The concept aims to reduce a possible current account deficit or reach a current account surplus, and it includes measures aimed at accumulating monetary reserves by a positive balance of trade, especially of finished goods. Historically, such policies may have contributed to war and motivated colonial expansion.[1] Mercantilist theory varies in sophistication from one writer to another and has evolved over time.
Mercantilism promotes government regulation of a nation's economy for the purpose of augmenting and bolstering state power at the expense of rival national powers. High tariffs, especially on manufactured goods, were almost universally a feature of mercantilist policy.[2] Before it fell into decline, mercantilism was dominant in modernized parts of Europe and some areas in Africa from the 16th to the 19th centuries, a period of proto-industrialization.[3] Some commentators argue that it is still practised in the economies of industrializing countries[4] in the form of economic interventionism.[5][6][7][8][9]
Mercantilism became the dominant school of economic thought in Europe throughout the late Renaissance and the early modern period (from the 15th to the 18th centuries) before advent of Classical liberalism. Evidence of mercantilistic practices appeared in early modern Venice, Genoa, and Pisa regarding control of the Mediterranean trade in bullion. However, the empiricism of the Renaissance, which first began to quantify large-scale trade accurately, marked the beginning of mercantilism as a codified school of economic theories.[2] The Italian economist and mercantilist Antonio Serra is considered to have written one of the first treatises on political economy in his 1613 work, A Short Treatise on the Wealth and Poverty of Nations.[10]
Mercantilism, in its simplest form, is all about bullionism, or the theory that a nation's wealth is measured in terms of how much precious metal, particularly gold and silver, it possesses. Mercantilist authors were concerned with the movement of money, however, more than with the hoarding of it. They felt that money needed to move through the economy to induce trade and economic activity, a concept different from that of simply amassing wealth. This focus on money's role, specifically precious metals, mirrors modern discussions of the money supply and its implications for economic growth, i.e., how money supply expansion can stimulate economic activity. However, with the advent of fiat money (money not backed by a physical commodity) and floating exchange rates, the importance of specie (gold and silver) in economic systems has diminished. Progressively, the focus shifted from the handling of money to the implementation of industrial policies that placed greater economic goals, e.g., stimulating general prosperity and supporting technological and industrial advancement, above the financing of war.
England began the first large-scale and integrative approach to mercantilism during the Elizabethan Era (1558–1603). An early statement on national balance of trade appeared in Discourse of the Common Wealth of this Realm of England, 1549: "We must always take heed that we buy no more from strangers than we sell them, for so should we impoverish ourselves and enrich them."[11] The period featured various but often disjointed efforts by the court of Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603) to develop a naval and merchant fleet capable of challenging the Spanish stranglehold on trade and of expanding the growth of bullion at home. Queen Elizabeth promoted trade and navigation acts in Parliament and issued orders to her navy for the protection and promotion of English shipping.[citation needed] The first Navigation Acts regulating trade were passed by Parliament in 1651 and 1652, during the English Commonwealth.
Authors noted most for establishing the English mercantilist system include Gerard de Malynes (fl. 1585–1641) and Thomas Mun (1571–1641), who first articulated the Elizabethan system (England's Treasure by Foreign Trade or the Balance of Foreign Trade is the Rule of Our Treasure), which Josiah Child (c.1630/31–1699) then developed further.
Numerous French authors helped cement French policy around statist mercantilism in the 17th century, as King Louis XIV (reigned 1643–1715) followed the guidance of Jean Baptiste Colbert, his Controller-General of Finances from 1665 to 1683 who revised the tariff system and expanded industrial policy. Colbertism was based on the principle that the state should rule in the economic realm as it did in the diplomatic, and that the interests of the state as identified by the king were superior to those of merchants and of everyone else. Mercantilist economic policies aimed to build up the state, especially in an age of incessant warfare, and theorists charged the state with looking for ways to strengthen the economy and to weaken foreign adversaries.[12][need quotation to verify]
New Netherland; area claimed by the Dutch, with modern state boundaries
British attempts to follow the mercantilist ideas led to the four Anglo-Dutch wars, the American Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812. To protect English commercial interests in North America, in October 1651 the English Parliament passed the first of the Navigation Acts, which mandated that all goods imported into England must be carried by English ships or vessels from the exporting countries, thus excluding (mostly Dutch) middlemen.[17] Passage of the Navigation Act 1651 was a reaction to the failure of the English diplomatic mission (led by Oliver St John and Walter Strickland) to The Hague seeking a political union of the Commonwealth with the Dutch Republic, after the States of Holland had made some cautious overtures to Cromwell to counter the monarchical aspirations of stadtholderWilliam II of Orange.[18]
After the English Restoration in 1660, newly-crowned King Charles II tried through diplomatic means to make his nephew, Prince William III of Orange, stadtholder of the Dutch Republic. At the same time, Charles promoted a series of mercantilist policies aimed at encountering Dutch mercantile dominance, which again led to a renewed deterioration in Anglo-Dutch relations. English merchants and chartered overseas mercantile trade companies—such as the East India Company, the Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa, and the Levant Company—calculated that global economic primacy could now be wrestled away from the Dutch. They reckoned that a combination of naval battles and irregular privateering missions would cripple the Dutch Republic and force the States General to agree to a more favourable peace.[19]
A portrait of Tobacco Lord John Glassford and his family c.1767
The Tobacco Lords were a group of Scottish merchants active during the Georgian era who made substantial sums of money via their participation in the Triangular trade, primarily through dealing in tobacco that was grown in the Thirteen Colonies. Concentrated in the port city of Glasgow, these merchants utilized their fortunes, which were also partly made via the direct ownership of slaves, to construct numerous townhouses, churches, and other buildings in Scotland.[22]
During the American Revolution, tensions grew between Britain and its North American colonies, among which were economic stresses arising out of the perceived unfairness of the Anglo-American tobacco trade. The market in tobacco was dominated by the Tobacco Lords, who American colonists claimed manipulated prices to the detriment of planters in Maryland and Virginia, who by the time of the outbreak of war in 1775 had accumulated debts of around £1,000,000, a huge sum at the time (equivalent to £191million in 2023). These debts, as much as the taxation imposed by Parliament, were among the colonists' most bitter grievances. Prior to 1740, the Tobacco Lords were responsible for the import of less than 10% of America's tobacco crop, but by the 1750s Glasgow handled more of the trade than the rest of Britain's ports combined.[23]
