the surplus produce of the country to what is barely sufficient for answering the demand of the company. All the members of the administration, besides, trade more or less upon their own account, and it is in vain to prohibit them from doing so. Nothing can be more compleatly foolish than to expect that the clerks of a great counting-house at ten thousand miles distance, and consequently almost quite out of sight, should, upon a simple order from their masters, give up at once doing any sort of business upon their own account, abandon for ever all hopes of making a fortune, of which they have the means in their hands, and content themselves with the moderate salaries which those masters allow them, and which, moderate as they are, can seldom be augmented, being commonly as large as the real profits of the company trade can afford. In such circumstances, to prohibit the servants of the company from trading upon their own account, can have scarce any other effect than to enable the superior servants, under pretence of executing their masters order, to oppress such of the inferior ones as have had the misfortune to fall under their displeasure. The servants naturally endea}rour to establish the same monopoly in favour of their own private trade as of the publick trade of Th? company. If they are suffered to act as they could wish, they will establish this monopoly openly and directly, by fairly prohibiting all other people from trading in the articles in which they chuse to deal; and this, perhaps, is the best and least oppressive way of establishing it. But if by an order from Europe they are prohibited from doing this, they will. notwith- standing, endeavour to establish a monopoly of the same kind, secretly and indirectly, in a way that is much more destructive to the country. They will employ the whole authority of government, and pervert the administration of justice, in order to har- ass and ruin those who interfere with them in any branch of commerce which, by means of agents, either concealed, or at least not publickly avowed, they may chuse to carry on. But the private trade of the servants will naturally extend to a much greater variety of articles than the publick trade of the com- pany. The publick trade of the company extends no further than the trade with Europe, and comprehends a part only of the foreign trade of the country. But the private trade of the servants may extend to all the different branches both of its inland and foreign trade. The monopoly of the company can tend only to stunt the natural growth of that part of the surplus produce which, in the case of a free trade, would be exported to Europe. That of the servants tends to stunt the natural growth of every part of the produce in which they chuse to deal, of what is destined for home consumption, as well as of what is destined for exportation; and consequently to degrade the cultiva- tion of the whole country, and to reduce the number of its inhabitants. It tends to reduce the quantity of every sort of produce, even that of the necessaries of life, whenever the servants of the company chuse to deal in them, to what those servants can both afford to buy and expect to sell with such a profit as pleases them. From the nature of their situation too the servants must be more disposed to support with rigorous severity their own interest against that of the country which they govern, than their masters can be to support theirs. The country belongs to their masters, who cannot avoid having some regard for the interest of what belongs to them. But it does not belong to the servants. The real interest of their masters, if they were capable of understanding it, is the same with that of the country,' and it is from ignorance chiefly, and the meanness of mercantile prejudice, that they ever oppress it. But the real interest of the servants is by no means the same with that of the country, and the most perfect information would not necessarily