Hello dear Steemians,

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As you all know my blog concentrated on Artworks, but there are other interesting hobbies and activities that I love to do. Slowly but surely I would like to incorporate them into my blog too.

While living in UK, nowadays it is quite a hot topic “Brexit” it is almost reminds me Hamlet with his “to be or not to be”. We, simple citizen just waiting for the moment of unknown future, especially in Scotland, there is another topic that becoming more and more popular another call for Freedom-Independence.

I remember the time when in 2014 it was a referendum campaign and the Scottish nation was divided into two camps, that time me and my family we learn a lot about the history of country, its economy and of course about the program that was running by those two groups.

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Acrylic portrait “Adam Smith” by @Stef1

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One thing I remember very well was in a speech of ex-Premier Minister Alex Salmond about Adam Smith, the famous Scot who made a great input in the Worlds Economy and actually himself he was born in Kirkcaldy, this little town where we currently live. That is why I decided to present you today this famous Man of Scotland and after a little research here is a short review of listed bellow information sources.

Because he lived in 16th century there is no photographs of him, I found a pencil drawing and Oil portrait, that is why I have done my portrait using is as a reference.

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Who is Adam Smith

Adam Smith is not only an important figure in economics, but the most important Scottish person to have ever lived. He wrote his magnum opus titled ‘An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations’ (often shortened to simply ‘The Wealth of Nations’). This work served as the first explanation for nations’ wealth, and is still considered as one of the most important books in social sciences; while being written in 1776!

Adam Smith was born in Kirkcaldy, Fife, on the 16th of June 1723. After graduating from the University of Oxford, he spent most of his time tutoring.

In 1751, he was a professor himself at the University of Glasgow teaching logic; where, from these lectures, he received inspiration for his later works, such as the ‘The Wealth of Nations’. After nine years, he was hired by David Hume to be his private tutor in Paris. While there, he studied the country’s economy and policies which he used to write ‘The Wealth of Nations’ in 1766 when he finished teaching his pupils. He returned to Kirkcaldy then, and spent fifteen years writing the book. In 1778 he moved to Edinburgh to live with his mother, where he eventually died in 1790.

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My step-by-step process:

The finished painting

Acrylic portrait “Adam Smith” by @Stef1

The book ‘The Wealth of Nations”

‘The Wealth of Nations” describes how nations can succeed in accumulating wealth. He first describes how in order to make large profits, production needs to be maximised. To do this, factories need to be specialised, the labour needs to be divided. He gives the example of a pin factory. Instead of having one man make one pin and perhaps making 10 per day, you should divide the labour into more manageable parts:

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“One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving, the head; (…) and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, (…)”

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By specialising into these small branches, production will be better overall, so that the factory will produce “forty-eight thousand pins in a day”.

If you look at how factories work nowadays, they follow Adam Smith’s principle. The extra employees that need to be hired will employ themselves. If the factory gets no new employees, then they will increase the wage. By increasing the wage, the job becomes more attractive, encouraging more people to get the job. There is much more content in the book which, if compared to nowadays, is being followed actively; even though it came out nearly two and a half centuries ago.

First Scot to be on an English note

His legacy still lives on today, having a museum, and a theatre named after him. His face is printed on the fifty (Great British) Pound note issued by the Clydesdale band, and the twenty Pound note issued by the Bank of England – he is the first Scot to be on an English note. A statue of Adam Smith was erected in Edinburgh outside the St. Giles’ Cathedral by Alexander Stoddard.

Adam Smith and his thought about Britain’s colinies

Adam Smith also played an important role in the debate over Britain’s colonies. He argued that, according to his model, Britain should either free all of its colonies leaving on friendly terms and then making a free trade market, or to bring them closer together and then make a free trade market by staying as one country. In the end, Britain went down the former path by making the Commonwealth. This is a hot topic today, as we see the reaction of Gibraltar to Brexit.

Adam Smith was one of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. That is the period during the eighteenth, and part of the early nineteenth century where there was a surplus of scientific research published by Scottish people. These scientific accomplishments carried an effect over a large region, not only including Britain, but also Europe and the whole world.

When compared to other influential Scottish people, not many come close to what Adam Smith has done. An invention like the telephone or television would be invented by someone quickly later. A large work like this is only achieved by a small amount of people.

Adam Smith idea of trade concept today

Forget about a poet like Robert Burns. Although his stories are nice, they haven’t really been very influential; while people like Alexander Graham Bell, John Logie Baird, or James Watt are very important figures as well, Adam Smith has single-handedly helped shape the world politics by creating the free trade concept that Unions such as the European Union (EU) or the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS, a.k.a. Russian Commonwealth) follow closely, by making a free-trade market between the member countries. These things, clearly, are superior than an invention that would otherwise be invented by a co-creator.

When compared to other people, their works are inconsequential; nobody has come close to matching the fifteen year effort that Adam Smith put in to his monumental work.

I hope you have learn a little about this interesting Person and I listed the sourse of information bellow if someone would like to learn more.

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Sources

• ‘An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations’, by Adam Smith, 1776
  ‘Adam Smith’Encyclopædia Britannica,https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adam-Smith#ref388285
• ‘The Wealth of Nation Summary’, GradeSaver, http://www.gradesaver.com/the-wealth-of-nations/study-guide/summary
• ‘Adam Smith: The Father of Economics’, Investopedia, https://www.investopedia.com/updates/adam-smith-economics/
• ‘Adam Smith – A Legacy’, Adam Smith Global Foundation, http://www.adamsmithglobalfoundation.com/legacy-p61
• ‘Adam Smith’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith
• ‘Scottish Enlightenment’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Enlightenment

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I hope you enjoyed my post and thank you for viewing :-)