Planters in Maryland and Virginia were offered easy credit by the Tobacco Lords, enabling them to buy European consumer goods and other luxuries before harvest time gave them the ready cash to do so. But when the time came to sell the crop, the indebted growers found themselves forced by the traders to accept low prices for their harvest in order to stave off bankruptcy. At his Mount Vernon slave plantation, future President of the United States George Washington saw his liabilities swell to nearly £2,000 by the late 1760s (equivalent to £350,162 in 2023).[24]Thomas Jefferson, on the verge of losing his own slave plantation Monticello, accused British-based merchants of unfairly depressing tobacco prices and forcing Virginia planters to take on unsustainable debt loads. In 1786, he remarked:
A powerful engine for this [mercantile profiteering] was the giving of good prices and credit to the planter till they got him more immersed in debt than he could pay without selling lands or slaves. They then reduced the prices given for his tobacco so that…they never permitted him to clear off his debt.[25]
Mercantilism was widely practiced by Europe throughout the 18th century. On the eve of the Industrial Revolution, imposing tariffs was standard practice for European countries.[26]
In the aftermath of the American Revolution, the weak Congress of the Confederation had been unable to impose a tariff or reach reciprocal trade agreements with most European powers, creating a situation in which the country was unable to prevent a flood of European goods which were damaging domestic manufacturers even while Britain and other countries placed high duties on U.S. goods. The weakness of the Congress under the Articles of Confederation prevented retaliation by the central government. Congress repeatedly asked for power to regulate commerce, but was refused by the states upon which rested the execution of such commercial treaties as Congress might negotiate.[27]France (1778) and the Netherlands (1782) made treaties but not on even terms; Portugal refused all advances. Only Sweden (1783) and Prussia (1785) made treaties guaranteeing reciprocal commercial privileges.[27]
Another factor which made the situation even more distressing was the British Navigation Acts. The only clause in the 1783 Paris peace treaty concerning commerce was a stipulation guaranteeing that the navigation of the Mississippi would be forever free to the United States. John Jay had tried to secure some reciprocal trade provisions with Great Britain but without result. William Pitt, in 1783, introduced a bill into the British Parliament providing for free trade between the United States and the British colonies, but instead of passing the bill, Parliament enacted the Navigation Act of 1783, which admitted only British built and manned ships to the ports of the West Indies, and imposed heavy tonnage dues upon American ships in other British ports. Although the French treaty of 1778 had promised "perfect equality and reciprocity" in commercial relations, it was found impossible to make a commercial treaty on that basis. Spain demanded, as the price for reciprocal trading relations, a surrender by the United States for 25 years the right of navigating the Mississippi, a price that the New England merchants would have been glad to pay. France (1778) and the Netherlands (1782) made treaties but not on even terms; Portugal refused all advances. Only Sweden (1783) and Prussia (1785) made treaties guaranteeing reciprocal commercial privileges.[27]
It was only until after the Napoleonic Wars that mercantilism began to be replaced by free trade. French economic policy liberalized greatly under Napoleon, who was in power from 1799 to 1814/1815. The British Parliament's repeal of the Corn Laws under Robert Peel in 1846 symbolized the emergence of free trade as an alternative system.[28]
The Continental System was a large-scale embargo by French emperor Napoleon against the British Empire from 21 November 1806 until 11 April 1814, during the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree on 21 November 1806 in response to the naval blockade of the French coasts enacted by the British government on 16 May 1806.[29] Aside from subduing Britain, the blockade was also intended to establish French industrial and commercial hegemony in Europe.[30]
Within the French Empire, the newly acquired territories and client states were subordinate to France itself, as there was a unified market within France (no internal barriers or tariffs) while economic distortions were maintained on the borders of the new territories.[31] Napoleon's impact on the French economy was of modest importance in the long run. He did sweep away the old guilds, monopolies, and trade restrictions. He also introduced the metric system and opened up French finance by the creation of the Bank of France. However, entrepreneurs had little opportunity to take advantage of these reforms. Napoleon created a protected continental market due to the systematic exclusion of all imports from Britain.[32]
Most of the European economists who wrote between 1500 and 1750 are today generally described as mercantilists; this term was initially used solely by critics, such as Mirabeau and Smith, but historians proved quick to adopt it. Originally the standard English term was "mercantile system". The word "mercantilism" came into English from German in the early-19th century.
The bulk of what is commonly called "mercantilist literature" appeared in the 1620s in Great Britain.[33] Smith saw the English merchant Thomas Mun (1571–1641) as a major creator of the mercantile system, especially in his posthumously published Treasure by Foreign Trade (1664), which Smith considered the archetype or manifesto of the movement.[34]
Mercantilist literature also extended beyond England. Italy and France produced noted writers of mercantilist themes, including Italy's Giovanni Botero (1544–1617) and Antonio Serra (fl. 16th–17th centuries) and, in France, Jean Bodin and Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Themes also existed in writers from the German historical school from List, as well as followers of the American and British systems of free-trade, thus stretching the system into the 19th century. However, many British writers, including Mun and Edward Misselden, were merchants, while many of the writers from other countries were public officials. Beyond mercantilism as a way of understanding the wealth and power of nations, Mun and Misselden are noted for their viewpoints on a wide range of economic matters.[35]
The Austrian lawyer and scholar Philipp Wilhelm von Hornick, one of the pioneers of cameralism, detailed a nine-point program of what he deemed effective national economy in his Austria Over All, If She Only Will of 1684, which comprehensively sums up the tenets of mercantilism:[36]
That every little bit of a country's soil be utilized for agriculture, mining or manufacturing.
That all raw materials found in a country be used in domestic manufacture, since finished goods have a higher value than raw materials.
That a large, working population be encouraged.
That all exports of gold and silver be prohibited and all domestic money be kept in circulation.
That all imports of foreign goods be discouraged as much as possible.
That where certain imports are indispensable they be obtained at first hand, in exchange for other domestic goods instead of gold and silver.
That as much as possible, imports be confined to raw materials that can be finished [in the home country].
That opportunities be constantly sought for selling a country's surplus manufactures to foreigners, so far as necessary, for gold and silver.
That no importation be allowed if such goods are sufficiently and suitably supplied at home.
