David Chan Smith

The offshore -- think tax havens, flags of convenience, manufacturing and relabelling -- has become a key point of discussion in an increasingly neomercantilist world. At the Business History Conference, 21 March, in London I'll present on the early modern offshore, the precursor to the modern system of business-friendly jurisdictions. Using the Isle of Man as a case study (one of the world's leading tax havens today), the paper reconstructs its global network of illicit trade to discover how an older system of tariffs and protectionism was evaded. 

Adam Smith was very interested in smuggling, even before he became a Customs commissioner. Smuggling, in fact, appears explicitly or implicitly throughout the Wealth of Nations, especially in its discussion of the American colonies. Discover the importance of smuggling as an alternative paradigm of trade as I present at the International Adam Smith Society conference at the University of Glasgow, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Wealth of Nations, 18 June 2026.

I recently wrote for ProMarket about how early modern smuggling stimulated a network of tax evasion through offshore havens. For some modern parallels have a read of A Tale of Tariffs and the Making of the Modern Offshore Market.

My article on the intellectual origins of Milton Friedman's famous criticism of corporate social responsibility and monopoly is now available at Modern Intellectual History 

Explore the early modern smugglers' world and visit my database on smuggling prosecutions