mercantilist

Updated: May 31, 2025

From our past study of the commercial and colonial wars of the eighteenth century, especially those between France and Great Britain, we have already learned that mercantilist ideas were still dominant in foreign commerce. We have noted the heavy protective tariffs which were designed to shut out foreign competition.

Carlton J. H. Hayes - A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1.

Moreover, the mercantilist theory, having in this case produced such unfortunate results, henceforth began to lose ground, and it is not without interest that Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, the classic expression of the new political economy of free trade, of laisser-faire, as the French styled it, which was destined to supplant mercantilism, was published in 1776, the very year of the declaration of American independence.

Carlton J. H. Hayes - A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1.