Cameralism, Mercantilism and the Making of the Modern Economic Mind

This chapter introduces and summarizes the argument of the book on how mercantilism and its continental variant(s) Cameralism represented foundational cornerstones of capitalism and economic modernity. This transcends traditional historians’ debates on industrial and trade policy (which I will only summarize briefly)—where mercantilist policy and thought are commonly located, introducing aspects of wider industrial policy, regulation and especially Cameralism as a pan-European discourse that positively connected free markets and tried to reconcile laissez-faire with proactive rulers and states intervening in the common weal or common economy in an effective way so as to reduce inequality and promote good social and economic development. Commonly understood as a continental variant or Sonderweg of mercantilism, I argue instead that British or insular mercantilism represented a Sonderweg within a very multifaceted and dynamic system of pan-European economic discourses and political economies commonly summarized as “Cameralism”. I argue that Cameralism needs, ultimately, to be written in the plural, as it can be found not only in the Germanies, i.e. the countries located within the Holy Roman Empire. Cameralism is now understood to have reached from Portugal and Spain to Finland and Norway. But I will focus on the German-speaking lands (where the older literature has commonly located Cameralism), in order to make a point pars pro toto that capitalism’s first language was not English, and that mercantilism (or Cameralism) was much more than a political economy attuned to either the need of the ruler (or centralized) state or a minority of rent seeking individual merchants and capitalists. Cameralists were mainly interested in raising the welfare of the common weal or nation in general. Attuned to each and individual circumstances in situ, Cameralist political economy thus provided rational strategies of empowering competitive laissez-faire and economic development in situ, attuned to its individual circumstances on the ground. With Cameralism we thus have an unusual suspect for modern capitalism; far transcending mercantilism as commonly understood by historians of early modern Europe and histories of economic thought.