Colonialism
The practice by which a country takes control of another territory, settling its own people there and extracting its resources, usually by force. In 1776, Britain, France, Denmark, Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands all controlled colonial territories across Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
Imperialism
The broader project of building and maintaining an empire: a system in which one country dominates others politically, economically, and culturally. Colonialism is one tool of imperialism.
Enslaved person / enslaved people
The term scholars and historians use today to describe people who were held in slavery. It is preferred over “slave” because it emphasises that slavery was something done to a person, not something that defined who they were. In the game, our character uses the word “slave”: because that is the word people used in 1776.
Chattel slavery
A specific form of slavery in which people are treated as property: “chattels”: that can be bought, sold, inherited, and used as collateral for loans. The transatlantic slave trade was a system of chattel slavery. It is distinct from other historical forms of coerced labour, though all involve the removal of a person’s freedom.
The Middle Passage
The sea crossing from West Africa to the Americas on which enslaved people were transported. It was called the “middle” passage because it formed the middle leg of the triangular trade route: manufactured goods from Europe to Africa, enslaved people from Africa to the Americas, plantation goods from the Americas back to Europe. Mortality rates on the Middle Passage were catastrophic: for both the enslaved and, to a much lesser extent, the crew.
The Triangular Trade
The system of Atlantic commerce in which European ships carried manufactured goods to West Africa, exchanged them for enslaved people, transported those people to the Americas, and returned to Europe with sugar, tobacco, cotton, and rum. Glasgow was a major port in this system, and Adam Smith lived and worked close to the city s market district, where he could see this trade at work.
Mercantilism
The dominant economic theory of the 17th and 18th centuries, which held that a nation’s wealth depended on accumulating gold and silver, controlling trade routes, and preventing rival nations from competing. Mercantilism justified colonial monopolies and trade restrictions. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations was, in large part, a systematic attack on mercantilist thinking.
Monopoly
The exclusive right to trade in a particular good or territory, granted by a government or charter. In 1776, the East India Company held a monopoly on British trade with Asia; the Royal African Company had previously held a monopoly on the British slave trade. Smith argued that monopolies enriched a small number of merchants while harming everyone else.
The Navigation Acts
A series of British laws, in force from the 1650s, requiring that goods traded between Britain and its colonies be carried on British ships. They were designed to benefit British merchants and exclude foreign competition. Smith called them “a burden” on the societies they governed.
The East India Company (EIC)
A British trading company founded in 1600 and granted a royal monopoly on trade with Asia. Over time it became a sovereign power in its own right, governing Bengal from 1765 and eventually controlling territory larger than the European Union today. It had its own army, courts, currency, and tax system. Smith devoted extensive sections of The Wealth of Nations to criticising it. It was nationalised by the British government in 1858 following a major uprising against its rule.
The VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or Dutch East India Company)
The Dutch equivalent of the EIC, founded in 1602 and the first company in history to sell shares to the public. It held a monopoly on Dutch trade in Asia and governed territories across Indonesia, South Africa, and Sri Lanka. Like the EIC, it maintained its own army and administered its own courts. It went bankrupt in 1799, partly due to corruption and overextension: exactly the fate Smith predicted for monopoly corporations.
The Code Noir
A French legal code, first issued in 1685, that regulated the treatment of enslaved people in French colonies. It defined enslaved people as property, specified punishments for disobedience, and governed the rights: extremely limited: of free people of colour. Saint-Domingue (Haiti) operated under the Code Noir in 1776.
Scientific racism
A set of theories, developed primarily in the 18th and 19th centuries, that attempted to use the language and methods of science to justify racial hierarchy: claiming that different races had different intellectual or moral capacities, and that white Europeans were superior. These theories were used to justify slavery, colonialism, and imperial rule. They have been comprehensively discredited, but their legacy persists today.
Enlightenment
An intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries, centred in Europe, that emphasised reason, individual rights, and the questioning of traditional authority. Enlightenment thinkers argued that government should be based on consent, that people had natural rights, and that superstition and tyranny could be overcome by reason. Adam Smith was part of the Scottish Enlightenment.