Scholars of late have come to reevaluate and appreciate the achievements of merchant companies that fostered commercial networks and established new global trade routes. This research would seem to lend support to historians who have characterized early seventeenth-century calls for “free trade” as mere sloganeering driven by provincial merchants suspicious of the London-dominated corporations. This article challenges this view and argues that free trade ideas had deep roots in early modern political culture. It traces the origins of these ideas to protests in the sixteenth century and shows how a broad coalition of interests drew upon ideas of property rights and the ancient constitution to challenge the new companies. So compelling were free trade arguments that they became a commonplace in the economic debates of an emerging public sphere. A reconsideration of the free trade campaign that is attentive to interactions and negotiations between the Privy Council, Parliament, and the public highlights the ability of the early modern state before the 1630s to readjust the political economy of the commonwealth.

近来，学者们开始重新评估和欣赏商人公司在培养商业网络和建立新的全球贸易路线方面所取得的成就。这项研究似乎为历史学家提供了支持，他们将 17 世纪初对“自由贸易”的呼吁描述为仅仅是由对伦敦主导的公司持怀疑态度的省级商人推动的口号。本文挑战了这一观点，并认为自由贸易思想在早期现代政治文化中有着深厚的根基。它追溯了这些思想的起源，可以追溯到 16 世纪的抗议活动，并展示了一个广泛的利益联盟如何利用财产权和古老宪法的思想来挑战新公司。自由贸易的论点是如此令人信服，以至于它们在新兴公共领域的经济辩论中变得司空见惯。对关注枢密院、议会和公众之间互动和谈判的自由贸易运动的重新考虑突出了 1630 年代之前的早期现代国家重新调整英联邦政治经济的能力。