Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire

415 Pages·2013·2.695 MB·English

by  Philip J. Stern, Carl Wennerlind

Mercantilism Reimagined
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Mercantilism Reimagined
Political Economy in Early
Modern Britain and Its Empire
Edited by Philip J. Stern
and
Carl Wennerlind
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mercantilism reimagined : political economy in early modern
Britain and its empire / edited Philip J. Stern and Carl Wennerlind.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-19-998853-2 (alk. paper)
1. Mercantile system—Great Britain.
2. Great Britain—Commercial policy.
I. Stern, Philip J. II. Wennerlind, Carl.
HB91.M427 2013
382 (cid:2) .3094109042—dc23 2013009336
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
contents

Contributors vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 3
Philip J. Stern and Carl Wennerlind
Part One : Circulation
1. Population: Modes of Seventeenth-Century Demographic Th ought 25
Ted McCormick
2. Labor: Employment, Colonial Servitude, and Slavery in the
Seventeenth- Century Atlantic 4 6
Abigail Swingen
3. Money: Hartlibian Political Economy and the New Culture of Credit 74
Carl Wennerlind
Part Two : K nowledge
4. Epistemology: Expertise and Knowledge in the World of Commerce 97
Th omas Leng
5. Natural History and Improvement: Th e Case of Tobacco 117
Fredrik Albritton Jonsson
6. Cameralism: A German Alternative to Mercantilism 134
Andre Wakefi eld
Part Th ree : Institutions
7. Corporations: Humanism and Elizabethan Political Economy 153
Henry S. Turner
8. Companies: Monopoly, Sovereignty, and the East Indies 177
Philip J. Stern
9. Th e Church: Anglicanism and the Nationalization of Maritime Space 196
Brent S. Sirota
10. Pirates and Smugglers: Political Economy in the Red Atlantic 218
Niklas Frykman
Part Four : Regulation
11. Polycentric States: Th e Spanish Reigns and the “Failures” of Mercantilism 241
Regina Grafe
12. Financial Markets: Th e Limits of Economic Regulation
in Early Modern England 263
Anne L. Murphy
13. Consumption: Commercial Demand and the Challenges to Regulatory
Power in Eighteenth-Century Ireland 282
Martyn J. Powell
Part Five : Confl ict
14. War and Peace: Trade, International Competition, and Political Economy 305
John Shovlin
15. Neutrality: Atlantic Shipping in and aft er the Anglo-Dutch Wars 328
Victor Enthoven
16. Rivalry: Greatness in Early Modern Political Economy 348
Sophus A. Reinert
Aft erword: Mercantilism to Macroeconomics 371
Craig Muldrew
Index 385
contributors
Fredrik Albritton Jonsson is assistant professor of history at the University of Chicago.
He is the author of Enlightenment’s Frontier: Th e Scottish Highlands and the Origins
of Environmentalism (Yale University Press, 2013).
Victor Enthoven is assistant professor of history at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
He is the co-editor, with Johannes Postma, of Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch
Trade and Shipping, 1585–1817 (Brill, 2003).
Regina Grafe is professor of Early Modern History at the European University
Institute, Florence, Italy. She is the author of D istant Tyranny: Markets, Power, and
Backwardness in Spain, 1650–1800 (Princeton University Press, 2012).
Niklas Frykman is assistant professor of history at Claremont McKenna College. He
is currently working on a monograph exploring maritime radicalism in the revo-
lutionary Atlantic around the turn of the nineteenth century.
Th omas Leng is lecturer in history at the University of Sheffi eld. He is the author
of B enjamin Worsley (1618–1677): Trade, Interest and the Spirit in Revolutionary
England (Th e Royal Historical Society, 2008).
Ted McCormick is associate professor of history at Concordia University. He is the
author of William Petty and the Ambitions of Political Arithmetic (Oxford University
Press, 2009).
Craig Muldrew is reader on the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge.
He is the author of Th e Economy of Obligation: Th e Culture of Credit and Social
Relations in Early Modern England (Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), and Food, Energy
and the Creation of Industriousness: Work and Material Culture in Agrarian England
(Cambridge, 2011).
Anne L. Murphy is a senior lecturer in early modern history at the University of
Hertfordshire. She is the author of Th e Origins of the English Financial Markets:
Investment and Speculation before the South Sea Bubble (Cambridge University
Press, 2009).
Martyn J. Powell is senior lecturer and head of department in the Department of
History and Welsh History at Aberystwyth University. He is the author most re-
cently of Piss-Pots, Printers, and Public Opinion in Eighteenth-Century Dublin (Four
Courts, 2009).
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viii Contributors
Sophus A. Reinert is assistant professor of business administration at the Harvard
Business School. He is the author of T ranslating Empire: Emulation and the O rigins
of Political Economy (Harvard University Press, 2011).
John Shovlin is associate professor of history at New York University. He is the author
of Th e Political Economy of Virtue: Luxury, Patriotism, and the Origins of the French
Revolution (Cornell University Press, 2006).
Brent S. Sirota is assistant professor of history at North Carolina State University. He is
the author of the forthcoming book Th e Christian Monitors: Th e Church of England
and the Age of Benevolence, 1680–1730 (Yale University Press, 2014).
Philip J. Stern is associate professor of history at Duke University. He is the author of
Th e Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the
British Empire in India (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Abigail Swingen is assistant professor of history at Texas Tech University. She is the
author of Competing Visions of Empire: Labor, Slavery, and the Origins of the British
Atlantic Empire (Yale University Press, forthcoming).
Henry S. Turner is associate professor of English at Rutgers University. He is the au-
thor of Th e English Renaissance Stage: Geometry, Poetics, and the Practical Spatial
Arts, 1580–1630 (Oxford University Press, 2006).
Andre Wakefi eld is professor of history at Pitzer College. He is the author of Th e Dis-
ordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice (University of Chi-
cago Press, 2009).
Carl Wennerlind is associate professor of history at Barnard College, Columbia Uni-
versity. He is the author of Casualties of Credit: Th e English Financial R evolution,
1620–1720 (Harvard University Press, 2011).
Acknowledgments
Mercantilism Reimagined emerged from a workshop held at Barnard College in the
spring of 2009. We gratefully thank Th e University Seminars at Columbia University
and the Barnard College Provost Offi ce for generously providing fi nancial support for
this event, as well as the Barnard College Special Events staff for logistical assistance.
As this volume has been long in the making, we have incurred numerous intellectual
debts to scholars with whom we have discussed the issue of mercantilism at our respec-
tive institutions and at various academic conferences, a list too long to reproduce here.
We would like, however, to thank especially the anonymous readers from the press,
Lisa Tiersten for helpful suggestions about the introduction, our editor, Sonia Tycko,
for her perceptive advice, as well as Carolyn Arena, Andrew Ruoss, and Pierre-Etienne
Stockland for valuable support and assistance.
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