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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