At first glance, mercantilism, the prevalent economic theory of the 16th to 18th century, might seem like a relic of history; a discredited doctrine relegated to the archives alongside powdered wigs, long-barelled muskets, and absolutist monarchs.

It was, after all, in the 18th century that Adam Smith famously dismantled the “mercantile system” in The Wealth of Nations (1776), critiquing its zero-sum logic, its obsession with hoarding bullion, and its web of monopolies, tariffs, and restrictions that stifled both consumers and competition. In the centuries since, liberal economic theory and global markets have largely supplanted the view of trade as a strategic contest of national advantage. Or so the conventional narrative goes.

And yet, old language is resurfacing. References to mercantilism have become more common in the lexicons of industry leaders, political economists, and trade journalists alike.

Bridgewater, the world’s biggest hedge fund, has written about the shift toward modern mercantilism since President Trump’s return to the Oval Office. As has the Harvard Kennedy School, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, the New York Times, the Financial Times, and countless other economy-watchers from around the globe.

Some apply the term to describe China’s industrial and export strategy. Others gesture toward elements of US trade and industrial policy that prioritise domestic production, restrict outbound capital, and frame economic resilience as a matter of national security.

Whether or not these developments constitute a true return to mercantilism remains an open question, but the reappearance of the term itself is something worth examining. It suggests that the core anxieties that animated mercantilist thought have not entirely disappeared. They may have simply taken new forms, under new names.

To understand what may or may not be resurfacing today, one must first return to what mercantilism was. Despite its prominence in shaping early modern Europe and the foundations of global trade, mercantilism remains one of the most misunderstood economic systems. It was never a codified school of thought, but rather a constellation of policies and principles that evolved over two centuries. Mercantilism as a concept was only ever defined in hindsight, and the term didn’t become popularised until after the publication of Swedish economist Eli Heckscher’s influential 1935 book by the same name, over a century after the era ended.

In this article, we will attempt to present a historical overview of the mercantilist era, exploring its ideological foundations, practical mechanisms, and consequences both in Europe and abroad. Ultimately, our goal is not to draw parallels to the world today, but to provide a structured lens through which you, dear reader, can assess for yourself whether the present moment echoes the past, or merely borrows its vocabulary.

The origins and ideology of mercantilism

Mercantilist ideas took shape in the late Renaissance and early modern period as European kingdoms centralised political power and turned to overseas expansion. Practices resembling what would be called mercantilism could be observed as early as the 15th century​ when Italian city-states like Venice and Genoa sought to control the trade of bullion (that is, precious metal in its pure, uncoined form – typically gold or silver).

By the 16th century, Spain and Portugal had amassed overseas empires and were implementing policies to hoard precious metals and monopolise colonial commerce. Spain’s famed treasure fleets (the flota system) were instituted in 1565 to channel all American silver and goods through a few controlled ports and convoys​. This early bullionist approach made Spain temporarily wealthy, but it remained relatively poor by 1700 despite its New World riches​.

From the late 16th to early 17th century, mercantilism began to coalesce into a set of theoretical principles. Discussions among writers and officials across Europe tended to converge on the ideas that national power depends on (1) abundant treasure, (2) a favourable balance of trade, and (3) a large, hard-working population.

In England, Thomas Mun (1571-1641) argued in his England’s Treasure by Forraign Trade (published 1664) that export surpluses would enrich the kingdom. In France, Jean Bodin and later Antoine de Montchrétien (who wrote the 1615 Traicté de l’œconomie politique) advocated strong royal oversight of the economy. The Italian thinker Antonio Serra wrote one of the first treatises on political economy in 1613, emphasising how a nation could grow rich through industry and trade​.

These thinkers and others from the time all shared an implicit belief that trade was a zero-sum game. In other words, they believed that there was a finite amount of wealth to go around, so one country’s gain must come at another’s expense​.

Mercantilist ideology also stressed self-sufficiency and national development. Governments were urged to fully exploit domestic resources and cultivate local industries (so as not to depend on foreigners), and a large population was seen as an asset (more people meant more labour, more soldiers, more production, and a bigger internal market)​.

Mercantilist pamphleteers often argued that the poverty of the lower classes was useful to the nation’s wealth, believing that the poor should work hard and consume little. In fact, many mercantilists believed that labourers should live at a bare subsistence level, with no excess income or leisure that might breed idleness​. Too much prosperity among the masses was thought to lead to vice and laziness, and would result in harm to the economy​. Not all thinkers at the time agreed with this view. A lone dissenter, the English writer Daniel Defoe, argued that impoverishing workers could be counterproductive, anticipating later critics like Smith​.

