E-resources
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ANDRE WAKEFIELD
Money in the German-Speaking Lands, 08/2017, Volume: 17Book Chapter
Adam Smith caricatured mercantilists in his Wealth of Nations. “A rich country, in the same manner as a rich man,” he argued, “is supposed to be a country abounding in money; and to heap up gold and silver in any country is supposed to be the readiest way to enrich it.” Genghis Khan’s Tatars, Smith quipped, asked whether there were many sheep and cattle in France, because they wanted to know whether it was worth conquering. They believed that wealth consisted in goats, sheep, and oxen; mercantilists and Spaniards, on the contrary, held that gold and silver were the foundation
