Federalism and the Unity of Early Liberalism Bentham’s and Kant’s Reception of Adam Smith’s “New Imperialism”

This essay links Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant more closely in their politics and political theory through a shared, substantially similar debt to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. In particular, I argue that on some key political questions that are foundational to liberalism, they draw strikingly akin lessons from Smith and build on his ideas in a similar direction. That is, even otherwise very different strands of early liberalism find agreement on a constellation of ideas about trade, federalism, and peace. I show that these are not just preoccupations of Kant’s potentially idiosyncratic Perpetual Peace, but help define the whole political tradition.