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Trade Wars Through The Ages

 

"(It) would be better to buy beef produced by the King's subjects, dear though it is, both for the navy and for private individuals, than to buy it at a lower price from foreigners. The money that is spent on the former would remain in the kingdom and would enable His Majesty's poor subjects to pay their taxes, and thus it would return to the King's coffers, while the other [course] would mean money leaving the kingdom."

-- Letter of Jean Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's ambassador in London, on July 1, 1969

Reprinted by permission of the following. Part 1: La Route de La Soie, Luce Boulonois, Editions Arthaud, 1964; Part 2: The Shorter Pepys, edited by Robert Latham, University of California Press, 1985; Part 3: The Wheels of Commerce, Fernand Braudel, Librairie Armand Colin, Paris, 1979. English translation copyright 1982 by William Collins Sons Ltd. and Harper & Row Publishers Inc., 1982. Reprinted by permission of Harper & Row; Part 4: Thomas Jefferson: Writings, edited by Merrill D. Peterson, The Library of America, 1986