Mercantilism was the economic belief that promoted the accumulation of gold and silver through the implementation of a trade policy that resulted in positive trade balances.
Explanation:
Mercantilism was popular in the early modern era in the large European Empires of the time like France or Britain.
A Mercantilist society like seventeenth century France would value precious metals so much because they were the very objective of the mercantilist policy: precious metals, as commodity money, were an indicator of the level of wealth of France, and could be used as a means of exchange for just about anything, from guns, to the payment of soldiers and goverment officials, to the purchase of luxury goods for the nobility.
