Mercantilism is a nationalist economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports for an economy. In other words, it seeks to maximize the accumulation of resources within the country … See more

Mercantilism was the economic version of warfare using economics as a tool for warfare by other means backed up by the state apparatus and was well suited to an era of military warfare. Since the level of world trade was viewed as fixed, it followed that the … See more

Adam Smith, David Hume, Edward Gibbon, Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were the founding fathers of anti-mercantilist thought. A number of scholars found … See more

Most of the European economists who wrote between 1500 and 1750 are today generally described as mercantilists; this term was initially … See more

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 centred on England and France, and it was in these states that mercantilist policies … See more

The term "mercantile system" was used by its foremost critic, Adam Smith, but Mirabeau (1715–1789) had used "mercantilism" earlier. Mercantilism functioned as the … See more

Adam Smith criticized the mercantile doctrine that prioritized production in the economy; he maintained that consumption was of prime … See more