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Mercantilism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the system of economic thinking which dominated Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, between the 16th and 18th centuries, Europe was dominated by an economic way of thinking called mercantilism. The key idea was that exports should be as high as possible and imports minimised.

For more than 300 years, almost every ruler and political thinker was a mercantilist. Eventually, economists including Adam Smith, in his ground-breaking work of 1776 The Wealth of Nations, declared that mercantilism was a flawed concept and it became discredited. However, a mercantilist economic approach can still be found in modern times and today’s politicians sometimes still use rhetoric related to mercantilism.

With

D’Maris Coffman
Professor in Economics and Finance of the Built Environment at University College London

Craig Muldrew
Professor of Social and Economic History at the University of Cambridge and a Member of Queens’ College

and

Helen Paul, Lecturer in Economics and Economic History at the University of Southampton.

Producer Luke Mulhall

Available now

58 minutes

Last on

Thu 16 Mar 2023 21:30
Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4

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LINKS AND FURTHER READING

CONTRIBUTORS




READING LIST

D'Maris Coffman, Adrian Leonard and William O'Reilly (eds.), The Atlantic World (Routledge, 2019)

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D. C. Coleman, Revisions in Mercantilism (Methuen, 1969)

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Jonathan Conlin (ed.), Great Economic Thinkers (Reaktion Books, 2018)

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William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company (Bloomsbury, 2020)

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Oliver M. Dickerson, The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1951)

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Eli Heckscher, Mercantilism (first published 1931; Routledge, 1994)

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J. W. Horrocks, A Short History of Mercantilism (Routledge, 2017)

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Terence Hutchison, Before Adam Smith: The Emergence of Political Economy, 1662-1776 (Wiley–Blackwell, 1988)

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Lars Magnusson, Mercantilism: The Shaping of an Economic Language (first published 1994; Routledge, 2015)

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Lars Magnusson, The Political Economy of Mercantilism (Routledge, 2015)

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Philipp Robinson Rössner, Freedom and Capitalism in Early Modern Europe: Mercantilism and the Making of the Modern Economic Mind (Palgrave Pivot, 2020)

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Eric Roll, A History of Economic Thought (5th edition, Faber & Faber, 2002)

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Ivano Cardinale and Roberto Scazzieri (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Political Economy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)

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Jacob Soll, Free Market: The History of an Idea (Basic Books, 2022)

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Philip J. Stern and Carl Wennerlind (eds.), Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire (Oxford University Press, 2013)

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P. J. Thomas, Mercantilism and the East India Trade (first published 1963; Routledge, 2020)


Koji Yamamoto, Taming Capitalism before its Triumph: Public Service, Distrust, and 'Projecting' in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 2021)


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Broadcasts

  • Thu 16 Mar 2023 09:00
    Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4
  • Thu 16 Mar 2023 21:30
    Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4

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