ABSTRACT
A fitting motto for the unification affected by mercantilism might be found in Ovid's line Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas-even though it lacked the power, its efforts are deserving of praise. Mercantilism had to leave much of its work of unification for its successors to complete. Their work consisted to a large extent in completing that which mercantilist statesmen had striven for but did not achieve and they became, as it were, its executors. Vandal says of Napoleon that from the administrative point of view he organized not the Revolution but the ancien regime. This can be applied to the new phase in the economic history of Western Europe. It was the 19th century which coordinated and realized mercantilism as an agent of unification. Why did mercantilism fail and its successors succeed in the endeavour common to both?
