When I spotted this new book, I just had to read it immediately—it is one of those books that you know will make a splash. “This is not a book I planned to write,” the author says in the preface (ix). It is a book he had to write. Researching intellectual histories in international political economy (IPE), Eric Helleiner discovered that a book on the intellectual history of neomercantilism was lacking—so he wrote it. Indeed, to the best of my knowledge, this is the first book-length coverage of the topic. Prominent scholars of IPE have characterized the field as having three leading ideologies: economic liberalism, Marxism and mercantilism; but the last of these has been given less attention than its two competitors. One could be forgiven for being less well read in this tradition when empirical trends were moving increasingly in a more liberal direction. However, in light of changes to the international liberal world order, and with the rise of national leaders who advance more protectionist policies (including in the United States, which recently had a president openly flirting with a reorientation away from liberalism and toward protectionism), students of IPE really need to go back to basics and study some of the origins of ideologies that are resurfacing today.

The book starts off by characterizing neomercantilism as an ideology that was around during the birth of liberalism—but one that was critical of free trade. Neomercantilism offered an alternative discourse about successful strategies for growth—or how best to accumulate wealth—and about power. Helleiner provides a pre-1939 definition of neomercantilism as “a belief in the need for strategic trade protections and other forms of government economic activism to promote state wealth and power in the post-Smithian age” (4). By using this definition, Helleiner focuses on trade protectionism but also assumes that the thinkers he discusses are fully aware of the work of Adam Smith—in particular, The Wealth of Nations (1776)—and others in that tradition. In fact, Helleiner notes how Smith contributed to the naming of the school of thought by his coining of the term “the mercantile system” (6).

The book seeks to explore neomercantilism, keeping in mind that the body of work that influenced it developed throughout the world. One of the most prominent thinkers discussed is the German writer Friedrich List—in particular, the ideas in his 1841 book Das nationale System der politischen Oekonomie, which was translated into English as The National System of Political Economy. Building on thinkers who came before him and on the work of contemporaries (such as Henry Carey, Alexander Hamilton and Daniel Raymond), List argued that in economies, industrialization needs to be prioritized over agriculture in order to ensure independence. Industrialization is also a way to safeguard the development of the military and secure defence. List worried that international relations were less peaceful than some of the liberals assumed, and he argued in favour of a more diversified economy that included industrial, manufacturing and agricultural activities: “the power of producing wealth is . . . more important than wealth itself” (List quoted in Helleiner, 56). List also advanced the idea of strategic trade protectionism but only for countries meeting certain criteria, including having a “high degree of civilisation and political development” (List quoted in Helleiner, 64). Helleiner clarifies that List had in mind here nineteenth-century French and German readers, who were, at that time, confronted with Britain as the dominant power. Helleiner highlights how List views countries in the tropics and other parts of the world further removed from Europe, and he criticizes List's political economy as overly focused on Europe and not engaging “with thinkers outside the European and North American intellectual world” (68).

Although Helleiner discusses List as the prominent thinker representing neomercantilism, List was a less central figure to the development of neomercantilism than his counterpart Smith was to the development of economic liberalism or than Karl Marx was to Marxism. In other words, in order to obtain a full grasp of neomercantilism, one needs to review the works of other authors who contributed to the concept, lest one repeats the very Eurocentrism that Helleiner criticizes. True to his word, Helleiner reviews, in substantive chapters, East Asian thinkers (notably from Japan, China and Korea) and others whose ideas emerged separately from those of List—for instance, Nikolai Mordvinov (Russia) and John Rae (Canada), and he also briefly discusses thinkers in Egypt, India, Poland, Romania and Latin America.

This book is refreshing and fascinating—and not only for filling a gap in the broad ideological intellectual history; it also embeds the development of this political and economic thought into a broader global context. By including thinkers who were coming up with similar thoughts in different parts of the world, without necessarily being aware of each other's work, the book moves beyond the scope of books such as Hagemann et al. (Reference Hagemann, Seiter and Wendler2019), Todd (Reference Todd2015) and Wendler (Reference Wendler2015) that have focused attention squarely on List. In so doing, the book contributes to a discussion that aims to reach out to thinkers from across the globe. Readers of this book may develop a better understanding of the current rivalry between the West and the rest (in particular, China). The book also makes a very modest effort to include some women's voices, such as Kate McKean (who published a manual on Carey), and highlights, from time to time, the role the thinkers gave to women's access to education or greater equality.

Overall, the book provides an excellent intellectual history of neomercantilism. Conveniently structured (some parts can be read on their own), beautifully written and well researched, it is one of the most significant IPE books I have had the pleasure to read in recent years. I am quite sure it will find its way into many a PhD thesis as a basic framework or as underpinning for a hypothesis (in the hypothesis-testing tradition), as well as onto reading lists for comprehensive exams, and it will influence how we see the historical evolution of the field of IPE. As the world might be facing a “new international neomercantilist moment” (357), this book is an absolute must read for anyone who has an interest in key thinkers and thinking in IPE.