Trade Empires, the Great Powers, and the Society of Orders

This is Unit Four of Western Civilization Two, part one of two: trade empires, the great powers and the society of orders, the exam's second band. Unit three ended with three absolutisms built on serfdom. This unit asks what paid for the powers, and the anchor's answer, which part two pays off, is that commerce made the powers and the powers made the commerce. Two theories of wealth ran side by side: mercantilism, a fixed pie the state must capture, and capitalism, exchange for profit reinvested, growing inside mercantilist states. The Dutch chartered the first corporation and Britain copied them best; the prize was sugar and the price was the Atlantic slave trade, whose count and whose meaning this part gives with their sources named. Beneath it all stood a society of three orders and a bourgeoisie that fit none of them, and above it five great powers. By the end you will be able to describe the two theories and the turn to commodities. To explain the Dutch model and its bubble. To describe Britain's imitation and the sugar economy. To describe the triangle, the passage and the count. To describe the companies and the empires in Asia and America. And to describe the orders, the powers, the Austrian Succession and the population that rose.

Three entries on wealth itself: two nobilities that despised merchants, a fixed pie against a growing one, and the shift from gold to sugar.

Merchants as parasites.

WC2 0301 Nobles of the Sword, Nobles of the Robe, and Despised Merchants

Medieval wealth was land and war. By the seventeenth century two nobilities held it: nobles of the sword, by inheritance, and nobles of the robe, by appointment or purchase, both living off peasants and despising merchants as parasites. The state's outlook on wealth changed before the nobles' did, and capitalism's birthplaces, the anchor says, were the Netherlands and England.

Fixed pie, or growing.

WC2 0302 Mercantilism and Early Capitalism: A Fixed Pie or a Growing One

Mercantilism held wealth finite, land and bullion, so one state's gain was another's loss: seize territory, run surpluses, hold colonies, let the crown control it. Capitalism, in the anchor's definition, is exchange for profit reinvested for more profit under laws protecting property. Spain was the mercantilist model, Dutch and English merchants the capitalist one. New: merchants' political power, and profit as state policy.

What the ships carried.

WC2 0303 From Gold to Commodities: Sugar, Tobacco, Coffee, Spices

The first wave of empire sought gold and converts. By the seventeenth century commodities paid: sugar, tobacco, coffee, spices, grown overseas and sold in Europe. Commercial wealth was tied to overseas empires, constant war for market share, and the slave trade, which the anchor calls one of history's greatest crimes, a judgment attributed as the anchor's.

Five entries on the Dutch model: where Europe could expand and where it could not, what a monopoly covered, the first corporation, its dividends and outposts, and a flower that cost half a mansion.

Forts, cannon, and fragmentation elsewhere.

WC2 0304 Where Europe Could Expand, and Where It Could Not

By eighteen hundred thirty-five percent of the globe, the anchor's figure, was under European control, for two causes: the military revolution's forts, cannon, muskets and warships, and political fragmentation elsewhere, above all India after the Mughal collapse. China, the Ottomans and Japan were too strong, and Africa's diseases kept Europeans coastal. Most slaves were captured by African slavers, the anchor says, not by Europeans.

A node, not yet a master.

WC2 0305 Monopolies That Ran Only to Europe

A company's monopoly covered trade bound for Europe and nothing else. The Indian Ocean's crossroads and the intra-Asian and African networks stayed in non-European hands; Europeans in Japan, the witness notes, were confined to Dejima after sixteen forty. Europe was a node of a global economy, not yet its master. Do not read this as nineteenth-century imperialism; unit thirteen draws the line.

Stockholders owned it, the state chartered it.

WC2 0306 The VOC, 1602: The First Corporation

The Dutch East India Company, founded in sixteen-oh-two, the anchor's date, was in its words the world's first corporation: a legal monopoly on trade with India and Southeast Asia, pushing out rivals by force and law and seizing Indonesia outright. The witness adds Malacca taken, the Banda Islands conquered, cloves confined to Ambon. Stockholders owned it, the state chartered it: capitalism's legal frame.

Half of Europe's ships.

