On the Introduction of the Arts

This book contains the first English translation of a tract written by Duarte Ribeiro de Macedo, a seventeenth century ambassador to France.In the tract Macedo implores his countrymen to adopt industrial mercantilism, primarily as a response to Portugal's trade imbalance with other European countries, and because Lisbon, which sat right on the Atlantic ocean, was one of the most advantageous entrepots in international trade.This tract gives us great insight into the commonly-held mercantilist ideas of the time, especially with regard to manufactures, or as Macedo called them "the arts." It also gives us a clear window into why the consumer-society, necessary for the growth of a modern, manufactures-based mercantilist economy, was more difficult to achieve in Portugal than elsewhere in Europe.This is just one starting point in the exploration of the modern mercantilist state, which also helps us to understand how these early political-economies differed from the free market, liberal capitalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.This tract will not convince one of the efficacy of one political-economy versus another, but it will reveal the many concerns that come with the introduction of a world-capitalist system.