About: Henry Martyn (economist)

Henry Martyn (baptised 1665 at Aldbourne, Wiltshire, died 1721 at Blackheath, London) was the English author of Considerations Upon the East India Trade (1701), which went even beyond the case for free trade advanced seventy-five years later by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. Martyn’s tract contains other remarkable insights that became important features of classical political economy, such as the nature and advantages of the division of labor, the dependence of the latter on the extent of the market, the workings of a market economy, the role of money, and the impact of international trade on resource allocation, on productivity, and on economic welfare.