• A "favorable balance of trade" is the major goal—more exports (in terms a value, not quantity) than imports to bring wealth to the home nation.13
• Nations should concentrate on producing marketable goods—cash products. (Adam Smith advocates national specialization in The Wealth of Nations.)
• Nations should limit the importation of goods and services as much as possible so as to prevent the exporting of gold.
• It is necessary to accumulate silver and gold as bulwarks of national wealth and power.
• All the major nations were mercantilist; each European nation practiced some form of mercantilism. Spain tried to control metals, France regulated internal trade, the Dutch controlled external trade, and so on.
Great Britain had four major aims in its mercantile policy:
• Encourage growth of a native merchant marine fleet (which would include colonial ships.)
• Protect English manufacturers from foreign competition.
• Protect English agriculture, especially grain farmers.
• Accumulate as much hard money as possible. (Americans had to pay for everything with hard currency, which was scarce in the colonies. Instead, they often paid with tobacco or other goods in lieu of cash. Colonial paper was not legal tender in England. The coins that actually circulated in America were often Spanish or Dutch, if they could be obtained.)
Note: The American colonies were a small part of a worldwide system. Although the Americans occasionally chafed under the restrictions placed upon them, they rarely doubted that they benefited from being part of the Empire, with all its protections. For example, colonial ships sailed under the protection of the Royal Navy, no small thing in an age of piracy.
World History
