Commerce and Politics in Hume's History of England by Jia Wei (review)

Jia Wei claims in the Introduction to Commerce and Politics in Hume's History of England that significant aspects of Hume's achievement as a historian have yet to be properly appreciated. She intends to shed new light on 'the relationship between the three Humes: Hume the political thinker, Hume the historian, and Hume the political economist' (3). She continues:

More specifically, this book pays greater attention to broad social, economic, and institutional changes which Hume wove into an entirely innovative fabric of causation. This becomes evident by examining three aspects of Hume's History: first, his championship of modernity, which he integrated into a historical narrative of England's development as a trading nation; second, his emphasis on maritime trade, which took place [sic] against the background of commercial revolution; and third, his endorsement of both liberty and authority.

(3)

Both the strengths and the weaknesses of Wei's account of Hume's history writing are apparent here. In her focus on the story Hume tells about the development of English commerce she succeeds in drawing out a thread of Hume's complex narrative that has not previously been considered in its own right. The attention she gives to maritime trade in particular is salutary. It is very interestingly complemented in the main narrative by a detailed examination of the way in which the administration of taxes features in the History. On the other hand, it is not news that Hume was a 'champion of modernity,' nor that he 'endorsed' both liberty and authority. In the parts of the book where she rehearses these themes, no fresh ground is broken. Generally, Wei's attempt to relate Hume the political thinker to Hume the historian and Hume the political economist is not a success. Her argument would very likely have been more convincing had it been less ambitious.

The larger narrative framework for Wei's analysis of Hume's History is, as it had to be, the Harringtonian story of the effects of reforms made to the law of property during the reign of Henry VII. These relaxations of the feudal system made possible the sale and mortgaging of land, which made possible the purchase of luxury goods by the nobility, which in turn provided an impetus to English commerce and trade, which in turn, eventually, caused an increase of the relative influence in English politics of the 'middling' sector of society. In the short term, this amounted also to a shift in the balance of power away from the nobility toward the crown, and allowed the Tudors to turn England into something approaching an absolute monarchy. In the longer term, it amounted to a shift in the balance of power away from the nobility toward the Commons, and set the scene for the great confrontation between crown and Commons that took place in the seventeenth century. In the first two chapters of her book Wei traces, as she puts it, 'the piecemeal progress of the Tudor government in promoting trade' (37). Wei describes this, convincingly, as a process whereby 'the rise of commerce enabled the Tudors to replace the local jurisdiction of the powerful nobles and clergy with a centralised legal order' (46). Hume, on her account, builds on and significantly qualifies the Harringtonian narrative: 'Henry [VII]'s role as a revolutionary legislator was … necessary but not sufficient; it was the rise of commerce that enabled him to use law as a means of removing the vestiges of feudalism' (57). The rise of commerce was supplemented by the Reformation and its attack on canon law as a jurisdiction independent of the crown. Centralisation of authority, however, did not entail financial autonomy for the crown. The exigencies of war finance caused Elizabeth to need to sell off large amounts of crown land. These were 'desperate measures' which, as Wei says, 'were to handicap the financial administration of the Stuarts' (73).

In chapter 3 of Commerce and...