Workshop of Mercantilism

Lecture: The Age of Mercantilism: An Interpretation of the American Political Economy, 1763 to 1828

Link of the text:http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2936899?uid=3737808&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21101124184841

This text talk about the American History from 1763 to 1828, taking to account the development of the American mercantilism. 

Everything start in the time of the colony in America, and in that time starts the expantion and empire of mercantilism as the new economy project in Europe and in America, and that was shared by the most of the revolutionary generation. 

They wanted to use the Adam Smith´s polemic about the critical of the British mercantilism that the british were willing to introduce to America. 

The idea of the mercantilism was that that system was "to build a dynamic balanced economy of agriculture and business organized on a capitalistic basis within a nationalistic framework".

Basically the mercantilists were nationalists people who wanted their own welfare and wanted to keep the domestic production. So they created a concept of this people and their system and was a "economic nationalism of mercantilism". 

They were a lot of expansionist problems, between America and England, becuase Americans where really scared about the stability of economy. They wanted to protect the navegation acts, artisans, agriculture, and wanted help in balancing their political economy. 

In 1786 James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson a letter that said that a self-sufficient economy was and anarchy and it was unfavorable to the acomulation of metals and the new politics affects the moral and the politics in the state. 

To undestand Madison´s judgment there are three thesis: "First, Madison used the verb "extend" in its active, unlimited sens. Second, he was stating a general theory, not making an argument in behalf of a given territorial sttlement. And third, he avocated and vigorously supported the continued expansion of the United States." He was proposing, as a guide to policy and action in his own time. 

Madison´s theory was the key of American mercantilism. And it was really importante for two reasons: First, in his theory he was combining commercial and territorial expansion with the political democracy and second the idea of empire, and expansion has the key of national welfare. 

But then came the thory of the physiocrats, that was the recognition of the land agriculture, the nature resorces. So it was kind of the same idea of the system that where proposed by Adam Smith, so there were a lot of clonflict about that system too. The really important thing was to expand the wealth and material goods.

Then about 1790 appears Hamilton with a new idea of mercantilism and he was more advanced that Madison in the way that he argued that England had to be courted while the United States built a navy and second he stressed the political side of mercantilism. 

Then a year later Jefferson began to shift away from the physiocratic dogma of free trade. He never like the industry and that stuff because he said that had a bad impact in politic, morals and established a life style to all humans, but in that way he never underestimated the domestic work. 

Finally mercantilism was one of the causes of the crisis of the 1890 later, and had a bad activity in society economy favoring just a little part of the community, and was the cuase too for creating a new corporated and stable system