A Declaration of Economic Independence

Abstract

The original seafaring nations of Spain, Portugal, and Italy were able to monopolize their established trade routes between Europe and Asia. These seafaring nations with a sufficiently powerful military force to protect their nautical supply chains could grow from expanded diversity of trade itself. Without the same ready access to these trade routes, an industrial nation like Britain could fuel economic growth only by expanding the hinterland of resource markets and the market for their final goods. Their hinterlands had to grow in proportion to their increased productive capacity. If hinterlands could not continue to grow, or if productive capacity could not ratchet up accordingly, a nation had to rely on more coercive terms of trade to fuel expansion.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

(American Revolutionary and its second President, John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, 1780)