Abstract

While Adam Smith’s scepticism of European imperialism is well documented, he also argued that liberty and empire can be reconciled in certain forms of government. For Smith, liberty requires a regular and lawful government. In the context of empires, liberty hinges on the sovereign’s capacity to control local magistrates in remote provinces. Through close examination of the history of the Roman Empire, Smith recognised the superiority of monarchies to republics in securing the liberty of distant areas. However, the overextended governance in modern overseas empires aggravated political oppression due to the delegation of sovereign power to provincial governors. For Smith, the flaw in modern commercial empires is not simply the conflation of merchants and sovereignty, but also a geopolitical issue rooted in the extension of distance between the metropole and the colonies. This article further analyses Smith’s scheme to reform the British Empire within the framework of his broader analysis of distant empires. He envisioned that a large-scale imperial union underpinned by political representation could be a solution to the dilemma of imperial governance in the age of globalisation. Therefore, Smith found empire and liberty potentially compatible in his political design.