Mercantilism: Jean Baptiste Colbert

Jean Baptiste Colbert was the financial minister of king Louis XIV. Colbert helped the king in achieving his goals to help France attain economic, political, and cultural brilliance. He pushed mercantilism on France. Colbert believed in the theory of mercantilism. Mercantilism is an economic policy under which nations sought to increase their wealth and power by obtaining large amounts of gold and silver and by selling more goods than they bought. There are nine characteristic that characterize this way of thinking. The characteristics are bullionism, achieving economic self-sufficiency, encouragement of thriving agriculture, sea power, establishing colonies, trade, large population, avoiding luxury items, and state regulates and enforces all the economic policies. Bullionism is the economic health of a nation measured by the amount of gold and silver which it possessed. Bullionism dictated a “favorable balance of trade”. It dictated by placing high tariffs on imported raw materials than exported so that there would be more exports than imports. Achieving economic self-sufficiency promises new industries that they will be rewarded by the state. In addition, thriving agriculture lessen the need to import food and enables prosperous farmers to provide a base of taxation. Sea power helps avoid the need of using the ships of other nations to carry your trade goods own fleet adds to the power and prestige of the nation. Besides this, the colonies could provide captive markets for manufactured goods and sources of raw materials. Markets in economics is a place where particular goods are in demand. Trade is a …show more content…
This way of thinking did bring success to France until the death of Colbert. After the death of colbert, Louis cancelled the Edict of Nantes. This led the thousand of huguenot artisans and business people to flee the country. Louis’s policy took away many skilled workers from