2,793 works, 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable, with cited passages inside.
Could prosperity under protective tariffs prove that protection worked—or might freer trade have produced more? In this 1919 scholarly article, Marianne Herzfeld reconstructs Karl Zinzendorf’s answer from his largely unpublished writings, especially his 1771 treatise on customs duties. She locates his case for free trade at the intersection of Austrian administrative experience and engagement with English economic thought. Affordable, good-quality goods for consumers, rather than privileges for producers or an accumulating stock of money, emerge as his measure of successful commercial policy. Herzfeld also traces the limits of that position: luxury duties, agricultural preferences, and concessions to administrative feasibility. Her account distinguishes a sustained theoretical challenge to commercial restrictions from both practical opposition among officials and the more systematic achievement of Adam Smith.