Jiří Hájek
From Mercantilism to Economic Nationalism
The article thematically and temporally focuses on the moments of a major breakthrough in the sphere of economic thought which gradually led to the industrialisation of society. It studies chiefly the development in the Bohemian Lands, from the reverberations of mercantilism in the form of some cameralistic principles, through liberal economy all the way to its strong modification by emphasising the ‘national’ requirements and needs. The article proposes a working thesis that Czech economic nationalism played a primary role and had an offensive (initiative) character, whereas German economic nationalism in the Bohemian Lands was mostly secondary and rather defensive. The study comes to the conclusion that from the national viewpoint economic nationalism quite undeniably fulfils the integration function, but from the economic perspective, because of its deformation of the essential market principles and its requirement for the creation of ‘national markets’, it is clearly an economically destructive and constitutionally disintegrative element.
Key words: Bohemian Lands, 19th century, mercantilism, economic nationalism
design by Bedřich Vémola
