Camarolism is a body of thought in Germany, Saxony and Prussia which divides public administration into public finance, public administration and policymaking. It's not principally concerned with overseas trade, although it is talking about state aid in the form of protectionism. Camarolism does remain the economic orthodoxy in German-speaking lands. But there are plenty of British envoys to Prussia who come back and say they obviously haven't read Adam Smith. The real challenge for the Prussian state in the late 17th and 18th century is one of state building. And if you look at it from the standpoint of 1870, then yes, it's stunningly successful because the Pr
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