Mercantile Capitalism and State Making
MERCANTILE CAPITALISM AND STATE MAKING
According to this weeks readings and lectures the most important question we have to ask is how does the modern state emerge? There are two facts which helped modern states to be occur which are war and capitalism. If we associate modern states with capitalism we can say that mercantile capitalism and state making strengthed each other. I want to explain how does capitalism helped modern states.
First of all mercantile capitalism started with geographic expeditions at 15th century. Because with these expeditions too many new resources, foods and wealth occured. According to these new explorations new marketing and commercing areas took place. We can say that this is the beginning of mercantile capitalism because with this event merchants start to have more power. In the society there was a conflict between the king and aristocrats. King wanted to have more power and make central authority stronger. Aristocrats were prohibitive to this, because they have political and economic power which was not connected to king. They were powerful by themselves. So king had to find a solution for gaining power and to handle with aristocrats. He decided to make an alliance between merchants. In this contract we can say that there was a symbiotic relationship. Merchants gained political power against aristocracy. King decreased port and custom taxes through merchants and he protected merchants because they didn’t have army. For example in the geographic expeditions British navy escorted them. These were merchants benefits. On the other side merchants gave money and resources to king for war-making. King wanted to make war because war means more land, more people and more taxes which will make him stronger. Also merchants destroyed castles of feudals with gunpowder and canons.
All in all, in conclusion, with this relationship, aristocracy weakened and king’s power increased. Society reached the centralization and also market was
According to this weeks readings and lectures the most important question we have to ask is how does the modern state emerge? There are two facts which helped modern states to be occur which are war and capitalism. If we associate modern states with capitalism we can say that mercantile capitalism and state making strengthed each other. I want to explain how does capitalism helped modern states.
First of all mercantile capitalism started with geographic expeditions at 15th century. Because with these expeditions too many new resources, foods and wealth occured. According to these new explorations new marketing and commercing areas took place. We can say that this is the beginning of mercantile capitalism because with this event merchants start to have more power. In the society there was a conflict between the king and aristocrats. King wanted to have more power and make central authority stronger. Aristocrats were prohibitive to this, because they have political and economic power which was not connected to king. They were powerful by themselves. So king had to find a solution for gaining power and to handle with aristocrats. He decided to make an alliance between merchants. In this contract we can say that there was a symbiotic relationship. Merchants gained political power against aristocracy. King decreased port and custom taxes through merchants and he protected merchants because they didn’t have army. For example in the geographic expeditions British navy escorted them. These were merchants benefits. On the other side merchants gave money and resources to king for war-making. King wanted to make war because war means more land, more people and more taxes which will make him stronger. Also merchants destroyed castles of feudals with gunpowder and canons.
All in all, in conclusion, with this relationship, aristocracy weakened and king’s power increased. Society reached the centralization and also market was