ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we sensed the rise of a new discourse dealing with economic issues during the turbulent 1620s. During the rest of the seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries, the new framework was used by pamphleteers and economic debaters for the purpose of discussing short-and long-run economic problems. Not only the favourable balanceof-trade formula came into use. Also, the notion that the economic realm was a system regulated by the forces of supply and demand was increasingly applied. It was used to defend certain protective measures against France, or to urge for more freedom of trade. It was used in order to discuss monetary issues such as the need for new and better coins, or the heated issue of debasement. It was utilised in the discussion whether the interest rate ought to be kept down by law or not, etc. As a consequence, a specified type of economic analysis building on the groundwork of Mun and Misseldon was further developed. But it was really not until the end of the seventeenth century that we can see the establishment of a more general discourse which aimed to link these bits and pieces together in a more coherent discourse system we may call ‘mercantilism’. Thus it was especially in the 1690s that such a ‘science of trade’ emerged which concentrated on how the market process in general, and increased foreign trade in particular, might increase the wealth and power of a national economy. During this decade a number of economic writers sought to establish the principles upon which an independent system based on commerce and trade was based. In this chapter we will deal with the separate discussions which occurred up until 1690. In the ensuing chapter we will look on how these separate discussions were pieced together in a more general discourse of mercantilism at the end of the seventeenth century. In this context we will also present some of the leading mercantilist writers of this period.
