Curran Corrigan
Emma Rothschild Intellectual Biography
Emma Rothschild wasted no time in pursuing her studies. At the age of 15 she became
the youngest person to be accepted into Somerville College, Oxford, where she graduated with
a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1967. She then took her talents to the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Kennedy Scholar in Economics, earning her MA in
1970. In the intervening years between 1970 and today, she has taught at MIT and Harvard,
where she is the Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History and the Director of the Joint
Center for History and Economics. Historical scholarship is only one facet of her many
intellectual contributions. She has served as Chairman for the United Nations Research Institute
for Social Development and sat on the Board of Directors for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists,
The Royal Commission of Environmental Pollution (UK), the Carnegie/MacArthur Committee of
International Security, and the United Nations Foundation. Her research interests are centered
on the history of economics and economic thought in the eighteenth century, which comes as
no surprise when one considers her pedigree as a member of the famous Rothschild banking
family, whose roots lie in same period she studies.
As The Inner Life of Empires1 makes clear, Rothschild is capable of blending intellectual
and economic history into a work that provides much more than the story of rich traders.
1
Emma Rothschild. The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth Century History, Princeton, NJ:Princeton University
Press, 2011)
Rothschild uses the Johnstones as a guiding example for the engagement of eighteenth century
networks that proved crucial to the development of the British Empire. She examines the
avenues of power which were available to men like the Johnstones, who could basically choose
between achieve military service, overseas commerce, or marriage in pursuit of financial and
social ascendancy. Rothschild was fortunate that the Johnstones were also connected to one of
the most prominent issues in Atlantic history: the slave trade. By including Bellinda and Joseph
Knight, Rothschild is able to transcend a narrow focus on elites. Indeed, the purpose of her
book is to show the way that the imperial activities of Britain in the eighteenth century
penetrated deep into the lives of even those who lived in the Scottish countryside . In doing so,
she joins a growing movement of imperial historians who have discarded an approach based on
“center/periphery” relationships in favor of using a much more dynamic and complex web of
connections to define the experiences of imperial subjects.
Her previous book, Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the
Enlightenment,2 which used a comparative approach of prominent Enlightenment thinkers to
examine the environment in which their early ideas were developed, received wide acclaim and
has been published in four languages. Its greatest achievement is in dispensing with twentieth
century conceptions of economics in her depiction of Adam Smith, arguing convincingly that
Smith’s ideas were oversimplified in order to forward the conservative political agenda of
William Pitt. Like Inner Life of Empires, Economic Sentiments demonstrates Rothschild’s ability
2
Emma Rothschild, Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment, (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2001).
to draw useful connections as a way weaving a broader historical tapestry in which the sum is
greater than the individual parts.
While Inner Life of Empires spans the Atlantic World, it also serves as an important
reminder of the existence of connections that involved much broader networks . Other
contributions have been much more explicitly Atlantic in focus, such as her 2006 article “A
Horrible Tragedy in the French Atlantic,”3 which examines the disastrous 1763 expedition to
French Guyana led by Etienne-Francois Turgot. Rothschild traces the ramifications of this failed
venture from Rochefort to Barbados, relying on primarily on intellectual correspondences. She
has also recently contributed the chapter “Late Atlantic History”4 to the Oxford Handbook of
Atlantic History edited by Nicolas Canny and Phillip Morgan.
One unusual aspect of Rothschild’s studies is that she is explicitly concerned with
engaging eighteenth century political economy in order to put us “in a position to understand
their importance for the present.”5 This reflects the other side of Rothschild’s published work,
which has included such diverse topics as the decline of the American automobile industry,
environmental sustainability, and the definition of security. Rothschild’s division of labor
between history and current events undoubtedly widens her methodological arsenal, but is
lamentable in that she has only published three historical monographs over the course of her
long career. However, it would seem that finishing her work with the Johnstones has provided
3
Emma Rothschild, “A Horrible Tragedy on the French Atlantic” Past and Present, Vol. 192 (August
2006), pp. 67-108.
4
Emma Rothschild, “Late Atlantic History” in Oxford Handbook to Atlantic History ed. Nicolas Canny and Phillip
Morgan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
5
Rothschild, Economic Sentiments, 47.
scholarly invigoration. Her next work, Commerce and Anxiety in Eighteenth-Century France is
estimated to begin publication sometime this year. The title suggests that it will follow the
same thematic trends as her earlier studies, engaging economics and the intellectual currents
which surrounded trade and material gain in order to provide compelling insights into
eighteenth century society.
Articles and chapters in books
History

