Policing and pin‐making: Adam smith, police and the state of prosperity

Abstract

This article explores contrasting uses of the concept of police in the work of British and Continental writers in the eighteenth century. The shifting use of the term in the work of Adam Smith is placed in the wider context of debates concerning the nature of police in Britain and on the Continent. A comparison is made between the broad use of the concept in cameralism and police science in Europe and the far narrower meaning attached to the term as it becomes increasingly used in the British context. This acts as a springboard for some broader comments on the state‐civil society distinction, the limitations of liberalism, and the role that the police concept may play in conceptualising state power.