Lecture 22: Dutch Treat—Coffee, Tea, Sugar, Tobacco

Dutch Treat—Coffee, Tea, Sugar, Tobacco ....................................

Lecture 22

I

n this lecture, you will learn about the economy, agriculture, and

colonization in the 17th and 18th centuries—the age of mercantilism—

with a focus on the few foods that become major export items in global

trade. These foods are almost always expensive luxury items to start with, but

are eventually grown on a much larger scale and are consumed by everyone

across Europe, rich and poor alike. The general pattern that will emerge is

that colonies grow the crops either through the plantation system that uses

slave labor or by exploiting native labor and forcing them to produce the

crop for export by the imperial power.

Mercantilism

 A few items—sugar, coffee, tea, tobacco, and spices—completely

change the focus of the global economy. What is ironic is that they

are all entirely superfl uous. They have no nutritional value and,

at best, supply a jolt of sweetness, caffeine, nicotine, or fl avor to

the consumer.

 The sad part is that consumers begin to buy these luxury items

instead of nutritious food, and people are being sold into slavery or

become pawns of the imperial trading companies, just so Europeans

can have these goods.

 The Portuguese and Spanish were the fi rst in the colonization

business, but in this era, they are muscled out by the new economic

powerhouses: England, the Netherlands, and France. In many cases,

it is not the countries themselves but powerful trading companies

like the Dutch East India Company that form these colonies

solely for profi t, and they are usually granted monopolies by their

governments, so they become perversely wealthy.

 The idea of a monopoly offends the capitalist free market mind,

but economic theories of the day, known as mercantilism, were