Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, cilt.27, ss.1544-1563, 2025 (TRDizin)
In today's global economy, trade wars have become a significant factor in the competition between countries. To gain insight into the policies that influence a nation's economic prosperity, it is crucial to examine the historical underpinnings of trade wars and the protectionist policies that have shaped them. Although theoretical studies have been conducted in this direction, content analysis of trade agreements in the mercantilist period, is limited. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the origins of economic policy differences in the foreign trade agreements of the United Kingdom, which became rich as a result of industrialization and mercantilist policies, with three different states (France, Austria and the Ottoman Empire). Data were obtained by analyzing foreign trade agreements from the British archives. In this context, a comparative analysis was made by standardizing the customs duties applied to the United Kingdom's trade of 22 products with three different states in terms of the current currency. In addition, to compare tariffs, an Average Protectionism Index (API) was developed based on the tariffs of 22 products. The analysis revealed that Britain applied mercantilist policies to three different states with different degrees of mercantilist policies, and that the Ottoman Empire, which applied the capitulation policy, suffered more economic damage than the other two states.