Ferguson, Millar and the Stages of Society

Scottish thinkers developed a new kind of history that studied how whole societies change over time. Adam Smith, John Millar and Lord Kames proposed a 'four-stages theory': societies moved from hunting, to herding, to farming, to commerce, and each stage had its own forms of property, law and government.

Adam Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) explored how institutions emerge as 'the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design', meaning that laws and customs often arise from countless choices rather than one planner. Ferguson also worried that commercial society, by encouraging specialization and private gain, could weaken civic spirit and public virtue. John Millar's study of ranks examined how the status of women and servants changed across stages. These ideas helped found sociology and anthropology.

Critics note that ranking societies by stages could imply that European commercial society was the summit of history, an assumption used to justify colonial attitudes.