operating with some very different assumptions: 17th- and 18th-
century governments very strictly controlled their national
economies and heavily restricted imports by putting heavy duties
on them. Mercantilist states also fi x wages, fi x prices, and encourage exports—
especially of locally manufactured goods. The idea is that this will
bring into the country money, which rulers can tax so that they can
build up their treasuries and wage war. They also assume that there is
a fi xed volume of trade in the world, so the only way to gain wealth is
to muscle in on the trade of another nation. Hence, there was a whole
series of mercantilist wars over trade routes and colonies.The Netherlands
The Dutch—or the Dutch East India Company, which governs these
colonies—are the most successful mercantilist country. Realizing
that the Portuguese have had a monopoly on the spice trade for the
past century, the Dutch declare war and, one by one, steal nearly
every Portuguese colony or trading post in Asia. They burned
plantations on all but a few of their islands and strictly limited
production to keep prices high.
Although this technically was not slavery because they didn’t buy
and sell the local inhabitants, for all practical purposes, it was
because they forced the native peoples to work on their plantations.
In most cases, people who had been growing food for themselves—
called subsistence agriculture—were now producing luxury goods
for export, being paid money, and then having to buy food from the
Dutch suppliers, which creates a situation of total dependency. The Dutch also made inroads into the China trade, which is in
tea, silk, and porcelain—all luxury items. They also got exclusive
rights to trade with Japan from an enclosed island near the city
of Nagasaki. That situation remained in place until the mid-19th
century and explains why Japan, longer than any other Asian nation,
remained uninfl uenced by the West.