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

This is Unit Four of Western Civilization Two, part two of two: the two wars that settled the commercial century, four procedures, and the chain that runs from a fixed pie to seventeen sixty-three. Part one ended with five great powers and a population that had begun to rise. This part pays off the unit's governing idea, that commerce made the powers and the powers made the commerce, by taking the powers to war. The Seven Years' War was the commercial question settled: France lost Canada and India and Britain took the oceans. The American Revolution was the bill for that victory, and France paid for the colonists' war with a debt that unit seven opens on. Then four procedures: the century's wars on one line, the triangle read arrow by arrow, mercantilist against capitalist by assumption, and the three orders with the bourgeoisie placed where the exam wants it. By the end you will be able to describe the two wars. To sequence the commercial wars. To read the triangle. To classify a policy and an order. And to state the chain.

Two entries on the wars: the global fight that made Britain the imperial power, and the revolt its victory paid for.

A land-grab that became a world war.

WC2 0324 The Seven Years' War, 1756 to 1763: Canada and India Lost

The Seven Years' War, the French and Indian War in America, began in the anchor's telling with Prussia's land-grab and became a global fight between Britain and France. Britain won: France lost Canada and almost all of India, and the Treaty of Paris in seventeen sixty-three, the witness says, left Silesia Prussian. The next century's predominant imperial power, the anchor says, was made here.

The winners were the colonists; the bill went to Versailles.

WC2 0325 The American Revolution as a Great-Power War

Taxes to pay for garrisons after the Seven Years' War drove the colonies to revolt in seventeen seventy-five; independence was declared in seventy-six, France joined in seventy-eight, and Britain conceded in eighty-three. France's only won war of the century, the anchor says, gained it nothing: the winners were the colonists, and the bill went to Versailles, where unit seven opens.

Four procedures: the wars between three fixed points, the triangle's three arrows, two theories sorted by assumption, and three orders sorted by birth.

Sixteen-oh-two, seventeen thirteen, seventeen sixty-three.

WC2 0326 Sequencing the Commercial Wars, 1602 to 1783

Three fixed points: the Dutch company's founding in sixteen-oh-two, Utrecht in seventeen thirteen, and the Treaty of Paris in sixty-three. Then place: the Navigation Acts, fifty-one, before the first Dutch war of fifty-two; New Amsterdam becomes New York, sixty-four, inside the Dutch wars; Frederick takes Silesia, seventeen forty, after Utrecht and before the Seven Years' War of fifty-six; Plassey, fifty-seven, the war's second year; the Declaration of Independence, seventy-six, after Paris; French entry, seventy-eight. Company, Acts, Dutch wars, New York, Utrecht, Silesia, the Seven Years' War, Plassey, Paris, independence, French entry. Silesia and the Austrian Succession rest on the witness alone; the company's year is the anchor's; the order holds whichever you cite.

What leaves Europe, Africa, the Americas.

WC2 0327 Reading a Map of the Triangle Trade

Three questions read any triangle map: what leaves Europe, what leaves Africa, what leaves the Americas, because each leg pays for the next. Europe to Africa: manufactured goods, cloth, metal, guns, traded for captives. Africa to the Americas: the enslaved, the Middle Passage, the witness's red arrow, five to six hundred to a ship with ten to twenty percent expected to die. The Americas to Europe: sugar first, then tobacco, coffee, indigo and rice, sold to pay for the next cargo. A fourth arrow inside the Americas: molasses to Massachusetts, distilled into rum. Read the destinations too, forty-two percent to the Caribbean, thirty-eight to Brazil, a few percent to the mainland. The Middle Passage is the second leg, from Africa, not to it, and captives were bought on the African coast, mostly from African slavers.

Who profits, and what the state protects.

WC2 0328 Mercantilist or Capitalist: Who Profits, and What the State Protects

The distinction is one of assumption. Mercantilism assumes wealth is fixed, so the state captures it: colonies, bullion, monopolies, exclusion. Capitalism assumes wealth grows through exchange, so the state protects property and profit. Ask who profits and what the state protects. A crown reserving colonial trade to its ships: the crown captures, mercantilist, the Navigation Acts. Stockholders drawing thirty percent from a chartered monopoly that reinvests: capitalist in operation, mercantilist in its monopoly, the Dutch company, and the exam accepts both halves. Silver from Peru to Seville to China under royal control: bullion captured, Spain. A bank selling state-backed bonds to private investors: property protected, the Bank of England. Merchants despised because trade makes nothing: the mercantilist theory of value. The two coexisted, and capitalism grew inside mercantilist states.

Who prays, who fights, who works.

WC2 0329 Classifying an Order: First, Second, Third, and Where the Bourgeoisie Sits

The three orders answer three questions, who prays, who fights, who works, and the trap is the Third Estate, which held everyone from the destitute to the richest banker. A bishop from a noble family holding church lands: the First Estate, though the witness notes every French bishop under Louis the Sixteenth was a nobleman. A count exempt from most taxation, sitting in his own court, hunting where peasants may not: the Second, one and a half percent of France by the witness's count. A landless laborer whose commons were enclosed: the Third. A Russian estate sold with its souls: the Third's eastern floor, serfdom. A banker richer than the count, educated, reading the philosophes, barred from office by birth: the Third, the bourgeoisie. Wealth moved no one between orders; birth and office did. What the bourgeoisie resented was not poverty but exclusion.

One capstone entry: the chain from a fixed pie to the Treaty of Paris, and why the anchor says commerce made the powers.

From a fixed pie to seventeen sixty-three.

WC2 0330 How Commerce Reordered Power, 1648 to 1763

The exam's second band asks how the global economy and the great powers fit together, and the anchor's answer is that commerce made the powers and the powers made the commerce. The theory came first: nobles of sword and robe lived on land and despised merchants, and mercantilism gave their contempt a doctrine, a fixed pie the state must capture. Inside that doctrine a different practice grew. The Dutch chartered a company in sixteen-oh-two whose stockholders reinvested profit, took Indonesia by force and law, paid thirty percent dividends by the anchor's count, and owned half of Europe's ships by sixteen twenty; they invented the exchange, the bubble, and the habit of treating wealth as something the state should protect. Britain copied best: a Dutch-trained treasury, Navigation Acts from fifty-one, three Dutch wars won at sea, New Amsterdam renamed. The prize was sugar, and sugar's price was the Atlantic slave trade: a triangle of manufactures, captives and crops, a Middle Passage whose mortality was calculated into profit, and a count the anchor puts at twelve to fifteen million, over ninety percent to the Caribbean and Brazil, with the anchor's claim, attributed, that racial slavery was born here. The same companies reached Asia, and Plassey in fifty-seven gave the English company Bengal and Bengal's taxes gave it armies. At home the society these empires served stayed a society of orders, nobles taxed little, commons enclosed, serfs sold by the soul, and a bourgeoisie rich, educated and excluded. Five great powers jockeyed over it, and the Seven Years' War settled the commercial question: France lost Canada and India, Britain took the oceans, and the war's bills started the revolutions that unit seven opens with.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe the Seven Years' War that made Britain the imperial power and the American Revolution whose bill went to Versailles. You can sequence the commercial wars between the company, Utrecht and Paris. You can read the triangle by what leaves each shore, and place the Middle Passage on the second leg. You can classify a policy by its assumption about wealth, and a person by the order birth gave them. And you can state the chain, commerce made the powers, which is this unit's one idea. Unit five opens on the revolution that changed how Europeans knew anything at all.