Let's work those history muscles and see if we can nail it down to at least a specific decade while still trying to stay on the right side of the evolutionary theory literature
Let's work those history muscles and see if we can nail it down to at least a specific decade while still trying to stay on the right side of the evolutionary theory literature
Would you say that sort of mercantilism was:
a) a necessary antecedent of capitalism, from which the true elements of capitalism directly emerged?
b) a separate response to some of the same societal forces that would eventually produce capitalism, and its evolution was more a cousin than an ancestor?
c) a dead-end whose similarities to capitalism are wholly superficial, neither a proto-capitalism nor parallel system?
To me, a) seems the most correct, a period of transition to capitalism.
But I'm not OP
To kind of address your answer, I just don't feel comfortable drawing a line between the Genoan/Venetian-style Mercantilism I'm mostly referring to and Capitalism like this. I wouldn't say there isn't a connection there, just that you'd have to make the case to me; perhaps there is some link involving places like the Hanseatic League that completes that circuit and I just don't know enough about it.
c) would be the closest from what I know
The way I see it this Mercantilism much like capitalism is a system that finds its space between the cracks of established feudal social orders, but it finds this space because of a lack of technology on the part of the feudal ruler to effectively project their power across the same types of distances these merchant families could; whereas capitalism finds its toehold as the feudal social order starts to break down.
So I guess I would say they are parallels in-so-far as they both arose out of a (social? power?) vacuum left by the inefficiencies of the Feudal order, with those inefficiencies characterized by the differing historical circumstances of the two periods / geographic locations / loci of global power at the time (Mediterranean vs. North Seas)