Routledge Dictionary of Economics, Second Edition
List, Friedrich, 1789–1846 (B3)
German economist and leading defender of PROTECTIONISM who was professor of economics at the University of Tubingen from 1817 to 1819, a journalist in the USA from 1825 to 1832 and subsequently US Consul in Leipzig and then Baden. He campaigned vigorously for the creation of a German railway system and Zollverein, or CUSTOMS UNION.
He committed suicide. His most celebrated work was The National System of Political Economy, originally published in 1841. In it he is very critical of SMITH’S ‘cosmopolitan’, or FREETRADE, economics for assuming that there was the universal peace which free trade requires and for ignoring the fact that Great Britain had grown strong through protectionism. List argued that free trade was to the benefit of merchants rather than to the advantage of a nation as a whole, for the basis of national economic power is the encouragement of ‘productive powers’, especially manufacturing, through protection.
See also: mercantilism
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