ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides an overview of economic providentialism in the early modern period. It discusses the ancient origins of the idea, the way it was recorded in sixteenth-century confessions of faith, and some contours of the early modern debate. Providentialism ‘played a major role in the fashioning of the social thought’ of the period and was ‘frequently used in a functional way, that is, to influence national economic policy’. The proliferation of trading companies, the widespread enclosure of common lands, the establishment of central banks, and many other developments all in their own way contributed to the breakdown of the static economic order of the Middle Ages. The early modern promotion of the economic is clearly reflected in its attitude towards the merchant.
