The Idea of a Mercantile State

A. V. Judges

doi:10.2307/3678499

The Idea of a Mercantile State

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 July 2011

A. V. Judges

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The chief purpose of this paper is to formulate a question. What, to put the matter briefly, have we in mind when we talk of the mercantile state; and what functional value is possessed by our ideas about it when we are engaged in the processes of reconstructing the political and economic life of the centuries in which it is commonly believed to have flourished? Various meanings have been given to the words mercantile system and also to the more austere mercantilism which German scholarship has coined for us to use when we wish to attempt a distillation of the policies attributed to practitioners of that system. Most of us would doubtless be ready to admit that these terms of art of the economist have been useful in bringing large groups of facts and theories into focus; and therein lies their justification. But the concepts which they awkwardly try to express have had a steadily diminishing utility in recent years as our knowledge has advanced, and (like other premature generalisations in the history of ideas) it would seem that they are being perpetuated because we shrink from generalising anew.

Type: Research Article
Information: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 21 , December 1939 , pp. 41 - 69

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/3678499 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1939

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References

¹ W. J. Ashley, “The Tory Origin of Free Trade Policy,” Q.J.E., July 1897, repr. in Surveys Historic and Economic, 1900, pp. 268 ff.

² “For one moment they reach an elevation from which they can contemplate the planet as a whole, and at the next moment their vision is confined to the horizon visible from an English shop window.” Stephen, Leslie, Engl. Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1902 edn.), vol. II, p. 297.Google Scholar

³ “Eloge de Gournay” in Œuvres de Turgot, 1844, vol. I, pp. 262–91.Google Scholar

^{page 44 note 1} Tucker, Josiah, Elements of Commerce and Theory of Taxes, Bristol, 1755. pp. 169–70.Google Scholar

^{page 44 note 2} Phil. Rurale, ou Écon. générale et politique de l’Agric., Amsterdam, 1763, p. 329.Google Scholar

^{page 44 note 3} Wealth of Nations, ed. Cannan, 1904, I, p. 457.

^{page 44 note 4} ibid.., II, p. 177.

^{page 45 note 1} ibid.., II, p. 184.

^{page 45 note 2} ibid.., I, p. 248.

^{page 45 note 3} ibid.., I, pp. 396, 416.

^{page 45 note 4} Cf. Edwin Cannan, Review of Econ. Theory, pp. 12–13, where the necessity for this qualification is brought out.

^{page 46 note 1} Actually this theorem of the general balance was already hoary with age. We meet it in English tracts and official memoranda at least a century earlier.

^{page 47 note 1} Cf. E. Halévy, Growth of Philosophical Radicalism, p. 104, etc.

^{page 47 note 2} Arnold Toynbee supposed that Smith was influenced by the gild restrictionism of Glasgow, where James Watt tried to set up as a craftsman (Lectures on the Ind. Revolution of the 18th Century, 1925 impr., p. 52). The picturesque legend of Watt’s persecution by the hammermen seems now to have received its death-blow (Dickinson, H. W., James Watt, Craftsman and Engineer, 1937, pp. 25–6).Google Scholar

^{page 47 note 3} Cf. W. R. Scott, Adam Smith as Student and Philosopher, pp. 124—5.

^{page 47 note 4} Manual of Pol. Econ., chap. 3; Observations on the Restrictive and Prohibitory Commercial System (first pr. 1821), section 2; Bowring, John, Works of Jeremy Bentham, 1843, vol. III.Google Scholar

^{page 48 note 1} Tooke, and Newmarch, , Hist, of Prices, 1857, vol. V, p. 400.Google Scholar

^{page 50 note 1} D. C. Somervell, The Victorian Age, p. 24.

^{page 51 note 1} New Essays on Trade, p. 61.

^{page 51 note 2} M. Dobb, Pol. Econ. and Capitalism, p. 50.

