[PEN-L:11695] taking stock

["James M. Blaut" <70671.2032@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael:

I can't agree with this:

"I see no reason why we have to stubbornly insist on either/or
positions.  Spain stole gold and did not develop, as everybody agrees,
and I would add, because it did not have the appropriate social
relations in place to develop.  England did because it had transformed
agricultural relations in the countryside.  I do not insist that you all
agree with me on that point, but it reflects the idea that we can
transcend the either/or."

If transcending the either/or means allowing some cultural, economic,
technical, or environmental priority or superiority to Europe and Europeans
prior to 1500, then I can't accept that. Sure, something like capitalism
was growing slowly in the English countryside in 1491, but it was also
growing in the Chinese countryside in 1491. So the question is: what
differentiated the two paths thereafter?

EITHER Europeans had something unique up their sleeve OR they didn't. I say
they didn't. They were as backward and unprogressive, or as developed and
progressive, as a number of other societies at that time.

So I'm "stubborn." So sue me.

Secondly: Spain (as Charles pointed out) did not LOOT the gold and silver.
After about 1540 the bullion came from mining and the mines were worked  by
labor, mostly non-slave labor, in an economy that was in most (or perhaps
all) rerspects as modern as you would find in Europe itself at the time.
Potosi, the great Andean silver mining city, in the 1570s, was larger than
any city in Europe at the time except (I think) Venice. Then, still in the
16th century, plantation production emerges -- Brazilian sugar exports in
1600 were double the value of all English epxports in that year -- and then
other colonial adventures begin to pay big fruit. And this is PRODUCTION.
not commerce.

As to Spain and Portugal vis=a==vis the countries that DID develop: some
folks on this list perhaps have insufficient knolwedge of the way and the
degree to which the European economy was integrated in the 16th-17th
century. For instance, for several deacdes in the later 1500s and early
1600s, just about all the Portuguese efforts ended up in the Low Countries:
Antwerp was the place to go to buy Asian spices and Brazilian sugar.
Holland shoved Portugal out of the way in Asia at the end of the 16th
century. Holland invaded and occupied (for a time) Poortuguese Brazil in
the early 17thn century in order to gain the profits from the plantations.
And recall that Holland made the first Bourgeois Revolution and was
undeniably the first capitalist-dominated polity of any significant size.
England practically turned Portugal into an English colony. And so on.

Development in the Spanish American empire was dependent on German,
Italian, Flemish, French, and I suppose English capital, and bullion that
came to Seville slipped out of Spain and created manufactures in these
other countries for consumption in Spain AND America. The gold and silver
carried from Mexico to Manila in the Manila Galleons for the most part was
used not by Spanish interests but by the Dutch East India company to
finance purchasse of Chinese products and Moluccan spices which then went,
yes, to Holland. The only really vexing question in all of this, to my
mind, is: why did Italy lose out? I think the answer perhaps maY be that
Italy didn't have the ship-building and maritime capacity (nor the wood)
needed to become a colonial power,unlike that Atlantic-facing regions.

A lot of our problem here results from focusing too exclusively on England.
England got into the game very early -- the slave trade; the Newfoundland
fisheries (whale oil, etc.), etc. -- but really got into the new game in a
BIG way after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1580-something. I would
insist that we look at the role of colonial accumulation in Englasnd from
say 1560 to 1688 to see the effect of colonialism on the rise of capitalism
in England. As Dobb said, England was basically a feudal society in 1600
even though the sprouts of capitalism were coming out of the ground. Thus
you have a slow transition taking place in the countryside AND among rural
or urban craftsmen and petty manufacturers -- just like in China -- but
something external to the system gave England (but first Holland) its
differentia specifica (sp?).

Cheerily

Jim B