1. Subject matter
Among economists it is considered assured that mercantilism was the paradigm of economic thought in the first centuries of the early modern period. This term, coined by Victor Riqueti Mirabeau in 1763, did not gain currency, however, until Adam Smith used it to describe a view of economics (Economy, political) made obsolete by his own theory. Contemporaries from the late 16th to the early 18th centuries …