^{page 51 note 3} As J. Viner points out (Studies in the Theory of International Trade, p. 440), the anonymous author of the very remarkable Considerations on the E. India Trade, 1701, states what is essentially the doctrine in rather different terms from those employed by Ricardo.

^{page 52 note 1} Believing that statesmen aimed at a high equilibrium level of investment and employment, “ there was wisdom,” Mr. Keynes holds, “ in their intense preoccupation with keeping down the rate of interest by means of usury laws, by maintaining the domestic stock of money and by discouraging rises in the wage-unit; and in their readiness in the last resort to restore the stock of money by devaluation, if it had become plainly deficient through an unavoidable foreign drain, a rise in the wage unit, or any other cause ” (General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, chap. 23). Without finding myself in a position to endorse much of Mr. Keynes’s interpretation of English economic theory of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I do think he succeeds, in passages similar in perspicacity to the quotation above, in illuminating some of the ends of monetary policy in those times, ends which have been persistently misunderstood by critics who found altogether too facile an aid to destructive analysis in J. S. Mill’s exposition of the theory of international trade.

^{page 52 note 2} Say, J. B., Cours Complet d’Écon. Politique (1852 edn.) II, pp. 205–6.Google Scholar

^{page 53 note 1} Nassau Senior, Three Lectures on the Transmission of the Precious Metals (2nd edn.), pp. 39, 45–51, 95.

^{page 53 note 2} Mill, J. S., Principles, Preliminary Remarks; Letters, ed. Elliott, H. S. R., II, pp. 154–5.Google Scholar

^{page 54 note 1} J. E. Cairnes, Some Leading Principles of Pol. Econ. newly expounded, 1874, p. 450.

^{page 54 note 2} “ The supporters of the mercantile system like their predecessors held that gold and silver alone constituted wealth.” Principles (4th edn.), 1849, p. 30; cf. also Literature of Pol. Econ., passim, and Introductory Discourse prefacing McCulloch’s editions of Wealth of Nations.

^{page 54 note 3} Mengotti’s Colbertism is divisible into two parts, the first the system of the balance of trade, the second the regulation of industry. See Custodi, , Scrittori Classici Italiani di Economia Politica, 1804, Parte Moderna, tomo XXXVI, pp. 251 ff.Google Scholar

^{page 55 note 1} Leslie, Cliffe, Essays in Pol. and Moral Phil., 1879, pp. 219–20, etc.Google Scholar; Bagehot, W., Econ. Studies, 1880, pp. 16–20.Google Scholar

^{page 56 note 1} “Primitive Pol. Econ. in England,” Edin. Rev., April 1847, pp. 426 ff., reprGoogle Scholar. in Jones's, R.Lit. Remains, ed. Whewell, , 1859, pp. 293 ff.Google Scholar

^{page 56 note 2} Travers Twiss devoted his admirable course of Oxford lectures in 1846–7 (View of Progress of Pol. Econ., 1847) to the early development of economic ideas, and accepted the generally held view that the mercantile system came in with Mun. Twiss seems not to have been influenced at all by Jones, but he makes acknowledgment to Adolphe Blanqui’s important Hist. de l’Econ. Politique (first publ. 1838), though disagreeing with him on certain matters, e.g., the claims of Mun’s contemporary Antonio Serra to be considered a liberal thinker. On the comparative importance as pioneers of Mun and Serra see Marx at his most playfully sarcastic in chapter 10 contributed to part II of Engels’ Anti-Dükring.

^{page 57 note 1} Palgrave, Dict, of Pol. Econ., 1910, II, p. 198 n.

^{page 57 note 2} Die Irrthümer des Historismus, preface, quoted J. N. Keynes, Scope and Method, 1891, p. 306.

^{page 58 note 1} Karl Bücher, Die Entstehung des Volkswirtschaft, first publ. 1893, Engl. transl., 1901, pp. 136 ff.

^{page 59 note 1} The careful investigation since made by E. Rachel in the Acta Borussica shows, however, that in the case of Germany, where Schmoller’s liberating mercantile policy is supposed to find its clearest expression, the unification of the tolls was the last thing the territorial princes-were able to secure. See Heckscher (Mercantilism, I, pp. 56 ff.) for a shattering treatment of the myth.

