Early Roman Economy Essay

Some economic historians (like Peter Temin) argue that the economy of the Early Roman Empire was a market economy and one of the most advanced agricultural economies to have existed (in terms of productivity, urbanization and development of capital markets), comparable to the most advanced economies of the world before the Industrial Revolution, namely the economies of 18th century England and 17th century Netherlands. There were markets for every type of good, for land, for cargo ships; there was even an insurance market.[4]

Early free markets were also present in the Caliphate,[5] where an early market economy and early form of merchant capitalism was developed between the 8th-12th centuries, which some refer to as "Islamic capitalism".[6] A vigorous monetary economy was created on the basis of the expanding levels of circulation of a stable high-value currency (the
The bulk of what is commonly called "mercantilist literature" appeared in the 1620s in Great Britain.[7] However, the term was coined by the French writer Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau in 1763 in his Philosophie Rurale, although the French form of mercantilism was called Colbertism after 1600s French finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Perhaps the last major mercantilist work was James Steuart’s Principles of Political Oeconomy published in 1767.[8] Adam Smith, who was critical of the idea, was the first person to organize formally most of the contributions of mercantilists into what he called "the mercantile system" in his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations.[9] Smith saw English merchant Thomas Mun (1571-1641) as a major creator of the mercantile system, especially in his posthumously published Treasure by Forraign Trade (1664), which Smith considered the archetype of manifesto of the