Introduction

The topic of borders deeply concerned writers on political economy in eighteenth-century Europe. In fact, various proponents of liberal political economy defended their ‘new’ system of laissez-faire economics precisely with the claim that it transcended national borders and was a universal, international and cosmopolitan system as opposed to the earlier mercantilist policies, which they characterized as narrowly conceived, selfish and inward-looking. Much of the conceptual language used to endorse the positive, globally uniting aspects of free trade was developed by members of the Scottish Enlightenment, such as David Hume and Adam Smith. As part of their promotion of free trade, these theorists created a powerful argument for the various humanizing aspects of commercialization – a connection that has been implicit ever since. Benjamin Vaughan, a London merchant with close ties to some of the era's brightest intellectual and political figures, was an important contributor to this chapter in the history of political economy. Though on intimate terms with some of the period's leading thinkers and politicians, Vaughan still merits a place in a collection addressing the ‘fringe’ of the Enlightenment by at least two measures. First, his habit of publishing anonymously has led to his obscurity and until quite recently his contributions to Enlightenment thought have gone largely unnoticed or been erroneously attributed to others. Second, modern scholarship continues to challenge the idea of a single, unified Enlightenment.