1.	Definice merkantilismu

2.	Hlavní myšlenky

3.	Uplatnění merkantilismu v praxi

3.1

Španělsko

3.2

Německo

3.3

Francie

4.	Boje mezi Anglií a Španělskem

5.	Španělé v Americe

6.	Španělský merkantilismus v koloniích

"England versus Spain

England was late in joining the competition for Asian trade, but England also reached out. In the New World England and Spain were bound to come in conflict. England had participated little in the process of exploration yet insisted that its occupation provided a legitimate claim to title. Of course, Spain claimed that discovery provided the claim to title. The Spanish not only desired to monopolize the trade of their colonies, but the also wished to prevent the English from establishing a foothold which would constitute a base for penetration of Spanish territory. Generally speaking, the English disliked the Spanish. Had not Spain tried to deprive Elizabeth of her crown, overthrow the English Church, and extinguish English trade?

All the seamen of western Europe were familiar with the Spanish traffic between Europe, Africa, and America. In the 1530's English seamen began to prey upon Spanish vessels. By 1560 the exploits of Sir John Hawkins were notorious. "Sea dogs" such as Hawkins, mostly from Devonshire, operating out of Plymouth, plundered the Spanish galleons laden with precious metal as they returned from the New World. Perhaps the most colorful of these buccaneers was Hawkins' kinsman, Francis Drake. Drake set out from England in 1577 with secret backing from Queen Elizabeth. He sailed through the Strait of Magellan in 1578 and up the west coast of North America, plundering Spanish settlements on the way. Not finding a Northwest Passage, he struck out across the Pacific, sailed to the Spice Islands, around the Cape of Good Hope, and back to England, where Elizabeth dubbed him Sir Francis Drake. The treasure he brought back netted 263,000 pounds sterling to the queen, and a profit of over four thousand percent to other investors.

The Secret of English success was seamanship. The Spanish conceived of a naval battle as a contest of armies on floating platforms. When Philip II decided to put an end to English depredations by means of the Spanish Armada, he put a soldier in charge. As Philip II prepared to invade England, English "sea dogs" harried Spanish shipping. Drake singed the beard of the Spanish king by sailing boldly into Cadiz Harbor and destroying a number of great ships. Still in May 1588 the Armada was ready and sailed from Lisbon. It is true that weather was against the Spanish, but seamanship and maneuverability saved England, not the winds. The Spanish Armada has taken on some of the qualities of a myth. It did not mark the decline of the Spanish Empire and the rise of the British. That happened much later. Nor did
the defeat give England command of the sea. English sea power in the Atlantic had usually been superior to the combined strength of Castile and Portugal, and so it continued to be. Drake and Hawkins had dreamed of bringing King Philip to his knees by cutting off his revenue from the New world, yet more American treasure reached Spain in the fifteen years after the Armada than in any other comparable period. Some historians have thought that the defeat of the Armada decided that the Counter Reformation was not to triumph throughout Europe, but it seems likely that even had the Spaniards won, the religious picture would not have been much different. As the Thirty Years' War was to demonstrate, religious unity could not be reimposed by force on the children of medieval Christianity."