Only later did non-mercantilist scholars integrate these "diverse" ideas into what they called mercantilism. Some scholars thus reject the idea of mercantilism completely, arguing that it gives "a false unity to disparate events". Smith saw the mercantile system as an enormous conspiracy by manufacturers and merchants against consumers, a view that has led some authors, especially Robert E. Ekelund and Robert D. Tollison, to call mercantilism "a rent-seeking society". To a certain extent, mercantilist doctrine itself made a general theory of economics impossible.[37] Mercantilists viewed the economic system as a zero-sum game, in which any gain by one party required a loss by another.[38] Thus, any system of policies that benefited one group would by definition harm the other, and there was no possibility of economics being used to maximize the commonwealth, or common good.[39] Mercantilists' writings were also generally created to rationalize particular practices rather than as investigations into the best policies.[40]
Many mercantilists also realized that the inevitable results of quotas and price ceilings were black markets. One notion that mercantilists widely agreed upon was the need for economic oppression of the working population; laborers and farmers were to live at the "margins of subsistence". The goal was to maximize production, with no concern for consumption. Extra money, free time, and education for the lower classes were seen to inevitably lead to vice and laziness, and would result in harm to the economy. The mercantilists saw a large population as a form of wealth that made possible the development of bigger markets and armies. Opposite to mercantilism was the doctrine of physiocracy, which predicted that mankind would outgrow its resources. The idea of mercantilism was to protect the markets as well as maintain agriculture and those who were dependent upon it.[41]
The major impetus for the first Navigation Act was the ruinous deterioration of English trade in the aftermath of the Eighty Years' War, and the associated lifting of the Spanish embargoes on trade between the Spanish Empire and the Dutch Republic. The end of the embargoes in 1647 unleashed the full power of the Amsterdam Entrepôt and other Dutch competitive advantages in European and world trade. The Navigation Act 1651, long titledAn Act for increase of Shipping, and Encouragement of the Navigation of this Nation, was passed on 9 October 1651 by the Rump Parliament led by Oliver Cromwell.[42] It authorized the Commonwealth of England to regulate England's international trade, as well as the trade with its colonies. It reinforced long-standing principles of national policy that English trade and fisheries should be carried in English vessels.[43]
The 1651 act banned foreign ships from transporting goods from Asia, Africa or America to England or its colonies; only ships with an English owner, master and a majority English crew would be accepted. It allowed European ships to import their own products, but banned foreign ships from transporting goods to England from a third country elsewhere in the European sphere. The act also prohibited the import and export of salted fish in foreign ships, and penalized foreign ships carrying fish and wares between English posts. Breaking the terms of the act would result in the forfeiture of the ship and its cargo.[44]
Like all laws of the Commonwealth period, the 1651 act was declared void on the Restoration of Charles II, having been passed by “usurping powers.” Nonetheless, with benefits of the act widely recognized, Parliament soon passed new legislation which enlarged its scope. The act of 1651 applied only to shipping, or the ocean carrying business. The Navigation Act 1660 was the most important piece of commercial legislation as it related to shipbuilding, to navigation, to trade, and to the benefit of the merchant class. The 1660 act is generally considered to be the basis of the Navigation Acts, which (with later amendments, additions and exceptions) remained in force for nearly two centuries. They entitled English colonial shipping and seamen to enjoy the full benefits of the otherwise exclusively English provisions. "English bottoms" included vessels built in English plantations, particularly in America.[45] There were no restrictions put in the way of English colonists who might wish to build or trade in their own ships to foreign plantations or other European countries besides England, provided they did not violate the enumerated commodity clause.[46]
Inquiry into the principles of political economy, 1767
Perhaps the last major mercantilist economist was James Steuart. In 1767, he published An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy,[47] the first book by a Scottish economist with political economy in the title. He explained usage of the term as:
[just as] economy in general [is] the art of providing for all the wants of a family, [so the science of political economy] seeks to secure a certain fund of subsistence for all the inhabitants, to obviate every circumstance which may render it precarious; to provide every thing necessary for supplying the wants of the society, and to employ the inhabitants ... in such manner as naturally to create reciprocal relations and dependencies between them, so as to supply one another with reciprocal wants.[48]
The book was the most complete and systematic survey of the science from the point of view of moderate mercantilism which had appeared in England and indeed the first full-fledged economics treatise to appear anywhere. Although often regarded as part of the Scottish Enlightenment which produced David Hume and Adam Smith, Steuart's economics hark back to the earlier Mercantilist era.[49]
At the level of any individual sales transaction, mercantilism held that profit was developed at the point of the sale. Steuart held that profit was a mere "surcharge" upon alienation (sale) of the commodity.[50] Steuart was not a pure mercantilist, however, he believed in a "scientific form of mercantilism."[51] Steuart held that all profit arose from the seller "overcharging" the buyer in any single sales transaction. However, Steuart did allow that the "profit" obtained through exchange would "fluctuate" with the rise and/or fall in demand.[52] Steuart was one of the last representatives of the mercantilist school of economic thought.[53]
Policies
Mercantilist domestic policy was more fragmented than its trade policy. While Adam Smith portrayed mercantilism as supportive of strict controls over the economy, many mercantilists disagreed. The early modern era was one of letters patent and government-imposed monopolies; some mercantilists supported these, but others acknowledged the corruption and inefficiency of such systems. There were no mercantilist economists presenting an overarching scheme for the ideal economy, as Adam Smith would later do for classical economics. Rather, each mercantilist economist tended to focus on a single area of the economy.[54]
Examples of mercantilist policies
Mercantilist ideas were the dominant economic ideology of all of Europe in the early modern period, and most states embraced it to a certain degree. Mercantilism was centered on England and France, and it was in these states that mercantilist policies were most often enacted. The United States, a former British colony, has also employed mercantilist policies at times in its economic history. Mercantilist policies have included:[55]
Imported goods that can be produced domestically should be banned.
Reduce export duties on goods produced domestically for foreign markets.
If no alternatives are available to its neighbors, charge more money for exports.
French finance minister and mercantilist Jean-Baptiste Colbert served for over 20 years.
