Thomas Mun

Thomas Mun was a successful merchant and economist whose pamphlet England’s Treasure by Forraign Trade “has been almost universally accepted among economists as the epitome of seventeenth-century mercantile doctrine.”

In the beginning of his career, Mun was involved in the Mediterranean trade as a member of the Mercers’ company. He was successful in his trade and amassed a large fortune before he settled in London. Thanks to his wealth and prominence, he was elected a member of the committee of the East India Company and of the standing commission on trade appointed in 1622. In the time when the economic depression of 1620s afflicted England he was promoted to director of the English East India Company. Many people transferred the guilty for the current situation to the Company because it financed its trade by exporting £30,000 in bullion on each voyage. As the main responsible person at the time, Mun was called to defend the company’s economic policy.

In “A Discourse of Trade, from England unto the East Indies” (1621), Mun claimed that as long as England’s total exports exceeded its total imports the export of bullion was not harmful. In defense of company’s interests he emphasized that the money earned on the sale of reexported East Indian goods exceeded the amount of originally exported bullion with which those goods were purchased.

According to his theory, foreign trade was the best way to increase the wealth of a nation, and in his works Mun gave the list of advices that should be followed in order to achieve it.