In Mercantilism Reimagined, the editors Philip J. Stern and Carl Wennerlind, although positioning themselves in a long scholarly tradition of thinking about—or criticizing—mercantilism, have avoided limiting the volume to a discussion about the factual existence or theoretical range of “mercantilism.” Rather, they aimed to gauge the set of ideas traditionally ascribed to mercantilism, such as “power and plenty, wealth and money, balance of power, private and public good, labor and land, free trade and monopolism, populationism and emigration, state and commerce,” in the light of current scholarship on each of these components (p. 4).
The chapters follow the implication that “mercantilism” cannot be studied as a school of economic thought or set of policies alone, but needs to be understood in the context of contemporary socioeconomic challenges, intellectual currents, and political ideas and policies. The attempt to embed and contextualize mercantilism more broadly reflects a refinement of economic thought that can be found not only among economic theorists, but also in botany, sermons, or among the non-national practices of smugglers. But it also mirrors the conviction that “the common vision of a mercantile system premised upon a coherent, strong, and expansive nation-state is simply unsustainable” (p. 5). Mercantilism Reimagined thus critiques a long tradition of thinking about the early modern period primarily as the age of state formation and thus overemphasizing the efficacy of early modern state organization.
According to these assumptions, the first two parts (“Circulation” and “Knowledge”) interweave “mercantilism” with concrete socioeconomic challenges of population and demographic thought (Ted McCormick), unfree and free labor in the Atlantic World (Abigail Swingen), and the question of money supply or the debate about money's (intrinsic) value (Carl Wennerlind). The interconnectedness of mercantilist ideas and scientific insights (Thomas Leng) and natural history (Fredrik Albritton Jonsson) leads us to a comparison of mercantilist ideas with German cameralism (Andre Wakefield), which—in spite of its similarities to “mercantilism” in its reflections on science, natural history, improvement, or politics—embedded these ideas in different institutional contexts of university education.
If the first two parts of the volume contextualize “mercantilism” in a broader social and intellectual context, Part 3 (“Institutions”) examines institutions and political entities that competed with and challenged the state's assertiveness—such as trading companies (see Philip Stern's contribution), corporations (Henry S. Turner), the Anglican church (Brent S. Sirota), or networks of piracy or smuggling (Niklas Frykman). Part 4 explicitly examines the weaknesses of the early modern state and highlights the ways in which it failed to regulate or control the market (Anne L. Murphy) or consumer behavior (Martyn J. Powell).
Engaging with István Hont's work (Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective [2005]), the last section explores the effects of commercial and political rivalries on supposedly mercantilist international politics. John Shovlin shows that, in contrast to the widely believed bellicosity of mercantilist politics, economic thinkers of the “mercantilist age” rarely issued calls to arms for commercial reasons. Rather, commerce and its inherent competition on an international stage functioned as a substitute for war, overriding dynastic politics. According to Sophus Reinert, political and economic rivalry must be explored in the context of the perceived inequalities of wealth and power between European states generated by international trade. Pursuing one's self-interest in an internationally competing trade (as a zero-sum game) sometimes also led, as Victor Enthoven explains, to a policy of neutrality.
The volume offers a kaleidoscope of case studies that each challenge our way to think about the concept “as a shorthand for a set of ideas” (p. 3). The collected analyses aim to inspire new embedded readings that connect economic thought, policies, and intellectual currents. Hence, instead of offering a set of answers or a definition of “mercantilism,” the anthology supplies researchers “working all across early modern Europe” with a set of questions that seem long overdue if we want to emancipate ourselves from the veiling, rather than revealing, debate over the right definition of “mercantilism,” or to understand an era's specific interests in the concept (that Craig Muldrew addresses in his afterword) (p. 8).
The volume assumes that the economy was not seen as an independent sphere before the nineteenth century, but it also makes clear that the twinning of “absolutism” and “mercantilism” (and thus the supremacy of state policies) must be abandoned. This is held to be true not solely in the case of Britain, where parliamentary ambition and republican ideas competed with the centralization of power; the limitations of early modern state power were, according to the authors, the same all over Europe (p. 13). This, however, calls for a broader European reimagination of “mercantilism,” if we do not want to think of the concept as a particularly British phenomenon, which the editors’ reference to Steven Pincus's interpretation of mercantilism as a British partisan discussion between Whig and Tory could suggest (p. 7). The volume, although predominantly assembling chapters around British political economy (as the subtitle announces), attempts to challenge its own British perspective (however without further addressing the question of national particularities) through the study of German cameralism and Spanish economic ideas. The lack of a coherent Spanish mercantilist theory that can, according to Regina Grafe, be explained by the polycentrism of the Spanish state “calls to arms,” so the editors declare, and causes British historians to rethink mercantilism for the “Atlantic Archipelago” (p. 15). However, one might want to add, if the broader European perspective should inform British historians, should not these case studies of mainly British origin also encourage us to reimagine “mercantilism” as a European phenomenon? This, however, might give us various disparate images of the Smithian assessment of a “mercantilist system.” And although the editors hardly attempted to defend the concept from its critics, yet deliberately decided not to discard it altogether, their “call to arms” might make the widespread concept of mercantilism analytically superfluous.
The volume and the questions that it raises is a very welcome contribution to a scholarly discussion of “mercantilism” and gives its informed readers a great deal to think about. It succeeds in challenging us to reflect on how the concept of “mercantilism” can help to critically assess the particularities of early modern political economy without employing it as an empty shibboleth to talk about its characteristics.
