... the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with mercantilism being an important part of economic and political structures. When Ricardo talked about mercantilism and the politics behind it, many similarities to globalization can be seen, questioning the idea of globalization just being a more recent world development. For a country to have a great economic and political position it needed to colonise so it could gain access to more natural resources and precious metals, share the wealth of other countries and set up a wider trade network. During this period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many governments were intervening and dictating the economics of its country making many countries into a closed economic system causing inflated prices on goods and preventing the development of a better standard of goods. When these methods were reformed and more countries opened up to a free market, the first step to globalization was taken. In his ...

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