[PEN-L:11698] Re: taking stock

[Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

James M. Blaut wrote:

> 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?

Jim, I do not pretend to know as much about the subject as you and others on
the list do.  I did not think that I was suggesting European superiority, but
instead that there was a confluence of a number of factors.

I would like to know the answer to the question that you raised. I do not
pretend to have the information myself.  I have been trying to douse this
thread to because signal to noise ratio was sinking.

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

I also believe based on my limited knowledge that the Europeans were backward.
in addition, the most advanced agricultural society in Europe was probably
Holland, not England.

> 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.

I accept your description here, except that I would include the profits
squeezed out of the young Nike girls as also akin to looting, even though
production is involved.  I also have reservation about how much prison
industries should be considered production, in the sense that their greatest
achievement in profitability is their ability to hire cheap labor.  I am not
insisting on an absolute characterization here, only to suggest that the lines
are blurred.

Finally, I would say that the main problem on the list has been the tendency to
approach the subject as if it were an athletic contest with winners and losers
among the participants, rather than seeing this as a collaborative effort to
learn something of importance in order that we can have a more substantial
analysis, which in turn can allow us to be able to contribute to making the
world a better place.

There is a role for humor here in our dialogues, but the continual put down of
the others -- suggestions that disagreements necessarily serve as evidence of
combatants' deficiencies serves no positive purpose.

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901