Mercantilisme

Mercantilisme, or mercantilism, is an early modern economic doctrine that sought to increase a nation’s wealth and power by accumulating precious metals and maintaining a positive balance of trade. Proponents argued that wealth was finite and that national strength depended on state power to control the economy. To expand exports and limit imports, mercantilist policy favored tariffs, import restrictions, subsidies for domestic industries, and the granting of monopolies to favored companies. The state actively guided economic activity, built up naval power, and pursued colonial acquisitions to secure raw materials and new markets. Trade was conceived as a zero-sum game: a country’s gains came at the expense of others.

Mercantilist practice varied by country but shared common mechanisms: preferential duties, navigation laws, state-sponsored merchant companies, and colonial regulations designed to channel trade through the metropolis. In England, Colbertian influence in France, and to some extent in the Dutch Republic and Spain, governments used legislation to promote domestic production, protect infant industries, and regulate colonial trade under mercantile thinking. The system contributed to the growth of powerful centralized states and the emergence of an Atlantic mercantile economy.

Mercantilism began to decline in the late 18th century as economists such as Adam Smith criticized the assumptions of wealth in bullion and proposed liberalized trade. Its legacy includes the emphasis on national economic policy and the idea that state action can shape economic outcomes, influences that persisted in various forms of protectionism into the modern era.