Adam Smith was not a historian, in the sense that he wrote nothing that could be described as “a history.” Nevertheless, he thought a great deal about history; he was deeply conscious of the history he was living in; it is probable that he saw the human species as immersed in history at all moments of its existence; and it is certain that he contributed to the development of historical thought in new directions and the acquisition of new meanings by the term “history.” For these reasons, it would be easy for us to describe Smith as a “historian” in all these latter and innovative senses, and to dismiss as archaic and evanescent all the senses in which he is not one. This, however, would be to distort the ways in which the terms “history” and “historian” were used by Smith himself and understood by his contemporaries. Edward Gibbon, who knew him and his work well and looked on him with respect and affection, is the author of two statements which may be taken together as illustrating this point. The first is found in Gibbon’s autobiography and runs:

The second, probably written earlier, occurs in a late chapter of the Decline and Fall: