ABSTRACT
It is certainly an oversimplification to argue-as done by Barry Supple and Joyce Oldham Appleby-that the new ‘mercantilistic’ discourse which emerged from 1620 onwards was an ‘ideology of a competitive era’.1 Such an interpretation tends to downplay the independent role of discourse and put too much emphasis on its function as a rational manifestation of real events. Most certainly, as for example Coleman has argued, it is difficult in this respect to draw a clear line of demarcation around 1620. Was not the English economy highly competitive even before this date? Could it not be stated that England had long been a commercial society? What was it in the economic environment which would have been pivotal for the birth of a new economic ideology in the 1620s?2
