The relentless revolution: a history of capitalism by Joyce Appleby, Joyce Oldham Appleby Read Free Book Online Page B

more efficiently. The capital invested in machinery made investors rich because the machines enhanced the productivity of the workers employed. The creation of great wealth distinguished capitalism from preceding economic systems, but so did the reorganization of labor and the enlargement of the pool of consumers to buy the new products. The earth-spanning commercial networks that Europeans began laying down in the sixteenth century vastly increased the places where capitalists could send their goods. When capitalism acquired its momentum, investors didn’t stay put in Europe. They followed the trajectory of Europe’s trading empires.
    The significance of expanded trade routes and partners could not possibly be overstated, but the key point to make about trade in a history of capitalism is that it had existed for centuries before capitalism and would have continued to flourish without it. Because we can see the obvious connections between the sixteenth-century voyages to the Orient and the New World, we’re tempted to connect it seamlessly to the eighteenth-century invention of the steam engine and the emergence of full-blown capitalism as though the one followed the other inexorably, but there is no inevitability in life. Nor do we ever have a very good sense of what the future holds for us. In the middle of the seventeenth century, when new trades were opening up, there was no reason for people to expect that a succession of marvelous machines would alter modes of work that had prevailed for millennia or that a fresh description of human beings and their social nature would soon supplant the traditional wisdom that had long guided people.
    European Domination
    Before the arrival of the Portuguese, the common attitude of all the different participants in East Asian commerce, diverse in ethnicity and religion, had been that the sea belonged to no one. This changed with the arrival of the newcomers. Albuquerque’s king showered him with titles after he had secured control of the Malabar Coast, Ceylon, Malacca, and Ormuz. Portugal achieved naval supremacy in the Indian Ocean after defeating an Egyptian fleet in 1509. When China, which possessed the only other strong naval power in the area, withdrew from the field of contest, the Portuguese controlled most of the trade until the arrival almost a century later of the Dutch, French, and English, who were equally bent on monopolizing whatever they could hold on to.
    The Ottoman Empire was probably more advanced than Portugal in many ways, but Portugal had the advantage of swifter, more maneuverable ships. When they encountered an on-again-off-again hospitality in Malacca, where they sought spices, they turned to force, using their military superiority to take advantage of the chaotic rivalry among rulers in the Malay Archipelago. For those interested in naval warfare, the new Portuguese tactics are fascinating. Previously ships had really been carriers of soldiers. They would fire some guns in combat but mainly maneuvered to get their men on their opponents’ decks. The Portuguese eschewed this approach. They turned their ships into seaborne gunnery platforms from which they pounded the enemy, never fearing a direct attack because of their ships’ capacity to sail against the wind. 4
    It took a combination of gold, silver, and force to dominate the spice trade, but the Portuguese succeeded in doing so, laying down a new law of the seas in the East, even if they never entirely monopolized their lucrative trades. 5 For a short time Portugal, a nation of a million people, succeeded in imposing its will upon the Chinese, Arabs, and Venetians who had long plied these waters. They carried European tools and weapons to Africa, silver and gold to China, Chinese goods to Japan, and spices and silks back to Europe. On both coasts of Africa, the Portuguese established fortified towns where they could store goods and refit their ships: Mozambique and Mombasa on the east, Elmina and