Mercantilism arose in France in the early 16th century soon after the monarchy had become the dominant force in French politics. In 1539, an important decree banned the import of woolen goods from Spain and some parts of Flanders. The next year, a number of restrictions were imposed on the export of bullion.[56]
Over the rest of the 16th century, further protectionist measures were introduced. The height of French mercantilism is closely associated with Jean-Baptiste Colbert, finance minister for 22 years in the 17th century, to the extent that French mercantilism is sometimes called Colbertism. Under Colbert, the French government became deeply involved in the economy in order to increase exports. Protectionist policies were enacted that limited imports and favored exports. Industries were organized into guilds and monopolies, and production was regulated by the state through a series of more than one thousand directives outlining how different products should be produced.[57]
To encourage industry, foreign artisans and craftsmen were imported. Colbert also worked to decrease internal barriers to trade, reducing internal tariffs and building an extensive network of roads and canals. Colbert's policies were quite successful, and France's industrial output and the economy grew considerably during this period, as France became the dominant European power. He was less successful in turning France into a major trading power, and Britain and the Dutch Republic remained supreme in this field.[57]
France imposed its mercantilist philosophy on its colonies in North America, especially New France. It sought to derive the maximum material benefit from the colony, for the homeland, with a minimum of colonial investment in the colony itself. The ideology was embodied in New France through the establishment under Royal Charter of a number of corporate trading monopolies including La Compagnie des Marchands, which operated from 1613 to 1621, and the Compagnie de Montmorency, from that date until 1627. It was in turn replaced by La Compagnie des Cent-Associés, created in 1627 by King Louis XIII, and the Communauté des habitants in 1643. These were the first corporations to operate in what is now Canada.[58]
After declaring independence from the empire of Philip II of Spain around 1585, the Dutch Republic experienced almost a century of explosive economic growth.[59] Dutch merchant capitalism was based on trading, shipping and finance rather than manufacturing or agriculture and marked the transition of the Dutch economy to a new stage. The accumulation of capital in this period caused demand for productive investment opportunities, and necessitated innovative institutional arrangements to bring demand and supply of investment funds together. From this period date the Amsterdam Stock Exchange and the Amsterdamsche Wisselbank. There were also innovations in marine insurance and legal structuring of firms like the joint stock company.[60]
The Dutch built the largest merchant fleet in the world. A major technological advance was the design of the Dutch merchant ship known as the fluyt. Unlike rivals, it was not built for possible conversion in wartime to a warship, so it was cheaper to build and carried twice the cargo, and could be handled by a smaller crew. Construction by specialized shipyards using new tools made it half the cost of rival ships. The factors combined to sharply lower the cost of transportation for Dutch merchants, giving them a major competitive advantage.[61] During the Thirty Years' War, the Dutch Republic also played the role of the world's “arsenal.” It had an extensive arms trade, using both the products of a sophisticated domestic arms industry (i.e. gun assembly and gun foundries) and foreign industries. The iron guns produced in the Wealden iron industry were extensively traded by the Dutch in the 1620s.[62]
In England, mercantilism reached its peak during the Long Parliament government (1640–60). Mercantilist policies were also embraced throughout much of the Tudor and Stuart periods, with Robert Walpole being another major proponent. In Britain, government control over the domestic economy was far less extensive than on the Continent, limited by common law and the steadily increasing power of Parliament.[63] Government-controlled monopolies were common, especially before the English Civil War, but were often controversial.[64]
The Anglo-Dutch Wars were fought between the English and the Dutch for control over the seas and trade routes.
With respect to its colonies, British mercantilism meant that the government and the merchants became partners with the goal of increasing political power and private wealth, to the exclusion of other European powers. The government protected its merchants—and kept foreign ones out—through trade barriers, regulations, and subsidies to domestic industries in order to maximize exports from and minimize imports to the realm. The government had to fight smuggling, which became a favourite American technique in the 18th century to circumvent the restrictions on trading with the French, Spanish, or Dutch. The goal of mercantilism was to run trade surpluses to benefit the government. The government took its share through duties and taxes, with the remainder going to merchants in Britain. The government spent much of its revenue on the Royal Navy, which both protected the colonies of Britain but was vital in capturing the colonies of other European powers.[65][66]
British mercantilist writers were themselves divided on whether domestic controls were necessary. British mercantilism thus mainly took the form of efforts to control trade. A wide array of regulations were put in place to encourage exports and discourage imports. Tariffs were placed on imports and bounties given for exports, and the export of some raw materials was banned completely. The Navigation Acts removed foreign merchants from being involved England's domestic trade. British policies in their American colonies led to friction with the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies, and mercantilist policies (such as forbidding trade with other European powers and enforcing bans on smuggling) were a major irritant leading to the American Revolution.[66][67]
Mercantilism taught that trade was a zero-sum game, with one country's gain equivalent to a loss sustained by the trading partner. Some have argued that mercantilist policies had a positive impact on Britain, helping to transform the nation into the world's dominant trading power and a global hegemon.[67] One domestic policy that had a lasting impact was the conversion of "wastelands" to agricultural use. Mercantilists believed that to maximize a nation's power, all land and resources had to be used to their highest and best use, and this era thus saw projects like the draining of The Fens.[68]
Mercantilism was the basic policy imposed by Britain on its colonies. Mercantilism meant that the government and the merchants became partners with the goal of increasing political power and private wealth, to the exclusion of other empires. The government protected its merchants (and kept others out) by trade barriers, regulations, and subsidies to domestic industries in order to maximise exports from and minimise imports to the realm.[69] The goal of mercantilism was to run trade surpluses, so that gold and silver would pour into London. The government took its share through duties and taxes, with the remainder going to merchants in Britain.[70]
In Federalist No. 12, Alexander Hamilton made the argument that tariffs on imports would need to be the primary source of revenue for the new federal government and that the federal government could more effectively impose tariffs on imports than the states could separately.[71]
The American School of economics dominated United States national policies from the time of the American Civil War until the mid-20th century.[72][73][74][75] It is closely related to mercantilism, and it can be seen as contrary to classical economics. It consisted of these three core policies:
Protecting industry through selective high tariffs (especially 1861–1932) and through subsidies (especially 1932–1970).
Government investments in infrastructure creating targeted internal improvements (especially in transportation).[76][77]
A national bank with policies that promote the growth of productive enterprises rather than speculation.[78][79][80][81]
Other countries
Mercantilism helped create trade patterns such as the triangular trade in the North Atlantic, in which raw materials were imported to the mother country and then processed and redistributed to other colonies.
The other nations of Europe also embraced mercantilism to varying degrees. The Netherlands, which had become the financial centre of Europe by being its most efficient trader, had little interest in seeing trade restricted and adopted few mercantilist policies. Mercantilism became prominent in Central Europe and Scandinavia after the Thirty Years' War (1618–48), with Christina of Sweden, Jacob Kettler of Courland, and Christian IV of Denmark being notable proponents.
The Habsburg Holy Roman Emperors had long been interested in mercantilist policies, but the vast and decentralized nature of their empire made implementing such notions difficult. Some constituent states of the empire did embrace mercantilism, most notably Prussia, which under Frederick the Great had perhaps the most rigidly controlled economy in Europe.
Spain benefited from mercantilism early on as it brought a large amount of precious metals such as gold and silver into their treasury by way of the new world. In the long run, Spain's economy collapsed as it was unable to adjust to the inflation that came with the large influx of bullion. Heavy intervention from the crown put crippling laws for the protection of Spanish goods and services. Mercantilist protectionist policy in Spain caused the long-run failure of the Castilian textile industry as the efficiency severely dropped off with each passing year due to the production being held at a specific level. Spain's heavily protected industries led to famines as much of its agricultural land was required to be used for sheep instead of grain. Much of their grain was imported from the Baltic region of Europe which caused a shortage of food in the inner regions of Spain. Spain limiting the trade of their colonies is one of the causes that led to the separation of the Dutch from the Spanish Empire. The culmination of all of these policies led to Spain defaulting in 1557, 1575, and 1596.[82]
During the economic collapse of the 17th century, Spain had little coherent economic policy, but French mercantilist policies were imported by Philip V with some success. Ottoman Grand Vizier Kemankeş Kara Mustafa Pasha also followed some mercantilist financial policies during the reign of Ibrahim I. Russia under Peter I (Peter the Great) attempted to pursue mercantilism, but had little success because of Russia's lack of a large merchant class or an industrial base.
