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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Mercantilism vs. Free Trade: The Early Years

Mises Daily: Saturday, September 14, 2013 by Chi-Yuen Wu
The overseas discoveries in the last decades of the fifteenth century had widened the boundaries of international trade and had given rise to a change in its nature and an expansion of its volume. As a result of the opening of the new silver mines between 1540 and 1600 in America, Europe was supplied with an abundance of money metals and thus the establishment of a real price economy was facilitated. That change in commerce together with the extension in the use of money accelerated the development of the new spirit of private enterprise and paved the way for the triumph of the moneyed classes. In fact, the time had come for a transition from a number of local economies to a national economy, from feudalism to commercial capitalism, from a state of comparatively little trade to an epoch of extensive international commerce. That change in the economic structure is sometimes called by economic historians the “Commercial Revolution.”
In the world of thought, that change in the economic structure found its expression in what is known as “Mercantilism.”…..To ReadMore….

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