This paper examines the role of commercial relations in Kant''s philosophy of history. Starting with the role of commercial relations in Kant''s Idea for Universal History, and moving onto Kant''s remarks on trade in the Critique of Judgment and later political writings, it illustrates the evolution of Kant''s thought from a positive evaluation of the contribution of trade to the development of moral dispositions to one of growing scepticism towards the expansion of commercial relations and the instances of colonialism that followed from it. This development, it is argued, coincides with a shift from a teleological account of nature as inherently beneficial to human beings to one in which the emphasis is placed on the role of history and the conscious role played by human agents in its transformation.