Nevertheless, by the mid-17th century, the key tenets of mercantilist doctrine (the drive for bullion, trade regulation, colonial expansion, and state promotion of manufacturing) had become orthodox thinking in most of Europe’s courts and councils.

Economic policy and practice

In practical terms, mercantilist governments levied import duties on foreign goods and often banned the import of products that competed with local craftspeople. For example, France under Colbert imposed steep tariffs on imported textiles and encouraged the growth of French industries in silk, tapestries, glassware, and shipbuilding​. Britain, especially from the mid-17th century, likewise taxed foreign imports (such as Indian calicoes and French wines) and gave bounties to support strategic exports. Both countries also prohibited the export of key raw materials. England, for example, banned the export of unprocessed wool to ensure it was woven into cloth at home.

A cornerstone of mercantilist practice was the chartering of exclusive trading companies. European governments granted monopoly rights to companies like the English and Dutch East India Companies, giving them sole authority to trade in specific regions​. In return, these companies paid the state fees or a share of profits and served as instruments of national policy abroad. The Dutch East India Company (VOC, an abbreviation of its Dutch name, the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie) and British East India Company dominated the spice and textile trade but also acted as extensions of state power, raising armies, capturing territory, and enriching their home nations​.

Through such monopolies, mercantilist states sought to seize control of valuable commodities (like spices, tea, sugar, furs, etc.) and eliminate foreign competition. Mercantilist governments also invested in infrastructure and innovation to give their industries an edge. Colbert’s France famously built roads and canals to facilitate commerce​, and rewarded enterprises that improved manufacturing techniques. Britain, for its part, expanded its merchant fleet and naval power (financed by high customs revenues) to protect trade routes.

Both nations encouraged inventions and the transfer of foreign know-how. For example, France lured skilled craftsmen from abroad to introduce new crafts​, while Britain’s patent system incentivised domestic inventors. By improving internal transportation and technology, mercantilists hoped to increase productivity and output.

While mercantilists were protectionist toward foreign trade, they often freed up internal trade to create a unified national market. Colbert reduced or eliminated many internal tolls in France to enable goods to move freely within the country​. In England, the trend from Tudor times onward was to integrate regional markets (for instance, by draining marshlands like the Fens to create new farmland and improve agricultural output)​. The idea was that a stronger domestic economy, with interlinked regions and diverse industries, would make the nation less reliant on imports.

Differences did exist among countries in terms of how far they intervened. In Britain, mercantilist controls on the domestic economy were somewhat limited by common law and Parliament, focusing more on trade and colonies​. In absolutist France and other continental states, governments more freely regulated internal production (through guilds, royal ordinances, and price controls) as well as external trade. In Central Europe, where states had fewer colonies, mercantilist thinking took the form of cameralism, emphasising agrarian improvement, state mining, and population growth to build fiscal strength.

Notwithstanding regional variations, the goal of these mercantilist societies was to create a self-sufficient, export-oriented economy that would fund the state.

Political power, warfare, and statecraft

While predominantly thought of as being an economic theory, mercantilism was also a political strategy, closely intertwined with warfare and state-building. In an age of near-constant conflict, wealth and war-making capacity went hand in hand. Governments embraced mercantilism as an extension of raison d’état, using economic policies as tools of power politics. Mercantilism was effectively the economic version of warfare backed by state authority.

If global wealth was fixed (as mercantilist thinking assumed), the only way to increase one’s share was to take it from rivals, by force if necessary​. This mindset contributed to many 17th- and 18th-century wars. For example, the Anglo-Dutch Wars (a series of naval conflicts from the 1650s-1670s) were driven largely by competition over trade routes and overseas markets​. England’s Navigation Acts (starting in 1651) had attempted to exclude Dutch merchants from British trade, provoking military retaliation and fierce sea battles. Similarly, the Franco-Dutch War of 1672-1678 and other clashes had strong mercantile undertones, as nations sought to break each other’s trading monopolies and expand their own.

Mercantilist rivalry also fueled the great imperial wars of the 18th century. France and Britain, the two leading colonial powers of the time, fought multiple wars across Europe, North America, and Asia, aiming to strip each other of lucrative colonies and trade rights. The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) and the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) had clear mercantilist dimensions as the victors gained territories and trading privileges (Britain, for instance, secured exclusive rights to the Atlantic slave trade in Spanish America and took control of French Canada and India).

