Mun: trade and treasure

David Reisman ()

Chapter 6 in Mercantilism, 2025, pp 68-83 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Mun, a director of the East India Company, wrote in defence of chartered monopolies. The East India Company had a special license to export specie in the first instance but rebuilt the nation's treasure through imports of raw materials and subsequent reexports to third markets. Consumption of luxuries should not be encouraged because of the adverse effect it has on foreign trade. Internal trade is not a source of wealth. Foreign trade is services such as shipping and freight as well as tangible commodities. Full employment at good wages is favourable to marriage and natural increase of population. Mun put exports above imports. He knew that trade has to be a multilateral seamless web, not just unilateral gain-seeking, in order to diffuse the ability to pay. Domestic manufacturing produces commodities for export. England must not be an entrepôt like Holland. Mun discussed the quantity theory of money and referred to the multiplicity of counters. Like Malynes, he did not postulate a self-stabilising mechanism.

Keywords: State-chartered monopolies; Consumption; Definition of wealth; Services; Mutual; Reciprocal gains from trade; Manufacturing; Money and prices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035347650
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035347667.00010 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:23987_6

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().