Mercantilism
inWestern colonialisminEuropean expansion before 1763
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Written by
Harry Magdoff,
Richard A. Webster•All
Fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Article History
By the time the term mercantile system was coined in 1776 by the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, European states had been trying for two centuries to put mercantile theory into practice. The basis of mercantilism was the notion that national wealth is measured by the amount of gold and silver a nation possesses. This seemed proven by the fact that Spain’s most powerful years had occurred when it was first reaping a bullion harvest from its overseas possessions.
The mercantile theory held that colonies exist for the economic benefit of the mother country and are useless unless they help to achieve profit. The mother nation should draw raw materials from its possessions and sell them finished goods, with the balance favouring the European country. This trade should be monopolistic, with foreign intruders barred.
The Spanish fleet system
Spain acted upon the as-yet-undefined mercantile theory when, in 1565, it perfected the fleet (flota) system, by which all legal trade with its American colonies was restricted to two annual fleets between Seville and designated ports on the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean. The outgoing ships bore manufactured articles; returning, their cargoes consisted partly of gold and silver bars. Though the system continued for nearly two centuries, Spain was a poor country by 1700.
French mercantilist activities
Ignoring this lesson, other European states adopted the mercantilist policy; the France of Louis XIV and Colbert is the outstanding example. Colbert, who dominated French policy for 20 years, strictly regulated the economy. He instituted protective tariffs and sponsored a monopolistic merchant marine. He regarded what few overseas possessions France then had as ultimate sources of liquid wealth, which they were poorly situated to furnish because they lacked such supplies of bullion as Spain controlled in Mexico and Peru.
The English navigation acts
England adhered to mercantilism for two centuries and, possessing a more lucrative empire than France, strove to implement the policy by a series of navigation acts. The first, passed by Oliver Cromwell’s government in 1651, attempted chiefly to exclude the Dutch from England’s carrying trade: goods imported from Africa, Asia, or America could be brought only in English ships, which included colonial vessels, thus giving the English North American merchant marine a substantial stimulus. After the royal Restoration in 1660, Parliament renewed and strengthened the Cromwellian measures. By then colonial American maritime competition with England had grown so severe that laws of 1663 required colonial ships carrying European goods to America to route them through English ports, where a duty had to be paid, but from lack of enforcement these soon became inoperative. In the early 18th century the English lost some of their enthusiasm for bullion alone and placed chief emphasis on commerce and industry. The Molasses Act of 1733 was in the interest of the British West Indian sugar growers, who complained of the amount of French island molasses imported by the mainland colonies; the French planters had been buying fish, livestock, and lumber brought by North American ships and gladly exchanging their sugar products for them at low prices. Prohibition of colonial purchases of French molasses, though decreed, went largely unenforced, and New England, home of most of the carrying trade, continued prosperous.
The old colonial system and the competition for empire (18th century)
Faith in mercantilism waned during the 18th century, first because of the influence of French Physiocrats, who advocated the rule of nature, whereby trade and industry would be left to follow a natural course. François Quesnay, a physician at the court of Louis XV of France, led this school of thought, fundamentally advocating an agricultural economy and holding that productive land was the only genuine wealth, with trade and industry existing for the transfer of agricultural products.
Adam Smith adopted some physiocratic ideas, but he considered labour very important and did not altogether accept land as the sole wealth. Smith’s Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), appearing just as Britain was about to lose much of its older empire, established the basis of new economic thought—classical economics. This denigrated mercantilism and advocated free, or at least freer, trade and state noninterference with private enterprise. Laisser-faire et laisser-aller (“to let it alone and let it flow”) became the slogan of this British economic school. Smith thought that regulation only reduced wealth, a view in part adopted by the British government 56 years after his death.