Mercantilism was the economic version of warfare backed up by the state apparatus, and was well suited to an era of military warfare.[83] Mercantilism was widely practiced during the Age of Sail, encompassing the mid-16th to mid-19th centuries from approximately 1571 to 1862, from the Battle of Lepanto to the Battle of Hampton Roads. International trade was dominated by sailing ships equipped with naval artillery.[84]
If authorities viewed the level of world trade as fixed, it followed that the only way to increase a polity's trade was to take it from another. A number of wars, most notably the four Anglo-Dutch Wars (from 1652 to 1784) and the Franco-Dutch Wars (as from 1672 to 1678), can be linked directly to mercantilist theories.[85] Most wars had other causes but they reinforced mercantilism by clearly defining the enemy, and justified damage to the enemy's economy.
Mercantilism fueled the imperialism of this era, as many nations expended significant effort to conquer new colonies that would be sources of gold (as in Mexico) or sugar (as in the West Indies), as well as becoming exclusive markets. European power spread around the globe, often under the aegis of companies with government-guaranteed monopolies in certain defined geographical regions, such as the Dutch East India Company or the Hudson's Bay Company (operating in present-day Canada).
With the establishment of overseas colonies by European powers, especially from the 17th century, mercantile theory gained a new and wider significance, in which its aim and ideal became both national and imperialistic.[86][need quotation to verify][87]
The connection between Marxist theory and mercantilism has been explored by Marxist economist and sociologist Giovanni Arrighi (1937-2009), who analyzed mercantilism as having three components: "settler colonialism, capitalist slavery, and economic nationalism", and further noted that slavery was "partly a condition and partly a result of the success of settler colonialism."[88]
In the French economy, the triangular trade method was integral in the continuation of mercantilism throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.[89] In order to maximize exports and minimize imports, France worked on a strict Atlantic route: France, to Africa, to the Americas and then back to France.[88] By bringing African slaves to labor in the New World, their labor value increased, and France capitalized upon the market resources produced by slave labor.[89]
Mercantilism as a weapon has continued to be used by countries through the 21st century by way of modern tariffs, as it puts smaller economies in a position where they may need to conform to the larger economies' goals or risk economic ruin due to an imbalance in trade. Trade wars are often dependent on such tariffs and restrictions hurting an opposing economy.
A letter of marque and reprisal was a government license in the Age of Sail that authorized a private person, known as a privateer or corsair, to attack and capture vessels of a foreign state at war with the issuer, licensing international military operations against a specified enemy as reprisal for a previous attack or injury. Captured naval prizes were judged before the government's admiralty court for condemnation and transfer of ownership to the privateer.
Licensing privateers during wartime became widespread in Europe by the 16th century,[90] when most countries[91] began to enact laws regulating the granting of letters of marque and reprisal.[92] Such business could be very profitable; during the eight years of the American Revolutionary War, ships from the tiny island of Guernsey carrying letter of marque captured French and American vessels to the value of £900,000 (equivalent to £145,029,851in 2023). Privateers from Guernsey continued to operate during the Napoleonic Wars.[93]
Article I of the United States Constitution, for instance, states that "The Congress shall have Power To ... grant Letters of marque and reprisal ...",[94] without separately addressing privateer commissions or licenses.
—United States Constitution Article I, § 10, Clause 1
After the Congress of Paris at the end of the Crimean War, seven European states signed the Paris Declaration of 1856 renouncing privateering, and 45 more countries eventually joined them, which in effect abolished privateering worldwide. The United States was among a few countries that were not signatory to that declaration.[95] The Declaration did not as such make privateers into a new category of international criminals, but rather made it a treaty obligation of states that they refrain from commissioning privateers in the first place. Most states normally treated foreign privateers as pirates in any case. In the plain wordings of the Declaration:
Privateering is and remains abolished;
The neutral flag covers enemy's goods, with the exception of contraband of war;
Neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war, are not liable to capture under enemy's flag;
Blockades, in order to be binding, must be effective—that is to say, maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy.[96]
Scholars debate why mercantilism dominated economic ideology for 250 years.[99] One group, represented by Jacob Viner, sees mercantilism as simply a straightforward, common-sense system whose logical fallacies remained opaque to people at the time. This, he argues, was because people lacked the necessary analytical tools.
The second school, supported by scholars such as Robert B. Ekelund, portrays mercantilism not as a mistake, but rather as the best possible system for those who developed it. This school argues that rent-seeking merchants and governments developed and enforced mercantilist policies. Merchants benefited greatly from the enforced monopolies, bans on foreign competition, and poverty of the workers. Governments benefited from the high tariffs and payments from the merchants. Whereas later economic ideas were often developed by academics and philosophers, almost all mercantilist writers were merchants or government officials.[100]
Mercantilism developed at a time of transition for the European economy. Isolated feudal estates were being replaced by centralized nation-states as the focus of power. Technological changes in shipping and the growth of urban centers led to a rapid increase in international trade.[101] Mercantilism focused on how this trade could best aid the states. Another important change was the introduction of double-entry bookkeeping and modern accounting. This accounting made extremely clear the inflow and outflow of trade, contributing to the close scrutiny given to the balance of trade.[102] New markets and new mines propelled foreign trade to previously inconceivable volumes, resulting in "the great upward movement in prices" and an increase in "the volume of merchant activity itself".[103]
Before mercantilism, the most important work in economics in Europe was that of the medieval scholastic theorists. The goal of these thinkers was to find an economic system compatible with Christian doctrines of piety and justice. They focused mainly on microeconomics and on local exchanges between individuals. Mercantilism was closely aligned with the other theories and ideas that began to replace the medieval worldview. This period saw the adoption of Machiavellianrealpolitik and the primacy of the raison d'état in international relations. The mercantilist idea of all trade as a zero-sum game, in which each side was trying to best the other in a ruthless competition, was integral to the works of Thomas Hobbes. This dark view of human nature also fit well with the Puritan view of the world, and some of the most stridently mercantilist legislation, such as the Navigation Ordinance of 1651, was enacted by the government of Oliver Cromwell.[104]
Jean-Baptiste Colbert's work in 17th-century France came to exemplify classical mercantilism. In the English-speaking world, its ideas were criticized by Adam Smith with the publication of The Wealth of Nations in 1776 and later by David Ricardo with his explanation of comparative advantage. Mercantilism was rejected by Britain and France by the mid-19th century. The British Empire embraced free trade and used its power as the financial center of the world to promote the same. The Guyanese historian Walter Rodney describes mercantilism as the period of the worldwide development of European commerce which began in the 15th century with the voyages of Portuguese and Spanish explorers to Africa, Asia, and the New World.
