Eric Helleiner joins us to discuss his fascinating new global history of neo-mercantilist ideas. In addition to the well-known "Listian Intellectual World" there is a whole universe of thinkers who were not derivative of List but did dream of industrialization by way of a protectionist and interventionist state. American Henry Carey, for example, was distinct on a number of dimensions - and more influential around the world. But there were also traditions endogenous to East Asia, which developed and expanded on earlier mercantilist discourses that can be traced back to China's Warring States period or Japan's feudal era. Rather than diffusing through the translation and circulation of a single text - as in the case of Smith or Marx - neo-mercantilist ideas seemed to spontaneously appear anytime the conditions were ripe for it. State forms other than the nation - from diaspora to empire to international institutions to a cosmopolitan world state - were dreamt of in the period before 1939 as possible vehicles for neo-mercantilist policy. Versions left, right, and center show how politically underdetermined it was as a discourse.
Note: this episode was recorded prior to the invasion of Ukraine.
*** LINKS ***
Eric Helleiner's faculty page: https://uwaterloo.ca/political-science/people-profiles/eric-helleiner
*The Neomercantilists: A Global Intellectual History* https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501760129/the-neomercantilists
*Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods: International Development and the Making of the Postwar Order* https://www.google.com/books/edition/Forgotten_Foundations_of_Bretton_Woods/VTMPjwEACAAJ
A refresher on the original mercantilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism
Steve Pincus, Forum: Rethinking Mercantilism https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5309/willmaryquar.69.1.0003
Fredric List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_List
Henry Carey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Charles_Carey
Alexander Hamilton's "Report on Manufactures" excerpts https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch4s31.html
Commodore Perry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_C._Perry
Sun Yat-sen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Yat-sen
EF Schumacher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._F._Schumacher
Gustav von Schmoller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_von_Schmoller
Mihail Manoilescu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihail_Manoilescu
Marcus Garvey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey
Raul Prebisch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%BAl_Prebisch