1776–1867 CE · selected publications and debates · Europe · Trade
Debates over markets, labor, land, value, poverty and industrial growth became formal political economy, from Adam Smith to Karl Marx and many critics of empire and capitalism.
Atlas dossier · Enlightenment & RevolutionsFree device narration · synchronized English captions · transcript available
Why it matters
The 1776 opening marks The Wealth of Nations and the 1867 endpoint the first volume of Capital. Those books did not begin or conclude economic thought. The period contains competing arguments about labour, land, value, poverty, empire and industrial change.
Project Gutenberg: The Wealth of Nations ↗Smith, Ricardo, Marx and their critics selected different units of analysis and wrote within distinct political settings. Workers, enslaved people and colonised producers shaped the economies they analysed even when canonical texts did not centre their voices.
Project Gutenberg: Capital, Volume I ↗A visual presentation accompanying this entry. Read each image’s attribution to distinguish archival records, later depictions and reconstructions.
Enlarge and examine the pictureRights-cleared archival or official image · Public domain
Adam Smith The Muir portrait.jpg — Unknown authorUnknown author; Public domain; via Wikimedia Commons
Source and reuse terms ↗Interpretation note
This dossier distinguishes the event’s basic chronology from later arguments about meaning, responsibility and legacy. When comparing religious, national, Indigenous or scholarly interpretations, consult the primary and institutional sources above alongside peer-reviewed historical work.
Elsewhere in the world
1772–1888 CE · selected Atlantic legal milestones · GlobalAbolition of Atlantic slave systemsEnslaved people, maroon communities, writers, religious organizers and political movements forced successive restrictions and abolitions across the Atlantic world.
1763–1783 CE · imperial crisis, war and settlement · AmericasAmerican RevolutionConflict over imperial taxation and authority became rebellion and war; thirteen colonies declared independence in 1776 and secured British recognition in 1783.
1791–1804 CE · uprising, emancipation and independence · AmericasHaitian RevolutionEnslaved and free people in Saint-Domingue fought colonial armies and internal rivals through revolution, emancipation and the establishment of independent Haiti.