A Commonwealth Union for Anglo-Atlantic Empire: Sir William Keith on the Political Economy of ‘ Publick Spirit ’

Sir William Keith (1669–1749) sought to reform the political economy of empire-building in the eighteenth-century Anglo-Atlantic world. His philosophical notion of cultivating a ‘publick spirit’ underpinned his important initiative to foster a British imperial union for commonwealth. This article sheds new light on the ways in which Keith developed this ambition through the distinctive intellectual contexts and networks that connected Aberdeen, Philadelphia and London between 1683 and 1749. Transforming himself from an exiled Jacobite sympathiser into an agent of empire, Keith’s concept of ‘publick spirit’ contributed to the eighteenth-century development of Scottish political economy and informed emergent ideas of union in early America.