Café Terrace at Night is a 1888 oil painting by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh in 1888.

It is also known as The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, and, when first exhibited in
1891, was entitled Coffeehouse, in the evening (Café, le soir).

Artist Vincent van Gogh

Year 1888

Catalogue F467

Medium Oil on canvas

Dimensions 80.7 cm × 65.3 cm (31.8 in

× 25.7 in)

Location Kröller-Müller
Museum, Otterlo
Van Gogh painted Café Terrace at Night in Arles, France, in mid-September 1888. The
painting is not signed, but described and mentioned by the artist in three letters. [1]
Visitors to the site can stand at the northeastern corner of the Place du Forum, where the
artist set up his easel. The site was refurbished in 1990 and 1991 to replicate van
Gogh's painting. He looked south towards the artificially lit terrace of the popular coffee
house, as well as into the enforced darkness of the rue du Palais which led up to a
building structure (to the left, not pictured) and, beyond this structure, the tower of a
former church which is now Musée Lapidaire.
Towards the right, Van Gogh indicated a lighted shop as well, and some branches of
the trees surrounding the place—but he omitted the remainders of the Roman
monuments just beside this little shop.
Mercantilism and nationalism
Main article: Mercantilism

A painting of a French seaport from 1638, at the height of mercantilism.

Mercantilism developed at a time when the European economy was in transition.
Isolated feudalestates were being replaced by centralized nation-states as the focus of
power. After the localism of the Middle Ages, the period 1500–1800 was one of religious
and commercial warfare, and large revenues were needed to maintain armies and pay
the growing costs of civil government. New opportunities for trade with the New World
and Asia were opening, and monarchies wanted a powerful state in order to boost their
status.
The "mercantile system" was based on the premise that national wealth and power
were best served by increasing exports and collecting precious metals in
return. Tariffs could be used to encourage exports (bringing more money into the
country) and discourage imports (which send wealth abroad). In other words, the goal
was to maintain a positive balance of trade, with a surplus of exports. Mercantilism was
not just an economic theory but also a political movement, advocating the use of the
state's military power to ensure local markets and supply sources were protected.
Advocates of mercantilism include English businessman Thomas Mun (1571-1641),
whose book England's Treasure by Foreign Traderepresents early mercantile policy. He
was a member of the British East India Company and according to Mun, trade was the
only way to increase England’s national wealth and in pursuit of this end he suggested
several courses of action: frugal consumption in order to increase the amount of goods
available for export, increased utilization of land and other domestic natural resources to
reduce import requirements, lowering of export duties on goods produced domestically
from foreign materials, and the export of goods with inelastic demand because more
money could be made from higher prices (Mun 1664).
In France, Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), Minister of Finance under King Louis XIV
of France, was a great exponent of economic regulation and mercantilism. He
prohibited the export of money, levied high tariffs on foreign manufactures, gave liberal
bounties to encourage French shipping, and set up national guilds to regulate major
industries such as silk, wine, and other French specialties.
German-born Austrian civil servant Philipp von Hörnigk (1640-1712), laid out one of the
clearest statements of mercantile policy in Österreich Über Alles, Wenn Sie Nur
Will (1684, Austria Over All, If She Only Will). The term "mercantilism" was not,
however, coined until late 1763 by Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau and
popularized by Adam Smith in 1776. In fact, Adam Smith was the first person to
organize formally most of the contributions of mercantilists in his book The Wealth of
Nations, although he vigorously opposed its ideas.
Mercantilist ideas did not finally decline until the coming of the Industrial Revolution.
Belief in mercantilism, however, began to fade in the late eighteenth century, as the
arguments of Adam Smith and the other classical economists won favor in the British
Empire and the Physiocrats advocated the laissez-faire approach in France.