Bullionism
Topic: Schools of Economic Thought and Economic Laws · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Bullionism was the earliest and crudest form of mercantilism. It said a nation's wealth is its stock of gold and silver ("bullion" means precious metal in bulk). So the state tried to pile up these metals and banned their export. It matters because it shows the mercantilist mindset in its purest form: trade was a zero-sum contest in which one nation gained only if another lost.
Example
A 17th-century European kingdom that banned merchants from taking gold coins abroad, and judged its strength by the size of its royal treasury, was following bullionist thinking.
Don't confuse with
- Mercantilism: the broader school (16th–18th century). It also saw wealth as gold and silver, but it built it up mainly through export surpluses, tariffs, colonies and chartered companies, not only through bans on exporting metal.
- Neo-mercantilism: today's version. It shows up as export-led surpluses, hoarding of forex reserves and tariff wars, not as a ban on moving gold.
Related concepts
- Mercantilism
- Physiocracy
- Classical economics
- Laissez-faire
- Night-watchman state
- Division of labour
- Labour theory of value
- Say's law
- Malthusian theory of population
- Malthusian trap