Thomas Mun, c.1571-1641.

East India Company official who is perhaps most identified with "the" founder of traditional English Mercantilism.

The grandson of a mint engraver and the son of a mercer, Thomas Mun lost his father early and was brought up his step-father, a wealthy East India trader.  After serving an apprenticeship in his step-father's business, Mun carved a career as an overseas merchant in the Levantine trade, traveling overseas for extended periods. 

In 1615, Mun was elected as a director of the East India Company.  In the early 1620s, Mun took up the defense of the EIC against the restrictions advocated by Milles and Malynes that had recently been taken up by an angry English parliament.  Mun's defense was first articulated in a tract published in 1621, and then further elaborated in a presentation before Parliament in 1628, which culminated in his principal mature piece, England's Treasure by Forraign Trade, written c.1630 but only published posthumously by his son John Mun in 1664.  Mun summarizes his formula in the famous opening to chapter 2 of the latter pamphlet.

"Although a Kingdom may be enriched by gifts received, or by purchase taken from some other Nations, yet these are things uncertain and of small consideration. The ordinary means therefore to encrease our wealth and treasure is by Forraign Trade, wherein wee must ever observe this rule: to sell more to strangers yearly than wee consume of theirs in value."  (1664: ch.2)

Like Misselden, Mun explained that it was the trade balance of a nation as a whole, and not the individual activities of any particular trading companies, that determine whether gold and silver flows in or out of a nation.  The objective of economic policy, Mun argued, was "to sell more to strangers yearly than we consume of theirs in value" to induce an influx of precious metal.   He proposed that government strive to keep a favorable trade balance by promoting exports and restricting imports by a variety of means. 

Mun bewails the short-sighted bullionist restrictions on the export of precious metals - noting that trading companies need to export cash in order to conduct their trading activities overseas, which will brings in more cash in the end.  Companies need cash to buy wares in foreign markets which they can re-export to other foreign markets for even greater value, and thus has the overall result in a net influx of treasure into England.  He uses the example of a company taking £100,000 is silver cash to buy Asian wares, which after transshipment via English warehouses, will be sold in Spain or Italy for £200,000. "Money begets trade, and trade encreaseth money".

The best government policy, Mun argued, would be to promote devaluation and assist the charter companies (who, as importers of raw materials and exporters of more valuable finished goods. were instrumental in inducing an influx).  However, Mun doubted that rising prices was a good policy. 

In his new doctrines, Thomas Mun was anticipated by the Neapolitan Antonio Serra (1613) and the Frenchman Montchretien (1615.) 

John Ramsay McCulloch speculated that there was an earlier edition of Mun's work, written and published in 1609, but a copy has never materialized.

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