 When writing the history of a segment of the past there is always a degree of arbitrariness in demarcating its temporal boundary. Early modern philosophy spans the early sixteenth century to the late eighteenth century, but where to draw the precise boundaries will forever garner debate. In the history of economics, there is little question that Adam Smith constitutes the founding authority on the subject. A few general treatises appeared before Adam Smith’s, starting with Antoine de Montchrétien’s Traicté de l’économie politique (1615), Pierre de Boisguilbert, Dissertation de la nature des richesses (1707) and culminating with Turgot’s Réflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richessess (1766), James Steuart’s Principles of Political Œconomy (1767), and Condillac’s Le Commerce et le gouvernement considérés relativement l’un à l’autre (1776). Nevertheless, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) was the definitive work of the period, although it took about two decades to reach that stature, and serve as the founding text for the classical school of political economy of the nineteenth century.