Os Judeus e o Mercantilismo

In the emerging centralized states of Europe – in the German states, most notably Prussia and Saxony, some Italian states, the Habsburg empire, France, England, and the Netherlands - rulers and bureaucrats began to evaluate Jews in a new way. Military and commercial competition between these states, and the demands of modern state-building, put a premium on pragmatic thinking. An ideological orientation that placed the welfare of the state at the pinnacle of the scale of values – raison d’état, as it is known – came to dominate policy. Among the mercantilist thinkers who formulated that policy, there was agreement that a strong state required active international trade, a standing army, and the encouragement of manufacture for export. Rulers who adopted this outlook were routinely declining to force the issue of religious conformity. Jews, who as a group possessed financial skills, capital, and international commercial ties, were increasingly viewed as a group that benefited the state.