By the mid-18th century, Britain’s naval victories and colonial conquests had set the stage for the coming dominance of the British Empire. To pursue mercantilist policies, states developed stronger institutions and bureaucracies. Central governments expanded their reach, establishing boards of trade, national banks, and colonial offices to regulate commerce and finance wars. Taxation shifted toward customs duties and tariffs, which provided revenue to build navies and armies.

In Britain, a large portion of government income came from mercantilist trade duties, and those funds were poured into the Royal Navy​. The Navy, in turn, protected Britain’s shipping and colonies, and even captured foreign colonies, completing a mercantilist circle of expansion​. France, under Louis XIV, similarly used tariff income to maintain Europe’s largest standing army and to subsidise wars. Mercantilist administrators like Colbert in France or Walpole in Britain effectively linked economic policy with military might, ensuring that commerce served state interests.

Mercantilism also reinforced the power of the central state over domestic affairs. Because national wealth (in the form of bullion) was crucial for war, rulers were motivated to assert control over economies as never before. This dovetailed with the rise of absolutist monarchies.

In France, the crown’s tight grip on economic life (regulating guilds, pricing, and production) went hand in hand with the absolutism of Louis XIV. In the smaller Germanic states (Germany didn’t unify into a single nation-state until 1871), cameralist officials modernised administrations and tax systems to better mobilise resources for their respective armies. Even in constitutional Britain, Parliament and the Crown agreed on the need to use economic tools (i.e., tariffs, navigation laws, etc.) to strengthen the nation against France and the Dutch. Mercantilism provided a theoretical justification for expanding government intervention, as protecting and enriching the realm became seen as the state’s paramount duty.

Yet, reliance on mercantilism could also strain societies and state finances. The drive for colonies and dominance led to heavy (and often unprofitable) military spending. Spain’s 16th-century riches, for example, were squandered in wars of religion and empire, leading to multiple state bankruptcies and a weakened economy by 1700​. France’s incessant wars under Louis XIV left it financially exhausted despite Colbert’s mercantilist reforms. Britain’s strict mercantile control over the American colonies sowed discontent that eventually sparked the American Revolution (1775-1783).

Case Study: How British mercantilism led to the Boston Tea PartySince the middle of the 17th century, the American colonies had been legally bound (under the Navigation Acts) to trade only with Britain. Raw materials produced in the 13 colonies (such as cotton, sugar, and tobacco) had to be exported to the mother country, while finished goods were imported back at much higher prices. As the colonists grew economically self-sufficient and commercially ambitious, these rigid restrictions created immense resentment. Subsequent British policies like the Molasses Act (1733), the Sugar Act (1764), and the Townshend Acts (1767) reinforced the growing realisation that Britain was exploiting the colonies for its own gain. Smuggling flourished as colonists sought to bypass imperial controls. The 1773 Tea Act (which granted the British East India Company a monopoly on tea sales in the colonies) became the tipping point. In protest to the act, on 16 December 1773, a group of around 100 American colonists, many disguised as Mohawk warriors, boarded three British ships moored in Boston Harbour (the Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver) and spent about three hours methodically dumping 342 chests of tea into the waters off Griffin’s Wharf.The Boston Tea Party, as it became known, escalated tensions between Britain and the colonies, prompting the punitive Coercive Acts (sometimes called the Intolerable Acts, a series of four laws passed in 1774) and pushing America further down the path to revolution. Just over 16 months later, in April 1775, the shot heard round the world was fired at the Battles of Lexington and Concord, kicking off the 8-year war that would cost Britain its most profitable colonies.

Thus, while mercantilist policies could enhance state power in the short term, they also incurred costs and resistance that states had to manage. It contributed to the rise of large navies, colonial empires and professional civil services, all directed toward national aggrandisement. Diplomacy and warfare became inseparable from questions of trade and treasure.

By the 18th century, the contest for wealth and empire had truly become global in scale.

Colonial expansion and global trade

From its inception, mercantilism was closely linked to colonialism. European powers established overseas colonies explicitly to serve these mercantile aims, supplying raw materials and precious metals and providing captive markets for the mother country’s exports​. In the mercantilist view, colonies were economic assets to be exploited for the benefit of the metropolitan nation.

