Abstract
This chapter discusses the importance of examining the Act of Union of 1707 as a manifestation of mercantilist economic thought. Placing the Union in the context of economic ideas sheds further light on both the contents of the treaty and the actions of the English and Scottish Parliaments. The definition of mercantilism used in the book, a system of theory and policies that seeks to maximize national power, is examined. Key aspects of English mercantilism employed in legislation before and during the negotiations—warfare without military conquest, the idea of surplus, and particular notions of wealth, power, trade, and transmutation—are introduced. How these are connected to the concept of structural violence is examined. The outline of the rest of the book is also discussed.
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Notes
- 1.
Original spellings from primary sources have been preserved throughout the text in quoted material.
- 2.
The only letter of petition in favor of the Union came from the Burgh of Montrose on October 15, 1706. Rather than an enthusiastic endorsement of the Articles however it is more a piece of economic fatalism. The “advantage of the Union,” the petition says, is its elimination of the “English Prohibitory Lawes” of the Alien Act. If the laws were to be reenacted “as they undoubtedly will, we shall be deprived of the only valuable branch of our trade by which the balance is on out side and then one needs not the gift of Prophecy to fortell what shall be the fate of this poor miserable blinded nation in a few years.” The Union was seen not as a liberator of trade as much as a means to prevent further damage (in Cooke and Donnachie 1998, pp. 20–21).
- 3.
In actuality it was not the majority of all Parliamentarians but only of those present who did not abstain. The number of those who voted no, were absent, or abstained, 113, outnumbered those who voted in favor, 110, according to the signatures of the act to vote on the final draft January 16, 1707 (National Records of Scotland 1707).
- 4.
There is also a large religious dimension to the Union debates involving the rights of the Scottish Presbyterian Kirk, which has been explored most recently in Stephen (2007).
- 5.
Istvan Hont (2005) performs this function for contemporary political theory, mostly in relation to Andrew Fletcher, but does not apply economic theory to his analysis. He asserts that England used economics for self-preservation. I argue that political theory and economic theory codetermine each other and more than self-preservation, economic policy is used for self-expansion and aggressive limitations of others’ expansion.
- 6.
The same omission has occurred in the history of economic thought literature. While economists such as S. Todd Lowry, Tony Aspromourgos, Anthony Brewer, and Antoin Murphy have provided excellent analyses of the thought of individual mercantilists and their influence on economic policies, they have not examined how their ideas manifested in major policy such as the Union.
- 7.
The work herein is not exhaustive of the research these issues require, but is presented as a first step toward further inquiry.
- 8.
Citations for the Wealth of Nations refer to book, chapter, and paragraph number.
- 9.
The phrase “oportet patrem-familias vendacem esse, non emacem,” appears in Cato’s De Agricultura.
- 10.
Coincidentally, the main English architect of the Union treaty, John Somers (1697), stressed the idea of trade as an “empire on the sea” (pp. 1–2).
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Ramos, A. (2018). Introduction. In: Shifting Capital. Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96403-4_1
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