 However myopic these theories might sound—given the horrific treatment of African slaves and Indigenous peoples throughout the early modern period, and given the bloodbath of the twentieth century between purportedly civil trading nations—it is important to underscore that a widespread optimism for a more peaceful and prosperous world characterized early modern economic thought. Immanuel Kant’s celebrated appeal to a world of perpetual peace may be viewed as the capstone to this long line of thought (see Nakhimovsky 2011). As Hirschman noted, Adam Smith was the exception, for exposing the monopolistic and rapacious tendencies of European merchants and colonizers. Smith deplored the European treatment of African slaves and Indigenous peoples, not only for the inherent injustices of their actions, but because this tended to inculcate deplorable traits in the colonizers, such as tyranny, cowardice and inhumanity (Smith 1759 [1976: 200–211]; Rothschild 2001).