In all ages, nations and powers have striven to attain to the dominion of the world, but hitherto not one of them has erected its power on so broad a foundation [as industry, commerce, and navigation]. How vain do the efforts of those appear to us who have striven to found their universal dominion on military power...-from "Chapter 33: The Insular Supremacy and the Continental Powers-North America and France"One of the most prominent economic philosophers of the 19th century, on a par with-but espousing quite different thinking than-Karl Marx and Adam Smith explores, in the three-volume National System of Political Economy, a reasoned doctrine of national and pan-national management of trade, a global collaboration between government and business. Volume 3 explores the economic and political systems that nurture ascendant nations in their global sovereignty. A close reading of this 1841 classic is an absolute necessity for anyone who hopes to understand world economic history of the last 150 years.German economist and journalist FRIEDRICH LIST (1789-1846) served as professor of administration and politics at the University of Tübingen, but was later jailed and later exiled to America for his political views. His is also the author of Outlines of American Political Economy (1827).