Adam Smith's stadial history: progress, population, and environment

Against the current trend to downplay the importance of a stadial history of societies in Smith's thought, I (re-)affirm its centrality to his political economy. Rather than simply reasserting an older "materialist" reading, however, I reinterpret the content of Smith's theory in terms of the centrality of the relationship between population growth and environmental transformation. Viewing Smith's work in this way demonstrates the consistency between his reflections on property in the Lectures on Jurisprudence and his account of socio-economic development in The Wealth of Nations, whilst underscoring the material character of his economic reasoning, and his attentiveness to environmental factors.