William Petty is best remembered for his statistical writings, preceding the work of Adam Smith, and for being a founding member of the Royal Society. Of particular interest were his forays into statistical analysis. Petty's work in political arithmetic, along with the work of John Graunt, laid the foundation for modern census techniques. This work in statistical analysis, when further expanded by writers like Josiah Child documented some of the first expositions of modern insurance. Vernon Louis Parrington notes him as an early expositor of the labor theory of value as discussed in Treatise of Taxes in 1692.[105][106][107]
The influence of Francis Bacon was also profound. Bacon held the conviction that mathematics and the senses must be the basis of all rational sciences. This passion for accuracy led Petty to famously declare that his form of science would only use measurable phenomena and would seek quantitative precision, rather than rely on comparatives or superlatives, yielding a new subject that he named "political arithmetic". Petty thus carved a niche for himself as the first dedicated economic scientist, amidst the merchant-pamphleteers, such as Thomas Mun or Josiah Child, and philosopher-scientists occasionally discussing economics, such as John Locke.[108]
Bacon, Locke, and Newton … I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical and Moral sciences.
The Scientific Revolution also led to the advancement of economic thought. For instance, Richard Cantillon (1680–1734) consciously imitated Newton's forces of inertia and gravity in the natural world with human reason and market competition in the economic world.[119]
Essai remains Cantillon's only surviving contribution to economics. It was written around 1730 and circulated widely in manuscript form, but was not published until 1755. Cantillon was influenced by his experiences as a banker, and especially by the speculative bubble of John Law's Mississippi Company. He was also heavily influenced by prior economists, especially William Petty. Essai is considered the first complete treatise on economics, with numerous contributions to the science. These contributions include: his cause and effect methodology, monetary theories, his conception of the entrepreneur as a risk-bearer, and the development of spatial economics. It is written using a distinctive causal methodology, separating Cantillon from his mercantilist predecessors.[121]
Traditionally, it is Jean-Baptiste Say who is credited for coining the word and advancing the concept of the entrepreneur, but in fact it was Cantillon who first introduced the term in Essai.[122] Cantillon divided society into two principal classes—fixed income wage-earners and non-fixed income earners.[123] Entrepreneurs, according to Cantillon, are non-fixed income earners who pay known costs of production but earn uncertain incomes, due to the speculative nature of pandering to an unknown demand for their product.[124] Cantillon's Essai had significant influence on the early development of political economy, including the works of Adam Smith, Anne Turgot, Jean-Baptiste Say, Frédéric Bastiat and François Quesnay.[125] Cantillon is one of the few economists cited by Adam Smith, who directly borrows Cantillon's subsistence theory of wages, although in many respects Smith advanced well beyond the scope of Cantillon.[126]
Adam Smith, David Hume, Edward Gibbon, Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were the founding fathers of anti-mercantilist thought. A number of scholars found important flaws in mercantilism long before Smith developed an ideology that could fully replace it. Critics such as Hume, Dudley North and John Locke undermined much of mercantilism and it steadily lost favor during the 18th century.
In 1690, Locke argued that prices vary in proportion to the quantity of money. Locke's Second Treatise also points towards the heart of the anti-mercantilist critique: that the wealth of the world is not fixed, but is created by human labor (represented embryonically by Locke's labor theory of value). Mercantilists failed to understand the notions of absolute advantage and comparative advantage (this idea was only fully fleshed out in 1817 by David Ricardo) and the benefits of trade.[127][note 1]
Hume famously noted the impossibility of the mercantilists' goal of a constant positive balance of trade.[128] As bullion flowed into one country, the supply would increase, and the value of bullion in that state would steadily decline relative to other goods. Conversely, in the state exporting bullion, its value would slowly rise. Eventually, it would no longer be cost-effective to export goods from the high-price country to the low-price country, and the balance of trade would reverse. Mercantilists fundamentally misunderstood this, long arguing that an increase in the money supply simply meant that everyone gets richer.[129]
The importance placed on bullion was also a central target, even if many mercantilists had themselves begun to de-emphasize the importance of gold and silver. Adam Smith noted that at the core of the mercantile system was the "popular folly of confusing wealth with money", that bullion was just the same as any other commodity, and that there was no reason to give it special treatment.[33] More recently, scholars have discounted the accuracy of this critique. They believe Mun and Misselden were not making this mistake in the 1620s, and point to their followers Josiah Child and Charles Davenant, who in 1699 wrote, "Gold and Silver are indeed the Measures of Trade, but that the Spring and Original of it, in all nations is the Natural or Artificial Product of the Country; that is to say, what this Land or what this Labour and Industry Produces."[130] The critique that mercantilism was a form of rent seeking has also seen criticism, as scholars such as Jacob Viner in the 1930s pointed out that merchant mercantilists such as Mun understood that they would not gain by higher prices for English wares abroad.[131]
The first school to completely reject mercantilism was the physiocrats, who developed their theories in France. Their theories also had several important problems, and the replacement of mercantilism did not come until Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776. This book outlines the basics of what is today known as classical economics. Smith spent a considerable portion of the book rebutting the arguments of the mercantilists, though often these are simplified or exaggerated versions of mercantilist thought.[100]
Economist David Ricardo (1772-1823) suggested that there is mutual national benefit from trade even if one country is more competitive in every area than its trading counterpart and that a nation should concentrate resources only in industries where it has a comparative advantage, that is in those industries in which it has the greatest efficiency of production relative to its own alternative uses of resources, rather than industries where it holds a competitive edge compared to rival nations.[132] He argued that international trade is always beneficial, even if one country is more competitive in every area than its trading counterpart. Ricardo attempted to prove theoretically that international trade is always beneficial.[133]
Scholars are also divided over the cause of mercantilism's end. Those who believe the theory was simply an error hold that its replacement was inevitable as soon as Smith's more accurate ideas were unveiled. Those who feel that mercantilism amounted to rent-seeking hold that it ended only when major power shifts occurred. In Britain, mercantilism faded as the Parliament gained the monarch's power to grant monopolies. While the wealthy capitalists who controlled the House of Commons benefited from these monopolies, Parliament found it difficult to implement them because of the high cost of group decision making.[134]
Mercantilist regulations were steadily removed over the course of the 18th century in Britain, and during the 19th century, the British government fully embraced free trade and Smith's laissez-faire economics. In the period loosely dated from the 1770s to the 1820s, Britain experienced an accelerated process of economic change that transformed a largely agrarian economy into the world's first industrial economy. This phenomenon is known as the "Industrial Revolution", since the changes were far-reaching and permanent throughout many areas of Britain, especially in the developing cities.[135]
On the continent, the process was somewhat different. In France, economic control remained in the hands of the royal family, and mercantilism continued until the French Revolution. In Germany, mercantilism remained an important ideology in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the historical school of economics was paramount.[136]
Adam Smith criticized the mercantile doctrine that prioritized production in the economy; he maintained that consumption was of prime significance. Additionally, the mercantile system was well-liked by the traders as it involved what is now referred to as rent seeking.[137]
In specific instances, protectionist mercantilist policies also had an important and positive impact on the state that enacted them. Adam Smith, for instance, praised England's Navigation Acts of 1660 to 1760, as they greatly fostered the expansion of the British merchant fleet and played a central role in turning Britain into the world's naval and economic superpower from the 18th century onward.[138] Some economists thus feel that protecting infant industries, while causing short-term harm, can be beneficial to a specific economy in the long term.
