Adam Smith

This is the author of the work. He is a 18th century Scotsman who has managed to both write and to have published one of the world's classics on economics. As far as is known, Adam Smith was the first to ever assemble an actual orderly theory of economics. His work is also a sign of Europe's recovery from the so-called Dark Ages when feudalism proved that life isn't necessarily better when people overpower the king and dismantle the highest, unifying strata of society. He was a professor of moral philosophy in Glasgow, Scotland.

Before Smith's lifetime "democratic republics" had existed with some success in parts of the world. By the end of his life, the English colonies had asserted their independence from the British, and unlike Peru, they didn't have the silver mines that made them "worth the struggle to hold onto" for the British Crown...