Darwin's Voyage

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Faith, Silver and Mercantilism

Not only social and political changes of the seventeenth century were important, but also their causes and consequences. In this period of time, instability spread all over the world, specifically in Europe, where we must mainly look for the reasons of these important shifts. The steady increase of wealth in states like Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, England or France (especially thanks to the gold and silver extracted from the colonial lands), involved all of them, and eventually others, in serious strains, particularly in the Thirty Years’ War.

In the lectures, Jeremy Adelman often talks about the essential change from interconnection to interdependence happened during this time, that’s to say, the path through which states and regions began to be more sensitives to whatever political and economic transformation that occurred in other parts of the world. One example of this new pattern of behavior was the adjustment of China, that moved southwards in order to produce the goods that europeans needed, which they exchanged for the silver that, meanwhile, was being extracted from the Americas mines and that the Ming Dinasty decided to use for its own consumption. Later, as we will see, the crisis of this commercial interdependence will be, among others, the cause of the upheavals within China and of what, finally, will incite the arrival of the Qing Dinasty. Anyway, as you can see, at that point in time the world was already interdependent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean. Let’s now explain the causes and consequences of this new reality.                                                                                    

Interior of the church of St Odulphus in Assendelft (Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, 1649)

On the one hand, we may point out some causes of this turning point. To start with, in my view, the main one was the paradox of becoming wealthy. While Europe was obtaining more richness, the competition among their states rose deeply. What’s more, they were divided into two religious groups: reformists and counter-reformists. By the way, it’s commonly said that convictions were an excuse to gain bigger revenues, and I strongly agree with this statement. The fact was that when silver, above all, became scarce, states had to deal with this threat through different replications. One of them was warfare (for instance, the long conflict of Spaniards in Netherlands), another one was piracy (Francis Drake’s actions), and so on. Secondly, besides competition, we have to stressed the fact that during the seventeenth century there was a sort of ice age, the world cooled, which caused famines everywhere and harmed seriously the harvests and the whole agriculture in regions like China (the Deccan famine in India was significant, too) where, as I said before, silver were exchanged for new goods in order to sustain its needs. The scarcity of those preciosities rebounded in the trade among China and Europe, forcing the Ming Dinasty to cope with revolts within its own borders. As you probably know, the consequence of that issue was the arrival of the Qing Dinasty, who created a new manchu state and also modified the bureaucracy and military priorities of the ancient one. In consequence, the Han majority was displaced. Finally, what was truly important was the Mercantilism, a new relationship between states and merchants. By quoting some words from the book Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, ‘the lasting prosperity of the landed interest depends upon foreign commerce’, what means that states wanted to ensure that because ‘augmenting our mercantile and royal navies, they necessarily become the means of our permanent prosperity and of the safety and preservation of our happy constitution’. So, as you can read, the aim was to enrich states and to maintain armies in order to defend the general interest of the countries, if necessary, by doing the war. One example of that was the Dutch East India Company. Russia, meanwhile starts to move westwards thanks also to commerce and warfare.

On the other hand, the impacts were crucial to understand the world that was coming. The increasingly importance of mercantilism caused the growth of important companies, which in the mid and long-term would probably have a different vision of their interests than those that previously had the states. Each state had toeholds in Asia, in Africa, in America too, but, from this moment, companies took control of the business in the name of each nation. In addition, the rivalry between europeans smash up the old dream of recreate the ancient Roman Empire. The Treaty of Westfalia (1648), closed the problems within Europe somehow, but moved them abroad, which supposed a reordering of the world. Another important point was the situation in which stayed nations like Spain who, because of the great debts acquired to fund warfare, lost its key possesions in Netherlands and political weight in the global framework after Westfalia. In the Islamic World, the Mughal empire weakened because of the trade with foreign companies.

In summary, the evolution and new behavior of global trade triggered drastic changes in the importance states gave to the monopoly of certain goods, emerging that way mercantilism. That was reflected in strains within Europe, and in the second half of the century, everywhere. If we add to the previous calamities, the answers to natural disasters, famines and discussions on religion, seventeenth century may be considered as the perfect modeler of the post-columbus world.

