The reflections of english mercantilists on the spanish imperial trajectory and its impacts on the formulation of english imperial conceptions of the late 17th and early 18th centuries

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the characteristics of English mercantilism in the late 17th and early 18th centuries by analyzing the representation of Spaniards in the mercantilist writings of that period. To this end, the texts of tories and whigs who approached aspects of the spanish imperial trajectory were taken as a basis, with emphasis on the narratives of english mercantilists who mentioned or tried to explain the Spanish decadence during the seventeenth century, which were analyzed seeking to identify the impacts and consequences that these reflections had in the thought of these authors and in the concrete policies that started to be adopted by the British empire.