The idea about the re-exports that we've mentioned with Mun, that came from an Italian thinker called Sarah. And also in terms of Italy, it's more city-states that are often in competition with each other and often at war with each other. That sort of idea we can associate particularly with Machiavelli and his ideas of really cutthroat competition between different city-states. It has an impact as well in this idea that you have to compete in this zero-sum game or you will be trampled down.
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