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The Dutch East India Company

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A Financial Crisis

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Hogarthian image of the South Sea Bubble (Edward Matthew Ward, 1816 - 1879)

  
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From Lisbon to Guangzhou

While many people claim that the political aftermath of the black death, as well as other important tensions suffered during the thirteenth and fourteenth century, created similar patterns of behavior in all around Eurasia, in my opinion we must point out significant differences in fields like religion, commerce and bureaucracy. That’s what I will try to explain in the next lines.

On the one hand, it’s said that a leading consequence of that vacuum was the return to the ancient religious beliefs. For instance, the Ming Dinasty came back to its old ceremonies and rites in order to reinforce political and social hierarchies in China. Another example of these worries was the expansion of the islamic dinasties sharing the same core religious. By the way, during this time we can study the great role played by the faiths in the strengthening of the Safavid Empire, the Mughal Empire and, above all, the Ottoman Empire. Europe wasn’t an exception in searching the truth faith, so the Christianity was very important in the statecraft of the majority of european micro-states. Moreover, those who believe that the importance of the global trade was the result of searching new markets in both extremes and center of Eurasia, also think that its development was based in similar foundations and causes. They even say that the empires gave to the commerce the same value in exchanging goods and, consequently, they obtained equal revenues. In particular, they consider that the seven voyages of Zheng He are alike than those of Christopher Columbus. In other words, It could be believed that both series of expeditions (and also others like those of Vasco da Gama or Tomé Pires) only had the same purpose: to expand their sales network. Finally, in what concerns to the administration, the main evidence to its increasing importance was the creation of places from which emperors and kings ruled with more and more officials, buildings and devices. That is to say, with more centralized power. The Forbidden City, in Beijing, and The Topkapi Palace, in Istanbul, represented the weight of bureaucracy in the construction of these new empires. In addition, taxes helped states to earn more money with which carried out new projects or warfares and slaves became commodities.                                                                                       

A Chegada de Vasco da Gama a Calicute em 1498 (Alfredo Roque Gameiro, 1900)

However, although what I have said before was crucial in order to build up these new societies and empires, traditional and basic explanations sometimes go in the wrong direction. For example, even though rulers set up a renewed and heavy system of beliefs, is false that they behaved always identically. It’s obvious, therefore, that the tolerance and respect to groups of Jews, Christians and so on, was bigger in the Ottoman Empire than in the Persian Safavid one. Besides, we must bear in mind that the spread of the commerce between the Iberian states and their colonies had different foundations than those in China and the islamic empires. China expanded its trade network thanks to the expeditions of Zheng He recalling better times, but after the upheavals happened between scholars and eunuchs decided to stop trading that way. It’s that, one important turning point for China, because in my view is highly probable they missed the opportunity to become bigger and more self-sufficient slowing, as a result, the conquests of Portugal in that area. The islamic world, meanwhile, continued dominating the Indian Ocean and the east coast of Africa, forcing europeans to discover new ways to find alternative raw materials than those they traditionally used to buy or acquire. It was that way how they arrive to America, and the portugueses also to places like Calcutta, creating, thereby, new sea routes. Furthermore, the design and construction of the bureaucracy that emerged in the fifteenth century wasn’t so hard and efficient everywhere. Whereas in Europe didn’t exist a great empire capable to deal with enemies outside and within their own borders and to carry out big projects together as was normal in China or in the Ottoman Empire, the micro-states kept on fighting with their neighbors which meant a major problem of money and effort. 

To sum up, it’s very clear that the changes caused by the disappearance of the Mongol Empire drove the new societies to the need of creating tools of protection which they found in the religion, commerce and bureaucracy. It’s also true that this new concept of societies didn’t work the same way in each case. Some were more tolerant, like ottomans, some more coercives, like safavids. Some were more maritimes, like those in Western Europe, some less, like the post Zheng He China. What’s more significant, actually, is the fact that they didn’t move separately, but because of the other or, even, because of their own strains.

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