Daniel Friedrich List (6 August 1789 – 30 November 1846) was a German entrepreneur, diplomat, economist and political theorist who developed the nationalist theory of political economy in both Europe and the United States. He was a forefather of the German historical school of economics and argued for the Zollverein (a pan-German customs union) from a nationalist standpoint. He advocated raising tariffs on imported goods while supporting free trade of domestic goods and stated the cost of a tariff should be seen as an investment in a nation's future productivity. His theories and writing also influenced the American school of economics.

List was a political liberal who collaborated with Karl von Rotteck and Carl Theodor Welcker on the Rotteck-Welckersches Staatslexikon [de], an encyclopedia of political science that advocated constitutional liberalism and which influenced the Vormärz. At the time in Europe, liberal and nationalist ideas were almost inseparably linked, and political liberalism was not yet attached to what was later considered "economic liberalism." Emmanuel Todd considers List a forerunner to John Maynard Keynes as a theorist of "moderate or regulated capitalism."

Daniel Friedrich List was born in the free imperial city of Reutlingen in the Duchy of Württemberg. His date of birth is uncertain, but his baptism is usually given as August 6, 1789. His father, Johannes (1746–1813), was a prosperous master tanner and a city official, and his mother was Maria Magdalena (née Schäfer). Daniel Friedrich was the second son and youngest child in his family. He was educated at the town's Latin School. As an apprentice at his father's tanning business, List showed little interest in manual labor. He was apprenticed as a bureaucratic clerk at Blaubeuren. After passing his examination, he entered the administrative service in 1805 and became Taxes and Warehouses Commissioner in Schelklingen.

At age 23 in 1811, List was promoted to a post at Tübingen. While there, he regularly attended lectures at the University of Tübingen and expanded his reading. He also made the acquaintance of the future minister Johannes von Schlayer [de]. In 1816, List's position in the bureaucracy was improved as the succession of King William I of Württemberg ushered in a period of reform. Under minister Karl August von Wangenheim [de], later his sponsor, List rose quickly through the bureaucracy. He moved to the Ministry of Finance in Stuttgart and rose to the position of chief auditor and accountant in 1816. In that role, he commissioned surveys among emigrants from Baden and Württemberg for the purpose of studying the increase in emigration and enacting countermeasures.

Von Wangenheim, who had meanwhile been appointed Minister for Church and School Affairs for the Duchy, commissioned List to propose reforms to university civil service training. List proposed establishing a political science faculty alongside the standard legal training, arguing in 1817:

"No one in our University has any conception of a national economy. No one teaches the science of agriculture, forestry, mining, industry, or trade. ... [T]he forms of government are in such a truly barbarous state, that if an official of the seventeenth century rose again from the dead he could at once take up his old work, though he would assuredly be astonished to find the advances that had been made during the interval in the simplest process of manufacture."

This proposal was accepted and the institution opened in Tübingen on October 17, 1817. Despite lacking a university degree, List was appointed professor of public administration science at the insistence of Von Wangenheim. The established professors and the university committees opposed the appointment on the grounds that List had only achieved his position through patronage, and they accused him of incompetence.

List published his thoughts on these reform in the short book Die Staatskunde und Staatspraxis Württembergs (1818). He further published arguments for constitutional liberalism in the magazine Volksfreund aus Schwaben, a national newspaper for morality, freedom and law. His journalistic activities drew suspicion from the new Württemberg government, and List was compelled to submit a petition to the king to defend himself against accusations of subversion.