'England is a nation of shopkeepers'. Long before Napolean disdainfully paraphrased Adam Smith, British commerce had become a motor for economic growth and increased state power. This four-volume facsimile edition brings together a range of rare seventeenth- and eighteenth-century documents about the mercantile system.

Introduction, [Richard Eburne], A Plaine Path-Way to Plantations (1624), Balthasar Gerbier, A Sommary Description (1660), An Answer of the Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa (1667), News from New-England (1676), Arthur Dobbs, An Essay on the Trade and Improvement of Ireland (1729-31), Representation of the Board of Trade Relating to ... his Majesty's Plantations in America (1733-4), [Malachy Postlethwayt], The African Trade, the Great Pillar and Support of the British Plantation Trade in America (1745), The Case of the Importation of Bar-Iron from our own Colonies of North America (1756), William Knox, The Interest of the Merchants and Manufacturers of Great-Britain, in the Present Contest wiThthe Colonies (1775), Josiah Child, Charles Davenant and William Wood, Select Dissertations on Colonies and Plantations (1775), Editorial Notes