Mercantilism

In the first major study of this subject for several decades, Lars Magnusson argues that mercantilism was much more modern than has been previously appreciated. Ever since the Physiocrats and Adam Smith, the mercantile system’ has been described as the opposite of classical political economy. This view is very much brought in to question by the current book. It argues that the sharp distinction between mercantilism and nineteenth century laissez-faire economics has obscured the meaning, content and contribution of the former. This book presents a full scale account of the development of mercantilism as a trend of economic thought during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Instead of accepting existing interpretations, it begins with the most fundamental questions: What was mercantilism? Did it have a central message? Was it really a coherent school of thought?