From antiquity to our own time those interested in political economy have with almost no exceptions regarded the natural physical environment as a resource meant for human use. Focusing on the period 1600-1850, and paying particular attention to major figures including Adam Smith, T.R. Malthus, David Ricardo and J.S. Mill, this book provides a detailed overview of the intellectual history of the economic consideration of nature from antiquity to modern times. It shows how even someone like Mill, who was clearly influenced by romantic notions regarding the spiritual need for contact with pristine nature, ultimately regarded it as an economic resource. Building on existing scholarship, this study demonstrates how the rise of modern sensitivity to nature, from the late eighteenth century in particular, was in fact a dialectical reaction to the growing distance of modern urban civilization from the natural environment. As such, the book offers an unprecedentedly detailed overview of the intellectual history of economic considerations of nature, whilst underlining how the history of this topic has been remarkably consistent.

The mastery of nature was viewed by eighteenth-century historians as an important measure of the progress of civilization. Modern scholarship has hitherto taken insufficient notice of this important idea. This book discusses the topic in connection with the mainstream religious, political, and philosophical elements of Enlightenment culture. It considers works by Edward Gibbon, Voltaire, Herder, Vico, Raynal, Hume, Adam Smith, William Robertson, and a wide range of lesser- and better-known figures. It also discusses many classical, medieval, and early modern sources which influenced Enlightenment historiography, as well as eighteenth-century attitudes toward nature in general.

A new intellectual biography of Thomas Babington Macaulay, showing how nineteenth-century British liberal culture retained and transformed the ideas of the Enlightenment in a rapidly changing world. Macaulay and the Enlightenment sheds new light on both familiar and unfamiliar aspects of the life and ideas of this most famous of nineteenth-century British historians. Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) was a prominent representative of mainstream British liberalism in the first half of the nineteenth century. He was also a Member of Parliament and government minister, and famously spent several years as a member of the governing council in India, where he promoted legal and educational reforms. One of the book's key contributions is the investigation of Enlightenment influences on the more well-known aspects of Macaulay's thought: history, politics, social and economic issues, religion, revolution and colonialism. The book also offers new revelations about Macaulay's attitude towards women, and provides insight into his views on art, nature and animals. In this study, Macaulay emerges as a more subversive, at times even radical, figure than previously assumed. The book thus emphasizes the transformation of Enlightenment ideas into early nineteenth-century liberalism.