In the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) affirmed that motivating the production process was as significant as encouraging consumption, which benefited the new mercantilism. Keynes also affirmed that in the post-classical period the primary focus on gold- and silver-supplies (bullion) was rational. During the era before paper money, an increase in gold and silver was one of the ways of mercantilism increasing an economy's reserve or the supply of money. Keynes reiterated that the doctrines advocated by mercantilism aided the improvement of both the domestic and foreign outlay — domestic because the policies lowered the domestic rate of interest, and investment by foreigners by tending to create a favorable balance of trade.[139] Keynes and other economists of the 20th century also realized that the balance of payments is an important concern. Keynes also supported government intervention in the economy as necessary, as did mercantilism.[140]
As of 2010[update], the word "mercantilism" remained a pejorative term, often used to attack various forms of protectionism.[141]
Paul Samuelson, writing within a Keynesian framework, wrote of mercantilism: "With employment less than full and Net National Product suboptimal, all the debunked mercantilist arguments turn out to be valid."[142]
Mercantilism, which reached its height in the Europe of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was a system of statism which employed economic fallacy to build up a structure of imperial state power, as well as special subsidy and monopolistic privilege to individuals or groups favored by the state. Thus, mercantilism held exports should be encouraged by the government and imports discouraged.[143]
Rothbard viewed mercantilism not as a coherent economic theory but rather as a series of post-hoc rationalizations for various economic policies by interested parties.
After the re-election of Donald Trump as president of the United States in 2024, Serbian-American economist Branko Milanović described Trump's policies of implementing tariffs on imports, trade blocs, and other barriers against China as "neo-mercantilism", stating that it "marks a symbolic end to global neoliberalism".[145][146]
Michael Strain of the conservative think-tank the American Enterprise Institute also described Trump's policy as a return to mercantilism: "We are seeing a combination of true-believing mercantilism, shocking ignorance about how the global economy works, and shocking incompetence in the planning and execution of economic policy."[147]
↑For instance, imagine that Portugal was a more efficient producer of wine than England, yet in England, cloth could be produced more efficiently than it could in Portugal. Thus if Portugal specialized in wine and England in cloth, both states would end up better off if they traded. This is an example of the reciprocal benefits of trade (whether due to comparative or absolute advantage). In modern economic theory, trade is not a zero-sum game of cutthroat competition because both sides can benefit from it.
References
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↑Singh, Abhay Kumar (2006). Modern World System and Indian Proto-industrialization: Bengal 1650–1800. Vol.1. Northern Book Centre. ISBN978-81-7211-201-1.
↑Rommelse, Gijs (2007). "Prizes and Profits: Dutch Maritime Trade during the Second Anglo-Dutch War". International Journal of Maritime History. 19 (2): 139–159. doi:10.1177/084387140701900207. S2CID155011146.
↑Boxer, Charles Ralph (1974). The Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th Century. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. p.39. It can hardly be denied that the Dutch raid on the Medway vies with the Battle of Majuba in 1881 and the Fall of Singapore in 1942 for the unenviable distinctor of being the most humiliating defeat suffered by British arms.
↑Magnusson 2003, p.47. "According to Adam Smith, the main architect of the mercantile system of economic thinking was the English writer and tradesman Thomas Mun (1571–1641). His main published writings appear in two short treatises, A Discourse of Trade from England unto the East Indies (1621) and perhaps the more important England's Treasure by Forraign Trade (1664). Adam Smith picked out this last tract – published posthumously after Mun's death, but probably written during the late 1620s – as the archetype of mercantilist texts; its manifesto."
↑Pestana, Carla Gardina (2004). The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution: 1640–1661. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press. p.120.
↑M. Beer "Early British Economics: from the XIIth to the middle of the XVIIIth century". Frank Cass, London 1967
↑Karl Marx, "Theories of Surplus Value" contained in the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 31 (International Publishers: New York, 1989) p. 40.
↑Karl Marx, "Theories of Surplus Value" contained in the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 30 (International Publishers: New York, 1988), p. 348.
↑Karl Marx, "Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy" contained in the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 29 (International Publishers: New York, 1987) p. 163.
↑See biographical note in the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 31 (International Publishers: New York, 1989) p. 605.
↑Maheu, Jacques. "New France". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Retrieved October 13, 2020.
↑Gachard, p. 590; however, see Martin van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, 1555–1590, 1992 Cambridge University Press, p. 150, fn. 143.
↑Cf.Puype, J. P., Hoeven, M. van der (ed.) (1996), The Arsenal of the World. The Dutch Arms Trade in the 17th Century Amsterdam, Batavian Lion International, ISBN90-6707-413-6
↑Lind, Michael: "Lincoln and his successors in the Republican party of 1865–1932, by presiding over the industrialization of the United States, foreclosed the option that the United States would remain a rural society with an agrarian economy, as so many Jeffersonians had hoped." and "...Hamiltonian side ... the Federalists; the National Republicans; the Whigs, the Republicans; the Progressives." — "Hamilton's Republic" Introduction pp. xiv–xv. Free Press, Simon & Schuster: 1997. ISBN0-684-83160-0.
↑Lind, Michael: "During the nineteenth century the dominant school of American political economy was the "American School" of developmental economic nationalism ... The patron saint of the American School was Alexander Hamilton, whose Report on Manufactures (1791) had called for federal government activism in sponsoring infrastructure development and industrialization behind tariff walls that would keep out British manufactured goods ... The American School, elaborated in the nineteenth century by economists like Henry Carey (who advised President Lincoln), inspired the "American System" of Henry Clay and the protectionist import-substitution policies of Lincoln and his successors in the Republican party well into the twentieth century." — "Hamilton's Republic" Part III "The American School of National Economy" pp. 229–30. Free Press, Simon & Schuster: 1997. ISBN0-684-83160-0.
