Regulating Commerce

Abstract

Abstract Contemporary debates between free traders and neomercantilists have intellectual roots in older ones from the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. International Political Economy (IPE) scholars usually focus on thinkers from Europe and America when discussing these older debates, but this intellectual history can be told from a more global perspective that includes thinkers from many other regions of the world. This wider approach helps to support recent initiatives to create a more ‘Global IPE’ that is less Western-centric. It also contributes to efforts in the fields of both history and IPE to deepen understandings of international ideational diffusion, including with attention to processes of resonance, appropriation, and the multidirectional flow of economic ideas. In addition, this global intellectual history provides a wider perspective from which to view current ideological debates about the regulation of international commerce.