ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the domestic economic policies of the contending national states and the extent to which their policies, often lumped together under the rubric of mercantilism, helped create the preconditions for takeoff. It reviews the policies initiated and the economic changes stimulated by governments. In the pre-industrial modernization of Europe, phases of special, intense effort left significant marks on the structure of policy and on the economy itself. In making executive policy, the upper nobility in Russia, was grouped in the Boyarskaya Duma, an advisory council to the sovereign. In Peter's efforts form part of a gathering trend in Russian history, and some relaxation in the state's pressure, the modernization of Russia continued beyond his death in 1725. Spain, the coming of the House of Bourbon in 1700 reversed the decline of the previous century and launched a wide-ranging process of unification and modernization in Colbertian style and image.
