ABSTRACT
Mercantilism was utilised in order to describe an economic policy regime characterised by direct state intervention in order to protect domestic merchants and manufacturers in accordance with the regulative policies of Louis xiv's finance minister, Colbert. It is traditionally designates a system of economic policy and an epoch in the development of economic thinking during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The practical orientation of the mercantilist writers in general, they nevertheless proposed a principle: namely that a country must export more than it imports which would lead to a net inflow of bullion. This was the core of the much-discussed so-called positive balance of trade theory. Mercantilism was never a well-structured doctrine built on a number of well-settled principles by which one could describe economic behaviour and/or prescribe the right policy measures. From smith to Viner in the 1930s the orthodox view that the mercantilist writers had confused money with wealth has been repeated over and over again.