This mentality drove a frenetic race for colonial possessions in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. By the late 17th century, mercantilist competition had fuelled the imperialism of the era, with each nation striving to conquer territories rich in resources like gold or sugar​. Colonies were prized as sources of commodities that would otherwise drain gold to import. Spanish America yielded silver and gold; the West Indies produced sugar and rum; North America sent tobacco, rice, and furs; and the East Indies offered spices, tea, and textiles. Under mercantilist policy, all this wealth was to be funnelled home. Foreign powers were barred from colonial ports, and colonial goods had to be transported in the coloniser’s ships.

To enforce these arrangements, European states imposed strict colonial trade laws. In the British Empire, the Navigation Acts and subsequent laws forbade the American colonies from trading with other nations or even producing certain finished goods. Enumerated products like sugar, tobacco, and cotton could only be exported to England (or via English ports)​. The French similarly enforced an exclusive trade system (l’Exclusif) in their Caribbean and North American colonies. Spain maintained a rigid monopoly over its Latin American viceroyalties, allowing commerce only via annual treasure fleets to Cádiz or Seville​.

These restrictions often bred resentment and smuggling. Colonial merchants would clandestinely trade with rival powers when they could, undercutting the monopolies. Even so, for much of the 17th and early 18th centuries, the colonial mercantile system reaped enormous profits for Europe. It enabled the transfer of massive wealth (in the form of sugar, spices, tobacco, precious metals, and more) from the periphery to European capitals.

A central feature of the colonial economy was the transatlantic slave trade. Mercantilist empires depended on enslaved African labour on plantations in the Americas and the Caribbean. European traders exchanged manufactured goods (like guns, textiles, and metalware) for captives in West Africa, shipped those enslaved people in brutal conditions to plantation colonies, and brought back commodities like sugar, molasses, cotton, and indigo. This circuit is known as the triangular trade. It provided cheap labour for colonial exports and became hugely lucrative for European merchants.

Historians note that mercantilism, in practice, rested on what has been called “settler colonialism” and “capitalist slavery”, the seizure of land and the exploitation of enslaved workers to generate wealth​. By the 18th century, millions of Africans had been enslaved and transported to the Americas to power mercantilist production. The human cost was catastrophic. It brought depopulation and disruption of African societies, the deaths of countless captives in the Middle Passage, and the coerced labour of generations in the New World. Yet in mercantilist calculations, this labour was simply another input to maximise output for the mother country.

Colonised peoples around the globe felt the impact of these policies. In the Americas, indigenous populations were often decimated or dispossessed to make way for colonial enterprises, from Spanish silver mines in Peru to British tobacco plantations in Virginia. Surviving native communities were forced into labour systems (such as the encomienda and mita in Spanish colonies) or pushed to the margins of the new colonial order.

In European settler colonies like the North American coast, a class of European-descended planters and merchants prospered under mercantilism, but even they chafed at the metropolitan trade restrictions. The American colonists, for instance, grew increasingly angered by British tax and trade policies that favoured British interests at their expense​. This discontent culminated in open revolt and the breaking of the mercantile system in North America.

In South Asia, mercantilist penetration took the form of trade enclaves that turned into imperial domains. The British East India Company, initially one mercantile company among many, used a combination of firepower and diplomacy to gain control of Bengal and other parts of India by the mid-18th century. Although India was not a settler colony, it was subordinated to British mercantilist needs, with its textile industry gradually undercut to favour British manufacturers, and its raw cotton and opium becoming tools of British trade strategy.

Other regions experienced similar subordination. For example, Dutch mercantilists in Indonesia uprooted local clove and nutmeg production to impose their own monopoly, infamously depopulating the Banda Islands in the process.

Case Study: The VOC in the Banda IslandsIn the early 17th century, nutmeg was worth more than gold in Europe. This unassuming spice, grown almost exclusively in the Banda Islands of modern-day Indonesia, became the obsession of one of history’s most powerful trading companies: the Dutch East India Company, or VOC.Intent on establishing a monopoly, the VOC tried to force an agreement on the Bandanese people to grant the company a monopoly on all nutmeg trade across the islands. Since the Bananese system contained many village chiefs rather than a single centralised ruler, the “agreement” largely went unenforced by the tribes, who continued to trade with the British and others. This infuriated the VOC.Tensions escalated in 1621 when Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the ruthless VOC governor-general, led a military expedition on the islands to enforce Dutch rule. What followed was one of the most brutal episodes in the history of trade imperialism. Within weeks, an estimated 14,000 of the total Bandanese population of 15,000 were either killed or exiled, with the few survivors forced into servitude on the now-VOC-controlled nutmeg plantations.The Banda Island Massacre gave the VOC a near-total monopoly on nutmeg, which remained in Dutch hands for over a century. It became an early example of how mercantilist ambition could be enforced through violence and displacement. The Bandanese paid with their lives so the Dutch could control prices in European markets.

