Western Civilization I / Unit 16 WC1 1529 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Mercantilist or Commercial? Sorting Statements
The idea
The exam gives economic statements from the period and asks whether they express the mercantilist outlook or the new commercial one the anchor calls early capitalism. The method is one question: does the statement treat wealth as fixed or as growable. Fixed, drawn in by surplus and colony: mercantilist. Growable, made by exchange and reinvested: commercial.
In practice
Five statements. A kingdom that imports more than it exports bleeds its treasure: mercantilist. A company that pays dividends from spice profits and sells shares to fund more ships: commercial. Colonies exist to supply raw materials and take the mother country's goods: mercantilist. A bulb worth what the next buyer will pay: commercial, the speculative mindset. Bankers make nothing and live on others' wealth: mercantilist, the noble's contempt. A sixth: a crown that runs its colonial trade directly rather than through a company, Spain, is mercantilist in form even while its silver feeds commercial markets elsewhere.
Where people slip
The two outlooks overlapped for two centuries and the anchor says mercantilism worked well enough. Do not answer that one replaced the other by sixteen forty-eight; answer that the Dutch and English were moving from the first toward the second while Spain stayed.
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