WORLD HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -What is Mercantilism? Mercantilism is a trade practice wherein nations maintain a favorable balance in trade by increasing exports and decreasing imports. They import cheaper raw materials from their colonies and accumulate wealth by exporting finished items to them in exchange for gold and silver currency.

Detailed explanation-2: -British Colonial Mercantilism Controlled production and trade: Mercantilism led to the adoption of far-reaching trade restrictions, which stunted the growth and freedom of colonial businesses. The expansion of the slave trade: Trade became triangulated between the British Empire, its colonies, and foreign markets.

Detailed explanation-3: -Mercantilism led to the adoption of enormous trade restrictions, which stunted the growth and freedom of colonial business. Much of the trade that took place before the mid-17th century was controlled by the Spanish and Dutch, including to and from England.

Detailed explanation-4: -This system dominated Western European economic thought and policies from the sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries. The goal of these policies was, supposedly, to achieve a “favorable” balance of trade that would bring gold and silver into the country and also to maintain domestic employment.

Detailed explanation-5: -The main idea of Mercantilism is that a nation’s wealth and power were best served by increasing exports and so involved increasing trade. It was an economic principle. It was an economic policy followed by European colonial empires. Thus such policies frequently led to war and motivated colonial expansion.