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How Did Mercantilism Symbolism In Industrialism

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Mercantilism was prominent in Europe for many centuries but was eventually replaced by a greater emphasis on the free market and limited government regulations. One of the fundamental problems associated with mercantilist thought was that if every nation was attempting to promote these policies of trade so that their colonies were producing raw materials for them and then the Mother country would manufacture the products and in turn sell them to their colonies to obtain gold and silver, this could not produce a good economic system. There does not really exist a solution where every nation could pursue this same system and all continuously acquire an increasing amount of wealth. Mercantilism also did not produce the ideas of equality or utility, which developed later. Ideas of equality are important for economic growth, as can be seen later in Europe with the free market system and capitalism. During this time period Europe did not adopt ideas of utility, as shown through its zero sum concept of trade. The focus was more on the benefit of the nation as a whole rather than the individual. The society was greatly hierarchical and did not express ideas of equality, which can also be seen through Europe’s exploitation of their colonies. The idea of the harmony of interests that came about in the later 18th century by Adam Smith was absent and national accumulation of wealth was the main goal.
During this time there was an increase in both industrialization and urbanization,

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