The social structure of colonial societies was profoundly shaped by mercantilism. Rigid racial hierarchies were often put in place to maintain control. European planters and officials sat atop a pyramid of coerced native and African labourers. Colonial cities like Boston, Kingston, Cartagena, or Batavia became boomtowns of trade, but their wealth was built on exploitation. The mercantile system enriched port merchants, shipowners, and European investors, while leaving labourers and indigenous peoples with little beyond hardship.

Some colonised regions saw the emergence of local elites (creole landowners, mixed-race traders) who benefited to a degree from the system, but they were even subject to the metropolitan rules.

By the late 18th century, cracks were appearing in the mercantilist colonial edifice. The American War of Independence dealt a severe blow to Britain’s closed imperial trade network, and elsewhere, economists and administrators began questioning whether colonial monopolies and trade restrictions truly benefited the home country in the long run. Nevertheless, the legacy of the mercantile age had already woven together Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas in a web of trade, conquest, and coercion. This early globalisation had irreversible effects on the demography, economies, and social structures of colonised lands, many of which still persist to this day.

Social implications in Europe

Mercantilism’s impact on European society was significant. One major effect was the rise of a merchant capitalist class whose wealth came from trade, shipping, and state contracts. Governments granted lucrative monopolies and trading privileges to merchants (for instance, chartered company shareholders or tax farmers), creating a new class of court capitalists tied to the state​.

At the same time, mercantilist policies had profound consequences for workers and artisans. By design, mercantilism favoured keeping labour abundant and cheap. Rulers and economists of the day frequently argued that low wages were necessary for national prosperity. They discouraged measures that might improve workers’ living standards, fearing that higher pay or more leisure would reduce the incentive to work​.

In mercantilist thought, poverty had a certain utility; if the common people remained hard-pressed, they would be more industrious. English Poor Law policies and French labour regulations in the 17th century often aimed to mobilise idle workers and curb wage growth. Where possible, states increased the labour supply (for example, by encouraging population growth or immigration of skilled craftsmen) to keep production expanding and wages in check​. The result was a social order in which merchant-employers (protected by the state) held considerable power over wage labourers and artisans.

Urban craft guilds also came under pressure. In France, Colbert’s ordinances brought many guilds under tighter state supervision to standardise production and quality​. Some guilds prospered under mercantilism due to state patronage (such as those producing luxury goods for export), but others saw their traditional privileges eroded if they conflicted with national policy. In England, by the 18th century, the rigid guild system was weakening in the face of expanding industrial workshops oriented toward export markets. Thus, mercantilism can be seen as hastening the decline of medieval economic institutions and paving the way for a more modern proto-industrial workforce.

The broader population experienced mercantilism in varied ways. Consumers often paid higher prices due to protective tariffs and the limited competition for certain goods. For instance, imported luxuries like Asian silks or American tobacco became expensive status symbols as a result of the high import tariffs. On the other hand, the influx of new commodities (such as sugar, tea, coffee, and chocolate) from the colonies gradually became more accessible and changed everyday life and diet for many Europeans. These comforts were the by-product of the mercantilist trade system (and the coerced labour that produced them abroad), and by the 18th century, a consumer revolution was underway in Europe despite mercantilist restrictions.

Mercantilism’s emphasis on population growth also had social implications. States promoted large families and tried to reduce the emigration of useful workers. France under Colbert gave incentives for having more children, and England prohibited the emigration of certain skilled artisans (to prevent industrial techniques from spreading to rival nations).

Within Europe, mercantilism contributed to the emergence of a new economic elite and the subordination of labour to the goals of the state. It reinforced a hierarchical social structure where merchants and state officials benefited most, while peasants, sailors, factory workers and artisans laboured under conditions dictated by national interest. Over time, the tensions inherent in this arrangement (i.e., between wealth and poverty, privilege and production) would spur debates about economic justice, eventually feeding into the revolutionary currents of the late 18th century.

Decline and legacy

By the late 18th century, mercantilist doctrine was coming under intense criticism. The very successes of mercantilism (burgeoning trade, wealthy merchants, and expanding empires) created new problems and new perspectives. Enlightenment thinkers began to question the heavy-handed state intervention and zero-sum logic of the mercantile system.

