ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the discussions related to the issue of Mercantilism. The chapter summarise the arguments put forward in this long discussion. The enduring interest that economists, economic historians and historians of economic thought have taken in the topic of Mercantilism is baffling. Hence a lively debate concerning its interpretation opened up more than a hundred years ago - and has been going on ever since. The chapter shows that Heckscher set out to show how mercantilist thinking was obsessed with an elevated attitude of the role of money. Hence economic development, according to the mercantilists, depended upon a circulation of money. It was this argument rather than mystical belief in the wealth-creating capacity of money that helped to explain the mercantilist's high propensity of money. Heckscher also discuss Mercantilism as a conception of society. In a recent edited work on Mercantilism, its editors Paul Stern and Carl Wennerlind suggested 'rethinking Mercantilism' but not necessarily abandoning the concept.
