Mercantalism

The "Mercantile System" or commonly known as mercantilism has been the most viral thought in economics between 15th and 18th centuries. It's first sights are from Europe, this thought has taken nearly every big European country under it's Influence. Basically mercantilists thought maximizing exports and minimizing imports in a country's economy is the best way to make the economy efficient. They also think the world's wealth is static and to build wealth, governments should do some regulations in the trade. Tariffs are a good way to minimize the imports when government put high tariffs it's more expensive to import goods.

France, which is one of the countries that greatly affected from mercantilism, tried to apply the mercantilist policies through their finance general, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Colbert made some radical changes in the economy of France to increase the prosperity and to implement the policies of mercantilism.He increased the size of the French navy, because Colbert thought they had to protect and take control of their trade routes. These practices failed despite this his ideas went viral. Great Britain was one of the nations which affected from the mercantilism, applied it to the colonies for preventing them to buy from other countries. British government itself, compromised trading units: government wanted them to use just gold and silver for trades.Colonies couldn't use gold and silver efficiently in trades. So they used paper currency. In conclusion, government coudn't take control of printing money therefore this bad management caused inflation. When these situations was happening, Great Britain was nearly in war because of this taxes hugely increased.

Combination of those inflation and taxes led to displeasure. Even though

mercantilism's long term dominance, after Adam Smith - who is an anti mercantilist- wrote an economy book called "Wealth of Nations" in 1776.After the release of this book,mercantilism lost it's popularity because some classical economists like Adam Smith, David Hume etc. found some inaccurate things about mercantilists. In the wealth of nations book,Adam Smith told that world's wealth can change so it's not static and for governments it's impossible to give trade surplus forever.In the late 18th century,mercantilism was almost at an end nonetheless this perspective of economics is still making a name for itself.

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