Friedrich List
Read this biographical article about Friedrich List. It offers some context for his refinements to Smith's ideas, based on List's wealth of experiences.
Legacy
List historically has held one of the highest places in economic thought as applied to practical objects. His principal work entitled Das Nationale System der Politischen Ökonomie (1841) and was translated into English as The National System of Political Economy. This book has been more frequently translated than the works of any other German economist, except Karl Marx.
Eugene During, of the University of Berlin, declared that "List's doctrines represented 'the first real advance' in economics since the publication of The Wealth of Nations (by Adam Smith)" and Marx himself wrote in his famous Anti-Duhring pamphlet: "It would be better to read Herr Duhring's chapter on mercantilism in the 'original', that is, in F. List's National System, Chapter 29". Thus, Marx was clearly well aware of List's work. However, he never to deal with it directly, and because of this, List was largely ignored by later writers.
However, List's influence among developing nations has been considerable. Despite the fact that his "National System" was vigorously attacked, such was the demand for it that three editions were called for within the space of a few months, and translations of it were published in English, French, Russian, Swedish, Hungarian, and many other foreign languages. Japan, in the nineteenth century, followed his model, Hungarian leader, Kossuth, alluded to him in public as "the man who had best instructed the nations as to their true national economical interests," and it has also been argued that Deng Xiaoping's post-Mao policies in China were inspired by List's work.
The last excerpt from The National System should forever be considered to be the "manual" for all the NGOs (United Nations, World Trade Organization, etc.) in the developed world dealing with the developing countries:
The economical education of a country of inferior intelligence and culture, or one thinly populated, relatively to the extent and the fertility of its territory, is effected most certainly by free trade, with more advanced, richer, and more industrious nations... Every commercial restriction in such a country aiming at the increase of manufactures, is premature, and will prove detrimental, not only to civilization in general, but the progress of the nation in particular... If its intellectual, political, and economical education, under the operation of free trade, has advanced so far, that the importation of foreign manufactures, and the want of markets for its own products has become an obstacle to its ulterior development, then only can protective measures be justified.... Internal and external trade flourish alike under the protective system; these have no importance but among nations supplying their own wants by their own manufacturing industry, consuming their own agricultural products, and purchasing foreign raw materials and commodities with the surplus of their manufactured articles... Home and foreign trade are both insignificant in the merely agricultural countries ...., and their external commerce is usually in the hands of the manufacturing and trading nations in communication with them... A good system of protection does not imply any monopoly in the manufacturers of a country; it only furnishes a guarantee against losses to those who devote their capital, their talents, and their exertions to new branches of industry.