Blackwell Reference Online

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In common scholarly and popular vocabulary, the concept of “mercantilism” designates either a system of economic policy or an epoch in the development of economic doctrine during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, or both of them, before the publication of Adam Smith's path-breaking Wealth of Nations (1776). The bulk of what is commonly known as “mercantilist literature” appeared in Britain from the 1620s up until the middle of the eighteenth century. However, the concept also appeared as a label for trade protection and dirigiste views during later periods, most often as “neo-mercantilism.” Among the first mercantilist writers, who are explicitly named as such, we find two Englishmen, Thomas Mun and Edward Misselden in the 1620s, while James Steuart's Principles of Political Oeconomy (1767) is conventionally perceived as perhaps the last major “mercantilist” work. Most of the mercantilist writers during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were businessmen, merchants and government officials. They wrote mainly about practical matters concerning trade, shipping, the economic effects of tariffs and protection of industries, monetary issues (the devaluation of coins), interest rates, and so on ( Magnusson, 1994 ). The concept of “mercantilism” first appeared in print in Marquis de Mirabeau's Philosophie Rurale in 1763 as systeme mercantile , although it was used ... log in or subscribe to read full text