Rise, Demise and Rebirth of Economic Nationalism. Reflections on Historical Economic Philosophy

Essay from the year 2005 in the subject Philosophy - General Essays, Eras, grade: 5, , language: English, abstract: This paper presents a valuable and interesting study on economic philosophy of economic nationalism. Economic Nationalism (formally known as Mercantilism) was the dominant school of thought in Europe from the 16th to 18th Century. Here it is assumed that wealth and monetary assets are identical. Mercantilism suggests that the ruling government should advance economic goals by playing a role in the economy mainly by encouraging exports and discouraging imports. The theory dominated economic policies of Europe and is believed to have encouraged the many intra-European wars of the period and played a role in expansion of European Imperialism both in Europe and throughout the rest of the world. Many economists around the globe have written about the economic philosophy of Mercantilism, however, there is need to understand the true context of philosophy based on socio-economic environment which was prevailing at that time. This research paper is about the rise and fall of economic nationalism as a philosophy bringing out facts about roots of philosophy, the role it played in the economics of 18th Century and the causes of its demise. The paper also describes the relevance of economic nationalism in the 21st century. It concludes that the philosophy of economic nationalism is still being partially practiced in the 21st century, in one form or the other, under the carpet of economic liberalism. Strangely, many of our fiscal, monetary and general economic reforms in 21st century are in line with the philosophy of economic nationalism.