Approximately three centuries before Albert Hirschman wrote National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade, another book was written on the same subject. The author was Thomas Mun, a wealthy merchant trader born in 1571. Mun's early career was in the Mediterranean trade, particularly in Italy. These trade interests led to his becoming a very rich man. As a result of his commercial experience and his wealthy stature, in 1615, Mun became a director of the British East India Company (EIC), and he spent the rest of his career advocating on its behalf. In 1622, he was also appointed to a British government commission on international trade and thereby brought the interests of the EIC directly into government.

The EIC had its origin in a meeting that took place in London in September 1599. Present at that meeting were a group of traders, most notably the auditor of the City of London, Sir Thomas Smythe, as well as explorers, including William Baffin of Baffin's Bay fame. Their purpose was to request a royal charter granting them monopoly rights to trade, and they were quickly successful in this aim, the charter being granted in 1600. This set in motion a long series of events in which the EIC would expand into Asia with the largest private army in the world.

Along with his dedicated service to the EIC, Thomas Mun became the best-known member of a group of individuals who wrote on economic affairs in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their body of work became known as mercantilism. What exactly mercantilism was has been a matter of extensive debate and substantial disagreement to the present day. The prominent historian of economic thought, Henry William Spiegel, referred to the mercantilist idea as “economic warfare for national gain.” If that put it too strongly, mercantilism was most certainly a form of economic nationalism. Consider another description from the economic historians Ronald Findlay and Kevin O’Rourke: