ABSTRACT
Adam Smith wrote his bible of capitalism, The Wealth of Nations, to expose mercantilism and to promote free trade. However, his description of eighteenth-century mercantilist trade describes well the protomercantilist trade between the cities and countryside 600 years earlier and mirrors the neomercantilist trade between developed and undeveloped nations for the next 223 years when the world was operating under his philosophy. For neomercantilists to restructure their overt plunder of weak societies into covert plunder through inequalities of trade, it was necessary to ignore statements in The Wealth of Nations that contradicted neoclassical trade philosophy. The economic philosophy of the time held that the colonial role in trade was to serve as the source of raw materials and the market for British manufacture, and never to usurp the manufacturing function. The Grand Strategy of Britain to control the industry and markets of the American colonies, acutely restricting their wealth accumulation, was the primary reason for the American war of independence.