“Late-Atlantic History,” The Oxford Handbook of Atlantic History, ed. Nicholas
Canny and Philip Morgan, forthcoming 2011

“The Inner Life of Empires,” Tanner Lectures delivered at Princeton University,
April 2006, forthcoming Tanner Lectures on Human Values, 2011

“Political Economy,” The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political
Thought, forthcoming 2011

“Adam Smith in the British Empire,” Empire and Modern Political Thought, ed.
Sankar Muthu, Cambridge, forthcoming 2011

“The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Inner Life,” The Adam Smith Review,
forthcoming 2010

“Choiseul and the History of France,” Waddesdon Miscellanea, vol. 1 (2009),
pp. 6-13

“The Atlantic Worlds of David Hume”, Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent
Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830, ed. Bernard Bailyn and
Patricia Denault, Cambridge, MA, 2009, pp. 405-449

“The Archives of Universal History,” Journal of World History, Vol. 19, No. 3
(September 2008), pp. 375-401

“David Hume and the Seagods of the Atlantic,” The Atlantic Enlightenment, ed.
Susan Manning and Francis D. Cogliano, Aldershot, 2008, pp. 81-96


“Adam Smith’s Laws,” Y a-t-il des lois en économie?, ed. Bernard Delmas, Villeneuve d’Ascq,
2007, pp. 37-40
“A Horrible Tragedy in the French Atlantic,” Past and Present, Vol. 192 (August
2006), pp. 67-108

“Adam Smith's Economics” (with Amartya Sen), The Cambridge Companion to
Adam Smith, ed. Knud Haakonsen, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 319-365

“Arcs of Ideas: International History and Intellectual History,” in Transnationale
Geschichte: Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien, ed Gunilla Budde, Sebastian
Conrad and Oliver Janz, Göttingen, 2006, pp. 217-226

“'Axiom, theorem, corollary &c. ': Condorcet and mathematical economics,” Social
Choice and Welfare, Vol. 25 (2005), pp. 287-302

“Language and Empire, c. 1800,” Historical Research, Vol. 78, No. 200 (May
2005), pp. 208-229

“Dibattito su Sentimenti economici,” Rivista di Storia Economica, Vol. 20, No. 2
(August 2004), pp. 243-252; symposium on Economic Sentiments

“Dignity or Meanness,” The Adam Smith Review, Vol. 1 (2004), pp. 150-164;
symposium on Economic Sentiments

“Global Commerce and the Question of Sovereignty in the 18th Century
Provinces,” Modern Intellectual History, Vol. 1, No. 1 (April 2004), pp. 325

“The English Kopf,” The Political Economy of British Historical Experience,
1688-1914, ed. D. Winch and P. O’Brien, Oxford, 2002, pp. 31-60

“La mondialisation en perspective historique,” Qu’est-ce que la culture?, ed. Y.
Michaud, Paris, 2001, pp. 57-68

“An Alarming Commercial Crisis in 18th Century Angoulême: Sentiments in
Economic History,” Economic History Review, 1998, Vol. 51, pp. 268-293 “Condorcet and Adam Smith on
Education and Instruction,” Philosophers on Education, ed. A.O. Rorty, London, 1998, pp. 209-226

“Bruno Hildebrands Kritik an Adam Smith,” Bruno Hildebrands 'Die
NationalÖkonomie der Gegenwart und Zukunft', ed. Bertram Schefold,
Frankfurt, 1998, pp. 133-172

“Condorcet and the Conflict of Values,” Historical Journal, 1996, Vol 39, pp. 677-

“Social Security and Laissez Faire in 18th Century Political Economy,” Population
701
and Development Review, December 1995, Vol. 21, pp. 711-744

“Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand,” American Economic Review Papers and
Proceedings, May 1994, pp. 319-322

“Psychological Modernity in Historical Perspective,” Essays in Honor of Albert
Hirschman, Washington, DC, 1994, pp. 99-117

“Commerce and the State: Turgot, Condorcet and Smith,” Economic Journal, 1992,
Vol. 102, pp. 1197-1210

“Adam Smith and Conservative Economics,” Economic History Review, 1992,
Vol. 45, pp. 74-96