WC2 0307 Thirty Percent Dividends, Half of Europe's Ships, the Cape, and Japan

Within ten years, the anchor says, stockholders drew thirty percent dividends; by sixteen twenty about half of Europe's merchant vessels were Dutch. The Cape of Good Hope was seized in sixteen fifty-two, and after sixteen forty-one only the Dutch kept a post in Japan. South Africa's settlement and Japan's one window, both Dutch; the figures are the anchor's and the witness confirms Japan.

Half a mansion for a bulb.

WC2 0308 Tulip Mania: The Speculative Mindset

In the sixteen twenties and thirties tulip bulbs became objects of speculation: five thousand guilders for one bulb in sixteen twenty-five, the anchor says, half an Amsterdam mansion, bulbs changing hands ten times a day, and a crash in thirty-seven. Value became what the next buyer would pay, the first bubble. The comparison is the anchor's period one; no modern sum is voiced.

Three entries on the imitator and the prize: a Dutch-trained treasury and the Navigation Acts, three wars that made New York, and the plantation that made the trade.

English colonies, English ships.

WC2 0309 Britain Imitates the Dutch: The Treasury of 1667 and the Navigation Acts

Britain was the best imitator. In sixteen sixty-seven Charles the Second made the treasury the coordinating body with Dutch-trained officials, the anchor says, and parliament grew financially savvy. The Navigation Acts, from sixteen fifty-one, reserved trade with English colonies to English ships; the witness dates two more to sixty and sixty-three. The Acts bred war before wealth.

Economics made war.

WC2 0310 Three Dutch Wars, New York, Jamaica, Florida

Three Anglo-Dutch wars followed, all won by England, and New Amsterdam became New York, surrendered in sixteen sixty-four with generous terms, the witness says; wars with Spain gained Jamaica and Florida. The anchor runs the Dutch wars from fifty-two to seventy-five and reads them as economics made war, fought at sea for trade, not for territory in Europe.

Seven years on a plantation.

WC2 0311 Sugar: The Colonial Product and the Plantation

The prize was the Caribbean and sugar, consumption doubling every twenty-five years, the anchor says. Plantations were proto-industrial with their own rendering works. Native slaves died or escaped, so the Atlantic slave trade began in earnest by the early seventeenth century. Life on a sugar plantation averaged seven years, the anchor's figure. Sugar, not tobacco, drove the trade's first century.

Three entries on the trade: the triangle and its second leg, the count from the database and the witness, and the anchor's claim about race, voiced as the anchor's.

Mortality calculated into profit.

WC2 0312 The Atlantic Slave Trade: The Triangle and the Middle Passage

The triangle ran manufactures to Africa, slaves to the Americas, raw goods to Europe. The Middle Passage was its second leg, mortality calculated into profit: the witness has five to six hundred aboard and captains expecting ten to twenty percent to die, and the anchor puts over a million dead on the crossing. Most went to the Caribbean and Brazil, not North America.

Two sources, two counts.

WC2 0313 Twelve to Fifteen Million: The Database's Count

The anchor cites the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database: well over twelve million carried, probably nearer fifteen with a fifth undocumented, over ninety percent to the Caribbean or Brazil. The witness: some twelve million carried, ten million arriving alive, forty-two percent to the Caribbean, thirty-eight to Brazil. The mainland took a small minority. Two counts; cite whose you use.

Interpretation, attributed.

WC2 0314 Racial Slavery: The Anchor's Claim, Attributed

The anchor argues that this was the first specifically racial slavery and that race derived largely from the trade, and the course voices both as the anchor's interpretation. The record beneath them is plain: skin color became the legal mark of the enslaved. The anchor's phrase, one of history's worst injustices, is attributed, as unit one attributed its verdict on Louis.

Three entries beyond the Atlantic: the company that took Bengal, the colonies that mattered least, and the empires of Spain, Portugal and Russia.

Profit first, rule after Plassey.

WC2 0315 The East India Company: Factories, Plassey, Bengal

The English East India Company held a legal monopoly and traded from posts called factories, seeking profit, not rule. At Plassey in seventeen fifty-seven eight hundred British and two thousand sepoys, the anchor's figures, beat Bengal's prince, and the company took Bengal, whose taxes paid for sepoy armies while the French were driven out. The witness confirms Plassey; unit thirteen finishes the story.

Small and unimportant, the anchor insists.

