Economists have asked why certain places grow, prosper, and attain a higher standard of living as early as Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations in 1776. Smith was motivated to understand the reasons why England had become wealthier than continental Europe. While Smith is widely considered the father of modern economics, his most important theorems originated in geography. When he said, ‘the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market’, he was referring to the geographical extension of market areas in Scotland as transport costs declined, which, in turn, allowed larger-scale and more geographically concentrated production, organized in the form of the factory system. The transition from artisanal production to a modern industrial economy, with a 4800 per cent increase in productivity, was intrinsically geographic.