Of course the reason that it was the Dutch East
Indies was the the Dutch displaced the Portuguese
in the area of most fevered search, the actual Spice
Islands which are located in modern Indonesia. Of
course the Dutch did not entirely displace the Portuguese,
as the pathetic case of East Timor reminds us.
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: James M. Blaut <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: INTERNET:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Saturday, September 25, 1999 5:41 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:11695] taking stock
>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
>
>