WC2 0316 North America: Tobacco, Furs, Puritans

Jamestown was nearly dead by sixteen ten and saved by tobacco; Champlain's Quebec lived on furs; Puritans reached Massachusetts by the thousands in the sixteen twenties. Beside Latin America and the Caribbean the North American colonies were small and unimportant until well into the eighteenth century. Slaves for tobacco first, cotton later; the money was in sugar.

Silver, Brazil, and furs across Siberia.

WC2 0317 Spain's, Portugal's, and Russia's Empires

Spain's was the largest empire, silver flowing through Spain and the Philippines to China, ruled directly by the Bourbons from seventeen hundred and split between Spanish-born officials and creole elites. Portugal shrank to Brazil, which imported staggering numbers of slaves and abolished slavery last, in eighteen eighty-eight. Russia crossed Siberia for furs, and four empires met in the Pacific Northwest.

Six entries on the society and the powers: three orders, peasants and serfs, the class that fit nowhere, five great powers, the war the anchor leaves out, and the people who multiplied.

Pray, fight, work.

WC2 0318 The Three Estates and Noble Privilege

Those who pray, fight and work: the First Estate the clergy, the Second the nobility, at most four percent by the anchor's count and one and a half percent of France by the witness's, largely untaxed, the Third everyone else. Nobles monopolized office, sat in their own courts, and hunted where peasants starved. Mercier's orderly future of seventeen eighty-one is the anchor's illustration.

Sold by the soul.

WC2 0319 Peasants West, Serfs East, and the Enclosure of the Commons

Western peasants owed dues, fees and rents; eastern serfs owed nearly everything, sold by the soul in Russia. From the late seventeenth century nobles enclosed the commons, above all in Britain, and smallholders became landless laborers or fled to the cities. Uprisings in Austria and Russia killed thousands of nobles before suppression. At its extreme, the anchor says, serfdom was slavery.

Vital, and fitting no order.

WC2 0320 The Bourgeoisie: A Class That Did Not Fit

Non-noble urban merchants were economically vital and fit no order. Some married into the nobility; others set themselves against it, productive work and education against aristocratic foppery. These were the readers of the Enlightenment and, the anchor says, the revolutionary bourgeoisie, unit six's audience and unit seven's leaders, though not yet a class in Marx's sense.

Five monarchies, one common language.

WC2 0321 The Five Great Powers

Five monarchies with a strong dynasty, a large army and stability jockeyed for position in Europe and overseas: France, the largest, richest and most admired; Britain, the constitutional exception with the navy; Austria; the upstart Prussia; and Russia. French was their common language, and Britain and France were the century's central rivalry. The anchor's remark about Frederick and horses is "supposedly" and is not voiced as fact.

The war the anchor leaves out.

WC2 0322 Europe After Utrecht: The Austrian Succession and the Pragmatic Sanction

The anchor calls Prussia's mid-century wars a land-grab from Austria and stops, so the witness supplies the frame: Charles the Sixth's Pragmatic Sanction securing Maria Theresa's inheritance, Frederick's seizure of Silesia in seventeen forty, and the War of the Austrian Succession to forty-eight. Silesia stayed Prussian and the Diplomatic Revolution realigned the powers. This entry rests on the witness texts, not the anchor.

More mouths, more hands, more cities.

WC2 0323 Population Rises in the Eighteenth Century

The anchor gives no eighteenth-century population figures, so the witness does: England and Wales grew from five and a half million in seventeen hundred to over nine million by eighteen-oh-one, on new crops, rotations and enclosed farms. More mouths, more hands, more cities, the demand unit nine's factories will meet. This entry rests on the witness texts, not the anchor.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe sword and robe nobles despising merchants, mercantilism's fixed pie against capitalism's growing one, and the turn from gold to sugar. You can explain the thirty-five percent, the monopoly that ran only to Europe, the company of sixteen-oh-two, its dividends and outposts, and the tulip bubble. You can describe the Navigation Acts, three Dutch wars and New York, and the sugar plantation. You can describe the triangle and its second leg, the two counts by their sources, and the anchor's claim about race as the anchor's. You can describe Plassey, tobacco and furs, and the empires of silver, Brazil and Siberia. And you can describe the three estates, the serfs, the bourgeoisie, the five powers, Silesia and the Austrian Succession, and the population that rose. Part two takes the great powers to war twice, works four procedures, and asks how commerce reordered power.