↑Richardson, Heather Cox: "By 1865, the Republicans had developed a series of high tariffs and taxes that reflected the economic theories of Carey and Wayland and were designed to strengthen and benefit all parts of the American economy, raising the standard of living for everyone. As a Republican concluded ... "Congress must shape its legislation as to incidentally aid all branches of industry, render the people prosperous, and enable them to pay taxes ... for ordinary expenses of Government." — "The Greatest Nation of the Earth" Chapter 4, "Directing the Legislation of the Country to the Improvement of the Country: Tariff and Tax Legislation" pp. 136–37. President and Fellows of Harvard College: 1997. ISBN0-674-36213-6.
↑Boritt, Gabor S: "Lincoln thus had the pleasure of signing into law much of the program he had worked for through the better part of his political life. And this, as Leonard P. Curry, the historian of the legislation has aptly written, amounted to a "blueprint for modern America." and "The man Lincoln selected for the sensitive position of Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, was an ex-Democrat, but of the moderate variety on economics, one whom Joseph Dorfman could even describe as 'a good Hamiltonian, and a western progressive of the Lincoln stamp in everything from a tariff to a national bank.'" — "Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream" Chapter 14, "The Whig in the White House" pp. 196–97. Memphis State University Press: 1994. ISBN0-87870-043-9.
↑Gijs, Rommelse (August 2010). "The role of mercantilism in Anglo‐Dutch political relations, 1650–74". The Economic History Review. 63 (3): 591–611. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00491.x.
↑Peet, Richard; Hartwick, Elaine (February 23, 2009) [1999]. "Marxism, Socialism, and Development". Theories of Development: Contentions, Arguments, Alternatives (2nded.). New York: Guilford Press. p.162. ISBN9781606233979. Retrieved August 23, 2025. [...] from the 15th to the 19th centuries, mercantilist imperialism saw the European conquest of most of the Americas and significant control over much of southern and southeast Asia. Conquest and control involved the plundering of ancient stockpiles of wealth from precapitalist civilizations, the establishment of unequal trading relations with dominated societies, and the production of bullion and exotic commodities, using coerced (often slave) labor in colonized societies.
12Miller, C. L. 2008. "Introduction." p. 14 in The French Atlantic triangle: literature and culture of the slave trade. Duke University Press.
12Miller, C. L. 2008. "Introduction." pp. 1–39 in The French Atlantic triangle: literature and culture of the slave trade. Duke University Press.
↑Eastman, Famous Privateers of New England p. 1 (recounting early letters of marque issued in contest between Spain and her revolted Low Countries in 1569).
↑Lord Russell, The French Corsairs p. 11 (discussing history of letters of marque: in France the first recorded use of letters of marque and reprisal was 1681).
↑Upton's Maritime Warfare and Prize p. 176 (discussing the history of letters of marque and reprisal).
↑Henry, R.A. The Reclamation of the Braye du Valle 1806–2006.
↑Lindberg, David C. (1990). "Conceptions of the Scientific Revolution from Baker to Butterfield: A preliminary sketch". In Lindberg, David C.; Westman, Robert S. (eds.). Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution (Firsted.). Chicago: Cambridge University Press. pp.1–26. ISBN978-0-521-34262-9.
12Lindberg, David C. (2007). "The legacy of ancient and medieval science". The Beginnings of Western Science (2nded.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp.357–368. ISBN978-0-226-48205-7.
↑Gal, Ofer (2021). "The New Science". The Origins of Modern Science. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp.308–349. ISBN978-1316649701.
↑Bowler, Peter J.; Morus, Iwan Rhys (2020). "The scientific revolution". Making Modern Science (2nded.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp.25–57. ISBN978-0226365763.
↑ Wootton, David. The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution (Penguin, 2015). p.136. ISBN0-06-175952-X
↑Del Soldato, Eva (2016). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2016ed.). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Archived from the original on December 11, 2019. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
↑Grant, Edward (2007). "Transformation of medieval natural philosophy from the early period modern period to the end of the nineteenth century". A History of Natural Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp.274–322. ISBN978-052-1-68957-1.
↑"The Three Greatest Men". American Treasures of the Library of Congress. Library of Congress. August 2007. Archived from the original on June 20, 2018. Retrieved June 27, 2018. Jefferson identified Bacon, Locke, and Newton as 'the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception'. Their works in the physical and moral sciences were instrumental in Jefferson's education and world view.
↑Jefferson, Thomas. "The Letters: 1743–1826 Bacon, Locke, and Newton". Archived from the original on December 31, 2009. Retrieved June 13, 2009. Bacon, Locke and Newton, whose pictures I will trouble you to have copied for me: and as I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical & Moral sciences.
↑Jevons 1881, p. 342; writes Jevons, "Cantillon's essay is, more emphatically than any other single work, 'the cradle of political economy.'" Cantillon 2010, p. 15; Editors Mark Thornton and Chantal Saucier write, "The influence of Cantillon's manuscript was largely unknown and the book had fallen so far into neglect that William Stanley Jevons was said to have "rediscovered" it in the late 19th century."
↑Finegold September 2010; writes Finegold, "Cantillon's insights on the source of economic wealth also set him apart from typical mercantilists before him."
↑Brewer 1992, p. 51; Anthony Brewer, however, distinguishes between Say's and Cantillon's use of the term "entrepreneur", noting that while Cantillon saw the entrepreneur as a risk-taker, Say predominately considered the entrepreneur a "planner".
↑Rothbard 1995, p. 351; Hülsmann 2002, p. 698. Hülsmann argues that Cantillon divided society into four classes: politicians, property owners, entrepreneurs, and wage-earners.
↑Cantillon 2010, p. 74; "They [entrepreneurs] pay a fixed price for them at the place where they are purchased, to resell wholesale or retail at an uncertain price... These entrepreneurs never know how great the demand will be in their city..."
↑Nevin, Seamus (2013). "Richard Cantillon: The Father of Economics". History Ireland. 21 (2): 20–23. JSTOR41827152.
↑Schumpeter 1981, p. 179; Schumpeter charged, "But no matter what he actually learned or failed to learn from predecessors, the fact is that the Wealth of Nations does not contain a single analytic idea, principle, or method that was entirely new in 1776."
↑Ricardo, David (1817) On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. Piero Sraffa (Ed.) Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Volume I, Cambridge University Press, 1951, p. 135.
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