
Adam Smith







The nations that, according to the best authenticated history, appear to have been first civilised, were those that dwelt round the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.[A] That sea, by far the greatest inlet that is known in the world, having no tides, nor consequently any waves except such as are caused by the wind only, was, by the smoothness of its surface, as well as by the multitude of its islands, and the proximity of its neighbouring shores, extremely favourable to the infant navigation of the world; when, from their ignorance of the compass, men were afraid to quit the view of the coast, and from the imperfection of the art of shipbuilding, to abandon themselves to the boisterous waves of the ocean. To pass beyond the pillars of Hercules, that is, to sail out of the Straits of Gibraltar, was, in the ancient world, long considered as a most wonderful and dangerous exploit of navigation. It was late before even the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, the most skilful navigators and ship-builders of those old times, attempted it, and they were for a long time the only nations that did attempt it.

Of all the countries on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt seems to have been the first in which either agriculture or manufactures were cultivated and improved to any considerable degree. Upper Egypt extends itself nowhere above a few miles from the Nile, and in Lower Egypt that great river breaks itself into many different canals, which, with the assistance of a little art, seem to have afforded a communication by water-carriage, not only between all the great towns, but between all the considerable villages, and even to many farmhouses in the country; nearly in the same manner as the Rhine and the Maas do in Holland at present. The extent and easiness of this inland navigation was probably one of the principal causes of the early improvement of Egypt.


All the inland parts of Africa, and all that part of Asia which lies any considerable way north of the Euxine [Black] and Caspian seas, the ancient Scythia [North of the Black Sea, part of present-day Southern Ukraine], the modern Tartary [modern Kazhakstan] and Siberia, [in other words: all of Russia] seem in all ages of the world to have been in the same barbarous and uncivilised state in which we find them at present.[C] The Sea of Tartary is the frozen ocean which admits of no navigation, and though some of the greatest rivers in the world run through that country, they are at too great a distance from one another to carry commerce and communication through the greater part of it. There are in Africa none of those great inlets, such as the Baltic and Adriatic seas in Europe, the Mediterranean and Euxine seas in both Europe and Asia, and the gulfs of Arabia, Persia, India, Bengal, and Siam, in Asia, to carry maritime commerce into the interior parts of that great continent: and the great rivers of Africa are at too great a distance from one another to give occasion to any considerable inland navigation. The commerce besides which any nation can carry on by means of a river which does not break itself into any great number of branches or canals, and which runs into another territory before it reaches the sea, can never be very considerable; because it is always in the power of the nations who possess that other territory to obstruct the communication between the upper country and the sea. The navigation of the Danube is of very little use to the different states of Bavaria, Austria and Hungary, in comparison of what it would be if any of them possessed the whole of its course till it falls into the Black Sea.


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[A] We know today that the first civilised nations were instead Asian and African. Sumeria was the first, formed in around 3500 B.C.E., in the land of Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. By around 3000 B.C.E. the Egyptian civilisation formed along the Nile river, followed by the Harappan civilisation in the Indus valley, in around 2500 B.C.E.

The first civilised nation to form on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea was the Hittite in Anatola (present day Turkey), around 2000 B.C.E. Near the same time the Minoan civilisation formed on the island of Crete. The first mainland European civilization was the Mycenaeans in the Peloponnese (islands south of Greece), who are thought to have emerged civilized around 1700 B.C.E. and who shortly thereafter, conqured their southern neighbours, the Minoan's in about 1450 B.C.E. By 1200 B.C.E. the Minoan, Mycenaean and Egyptian civilisations collapsed (with none replacing them for 700 years), while Asian civilisations continued in Assyria, Persia, and China.

[B] We presently know that this is not correct; these civilisations all practised both over-land and over-seas foreign trade for thousands of years. While the level of over-seas trade was relatively minimal next to over-land trade, China led the world for centuries in the extent of their overseas trade: having the biggest fleet in the world for the first half of the second millineum. Near the end of Chinese over-seas trading, ships had sailed as far as Eastern Africa and the Middle-East, making frequent trips to India and SouthEast asia for spices and other exotic goods.

[C] In 1776, Russia had not yet established a political superstructure based on the Industrial revolution, but was still Fuedalist. Smith's referal to Russia's barbarism is probably a reference to Fuedalism.