What did Adam Smith discuss during his sojourn in Switzerland in late 1765/early 1766? What lessons might he have learned while conversing with Voltaire at his country estate in Ferney or with the duchesse d’Enville at her interim salon in Geneva? And how did his encounters with these Lumières inform his subsequent work?

Thus far, Alain Alcouffe and I have identified several matters of historical interest that Smith himself was either personally aware of or that might have piqued his curiosity during this chapter in his life, including the physical whereabouts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (a fugitive from justice at the time), the ongoing pamphlet war between John Needham and Voltaire on the nature of miracles (see here, for example), and a spat between Voltaire and an English hunter that occurred on the Frenchman’s country estate in December 1765 (a hunting incident we call the “Fracas at Ferney” or the “Dillon Affair”).

But up to this point we have omitted any discussion of a dramatic political showdown that was unfolding in Geneva at this very moment in history. This unprecedented constitutional controversy was set into motion when the government of Geneva decided to prosecute Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1762, but the highpoint of this stalemate happens to coincide with Adam Smith’s visit to Geneva in 1765/66 … (To be continued)