Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations on the 9th of March 1776 after spending seventeen years compiling notes and studying economic conditions. This publication occurred during the early Industrial Revolution following a research process that took approximately ten years to complete the core manuscript.
Adam Smith argued that division of labour caused greater increases in production than any other factor known at the time. He noted that water carriage extended markets allowing division of labour to come earliest to cities near navigable rivers while money emerged as a durable medium of exchange to avoid frauds when weighing metals manually.
Five editions of The Wealth of Nations appeared during Adam Smith's lifetime between 1776 and 1789. A team led by Edwin Cannan later collated these first five editions to track textual evolution with differences including added footnotes and major changes between the second and third editions.
Prime Minister Lord North adopted ideas from The Wealth of Nations for new taxes on man-servants and property sold at auction in 1777. Whig leader Charles James Fox mentioned the work in Parliament on the 11th of November 1783 regarding national debt management while Prime Minister William Pitt praised Smith in the House of Commons on the 17th of February 1792.
The Wealth of Nations was translated into French, German and Spanish during the late 18th century. Germain Garnier produced a French version regarded as better than earlier translations despite not being first while José Alonso Ortiz published a virtually complete Spanish edition in 1794.