Ebook: Adam Smith and Yan Fu

This English adaption is based on a Chinese version 亞當史密斯與嚴復：《國富論》與中國》，臺北：三民書局，2002；浙江大學出版社，2009. I am grateful to San Min Books (Taiwan), the original 2002 publisher of this book, for the permission of this adaption.
I try to render it in a style suitable for Western readers by omitting Chinese-specific issues, and add examples from Yan Fu’s translations and comments, side-by-side with Adam Smith’s original texts. As the main messages remain unchanged and new studies on this topic were limited, I only made minor updates and revisions.
Major parts of the first four chapters are taken from the following three papers: 1) Adam Smith and Yan Fu: Western economics in Chinese perspective, Journal of European Economic History, 1989, 18(2):371-82. 2) Translations of The Wealth of Nations, Journal of European Economic History, 1996, 25(2):467-500. 3) Receptions of The Wealth of Nations, The European Legacy, 1996, 1(7):2069-83.
These three papers are also appeared in Adam Smith across Nations: Translations and Receptions of The Wealth of Nations, Oxford University Press, 2000, slightly revised as two Overviews and Chapter 1.2.
With generous supports from the Harvard-Yenching Institute, in 1992-3 I used the Vanderblue Memorial Collection of Smithiana (located at the Kress Library, Baker Library of Harvard Business School) to work out Adam Smith across Nations (2000). Chapters 2 and 3 in the present monograph are based on its two Overviews.
For recent related studies, there is a mini-symposium “Adam Smith in international context” in Adam Smith Review, volume 9, 2017. It contains one paper on Germany and two on China. Google search shows that there are a few new papers on “Smith and Yan Fu” (in English), they are mostly on the cultural and translation aspects, not on economic issues.