In France, the Physiocrats in the 1760s argued that agriculture, not trade, was the true source of wealth and that free trade in grain should replace restrictive mercantilist controls. In Britain, economists like Adam Smith lambasted mercantilism as a misguided policy that benefited producers and the government at the expense of consumers. Smith famously described the mercantile system as an artificial contrivance, a network of monopolies, and regulations that conflated money with wealth and treated trade as war. He and other classical economists contended that real wealth came from the productivity of labour and land, and that free trade (allowing each nation to specialise in what it produced best) would increase prosperity for all parties.

Practical events were also undermining mercantilism. The loss of the American colonies in 1783 showed the limits of colonial monopolies, as the United States promptly opened its trade to all nations. The costs of maintaining far-flung colonies and fighting trade wars were becoming hard to justify.

Some mercantilist policies were relaxed. For example, Britain gradually eased restrictions on its remaining colonies and in 1846 repealed its protectionist Corn Laws, marking a definitive turn toward free trade orthodoxy. Across Europe in the early 19th century, tariffs were lowered through bilateral agreements, and the notion of an open world economy began to gain favour. Nevertheless, mercantilism did not disappear overnight. Many European powers continued to practice forms of economic nationalism, from Napoleon’s Continental System (an embargo against British goods) to protective tariffs in Germany and the United States during their industrialisation.

Mercantilism’s legacy is a mixed one. On one hand, the policies of the period helped Europe accumulate capital, build powerful states, and integrate the world through trade (albeit on very unequal terms). The period from the 16th to the 18th century saw the transformation of the world economy, laying the foundations for the modern global economic system. On the other hand, mercantilism’s zero-sum mindset contributed to centuries of colonialism, conflict, and coercion, the effects of which lingered long after the ideology was supplanted. Mercantilism also taught hard lessons, such as the inefficiencies of overregulation, the moral outrages of slavery and conquest, and the economic stagnation that can result when competition is stifled.

So, are we entering into a new era of mercantilism?

Let’s return now to the modern world, and revisit the question posed at the beginning of this article of whether contemporary commenters are justified in asserting claims of a return to mercantilism. Having now briefly travelled through the political, economic, social, and military history of the time, we can start to form an idea of mercantilism’s defining traits.

These include:

• High tariffs on imports (especially manufactured goods) in order to protect domestic industries.
• Exclusive trading rights and monopolies, particularly in overseas colonies (since colonies were forbidden from trading with other nations).
• Export subsidies and promotion of domestic manufacturing (sometimes by importing skilled artisans or new technologies).
• Restrictions on bullion exports in order to keep precious metals within the country.
• Navigation Acts and laws to reserve shipping for the national fleet (i.e., barring foreign ships from carrying trade).
• Regulation of labour and wages to keep production costs low (i.e., legally limiting wage rates).
• The use of domestic resources to the fullest extent, and constraints on the domestic consumption of imported luxuries.
• Colonial policies that required raw materials to be exported to the metropole and finished goods to be imported back in return.
• Legal prohibitions on the development of certain industries in colonies to prevent competition with the mother country.
• Population growth incentives and restrictions on the emigration of skilled labour to maximise productive capacity.
• Creation of chartered companies (e.g., East India Companies) with quasi-governmental powers to control trade and territory.
• State investment in infrastructure (such as roads, canals, and ports) to facilitate domestic commerce and export capacity
• Expansion of customs duties and trade offices to monitor and enforce compliance with trade policy.
• Emphasis on building naval and military strength to secure trade routes and protect commercial interests.
• Promotion of a favourable balance of trade as a strategic objective of national policy and diplomacy.

Having retraced the course of history and defined these traits, it would be tempting to conclude with a neat comparison to the present. But that is not our intention here. We do not see it as our role to tell you what to think.

Some aspects of mercantilism may feel familiar: the resurgence of high tariffs, renewed emphasis on trade balances, rising military expenditures, or calls for shipping on national fleets. At the same time, many of the era’s defining traits – like state-sponsored monopolies, legal curbs on consumption, and colonial extractivism – seem far removed (at least in their historical form) from the present situation.

Nevertheless, the echoes, however fragmented they may be, are worth reflecting on. So, armed with this historical context, we leave you, dear reader, to ponder whether we are witnessing the return of mercantilist thinking or simply projecting old frameworks onto new realities.