Politics and economics of markets

Abstract

Although the benefits of competition and free trade have dominated political approaches to economic policy for the last thirty years or so, the ideological framework for such ideas dates mostly from the beginning of the nineteenth century. In this essay, I will make the case that political economy first evolved from the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a means of dealing with the problem of overpopulation and lack of agricultural employment by advocating the benefits of market-oriented commercialisation to provide industrial work. This was further expanded as foreign trade and colonisation became seen as means to economic growth and specifically national wealth. Writers were generally strongly oriented towards the nation state as the instrument of government to promote industrial policy, and most, although not all, authors thought that a surplus of industrial exports was the best policy to promote growth. The state which was most successful at implementing such policies was England and then Britain. This essay will focus on both the evolution of writings concerning political economy and government policy in the strongest commercial states of the period from 1600 to 1800, England, France and the United Provinces.