^{page 59 note 2} Grundriss der Allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre. Erster Teil, 1900, s,86.

^{page 60 note 1} “ Studien über die Wirtschaftliche Politik Fr. des Grossen und Preussens,” in 7 parts in Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, usw., 1884. Transl. in part as The Mercantile System and its Historical Significance, N.Y., I93L P. 53.

^{page 60 note 2} ibid.., pp. 64–5.

^{page 60 note 3} ibid.., p. 61.

^{page 61 note 1} Scott, W. R., William Cunningham, 1849–1919, British Academy Proceedings, vol. IX; p. 3 of reprint.Google Scholar

^{page 61 note 2} ibid.., p. 5.

^{page 61 note 3} Econ. Journal, 1892, II, pp. 694 ff.

^{page 62 note 1} Econ. Journal, 1894, IV, pp. 512 ff.; and cf. Richard Cobden and Adam Smith, publ. by Tariff Reform League, 1904, pp. 29–30.

^{page 62 note 2} Modern Civilization in its Econ. Aspects, 1896.

^{page 62 note 3} W. A. S. Hewins, The Apologia of an Imperialist, vol. I, chaps. 2 and 3.

^{page 62 note 4} Growth of Engl. Industry and Commerce in Mod. Times, 1903, p. 879.

^{page 62 note 5} Progress of Capitalism in England, 1916, p. 83.

^{page 63 note 1} Studies in Econ. Hist., p. 158.

^{page 64 note 1} Mercantilism; first published in Swedish in 1931; the English version, with author’s revisions, in 1935. Professor Heckscher has summarized his views in an article of the same title in Econ. Hist. Rev., Nov. 1936, pp. 44 ff.

^{page 65 note 1} J. Viner, Studies in the Theory of International Trade, pp. 51—7; E. A. J. Johnson, Predecessors of Adam Smith, pt. III; cf. also E. S. Furniss, Position of the Laborer in a System of Nationalism.

^{page 66 note 1} B. C. Hunt, Development of Business Corporations, p. II.

^{page 67 note 1} When did mercantilism flourish ? Most, though not all, of our authorities allow it an exclusively post-medieval career. It is commonly believed that it passed through several stages, among which “ bullionism ” sometimes appears as a sort of curtain-raiser to the “ general-balance ” act. Arnold Toynbee (op. cit., p. 56) taught that the mercantile system came to an end at the point in time at which Adam Smith seems to have made it begin. Luigi Cossa, a representative stratifier, distinguished three phases: (a) specie regulation and exchange control; (b) originating “ in the last centuries of the Middle Ages,” a “ balance-of-bargains ” calculus; (c) the era of the balance-of-trade proper (Introd. to the Study of Pol. Economy, Engl. transl., 1893, Historical Part, chap. 4). Sir William Holdsworth (Hist, of Engl. Law, XI, p. 380) restricts the period to the eighteenth century. The notions of the Whigs, triumphing over the commercial liberalism of the Tory peace of Utrecht, “ gave rise to the economic system which is generally known as the mercantile system.” The latest work of neo-Marxist interpretation published by I. S. Plotkinov treats mercantilism as “ the ideology of the monopoly trading companies.” Beginning in the age of colonial expansion, it used state power for the protection of trade, controlling trade in the interest of the state. The plunder of colonies served as the main source of primary accumulation of capital. In the next stage of economic development “ the rise of industrial capitalism destroyed mercantilism,” according to Mr. Christopher Hill in his summary of Plotkinov’s views (Econ. Hist. Rev., May 1938, p. 167).

^{page 68 note 1} Cf. Robbins, L., Econ. Planning and International Order, p. 16.Google Scholar

^{page 69 note 1} Brentano, L., Der Wirtschaftende Mensch in der Geschichte, s. 29.Google Scholar

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