(^550) NOTES
- Abramovitz and David, "Convergence and Deferred Catch-up," p. 21. The data
are taken from Angus Maddison, "Explaining the Economic Performance of Nations,"
Tables 2-1 (p. 22) and 2-4 (p. 28), and are measured in PPE (purchasing power equiv
alent) dollars. - This and the quotations that follow are from Wealth of Nations, Book IV, ch. 7,
Part 2: "Causes of the Prosperity of New Colonies." - Wealth of Nations, Book II, ch. 5: "Of the Different Employment of Capitals."
- Cook, The Long Fuse, pp. 58-59.
- Modern quantitative economic historians have tried to measure the burden of
these acts on the American colonists and have argued that it was insignificant. The im
plication is that economic "justifications" were a pretext and that the colonists had
other motives for war, or worse yet, were simple ingrates. Aside from errors in the cal
culation of the burden and problems with fanciful counterfactuals of what might have
been if no navigation acts, the very notion that one can quantify a perceived grievance
and thereby judge whether a war is justified strikes me as naive. On this abundant de
bate, see Thomas, "A Quantitative Approach," and in rejoinder, Sawers, "The Navi
gation Acts Revisited," and the articles cited there. - Cited in Cook, The Long Fuse, p. 59.
CHAPTER 20- Cf. Humboldt, Relation historique, ed. Tulard, p. 252.
- Fischer, Albion's Seed, p. 26 and n. 5. In Virginia, a land of plantations and in
denture, the ratio was 4 to 1; in Brazil a land of sugar and slaves, 100 to 1. - An article in the Quarterly Review, 35, speaks (p. 537) of the segmentation of
Latin American society by color: "the different classes, who in process of time, more
by the rules of society than by the influence of the laws, assumed a variety of ranks ac
cording to the greater or less affinity to the white race." Quoted in Rodney and Gra
ham, Reports of the Present State, p. 12. - Cf. Fischer, Albion's Seed, pp. 240-46, on the hierarchical values and institutions
of southern England. - "Independence was not so much sought after by the people of Buenos Ayres, as
thrown in their way"—Rodney and Graham, Reports of the Present State, pp. 28-29. - The contrast is Furtado's, Economic Growth of Brazil, p. 109.
- Cf. Faith, The World the Railways Made, p. 156, citing Ferns, Britain and Ar
gentina: "Argentine interests were not concerned either to invest in or gain control of
such undertakings, no matter how freely they might criticise their activities in their
newspapers and in the halls of the Congress ... it was... more profitable to specu
late in land, sell cattle and wool, and institute share-cropping, all of which railways
greatly stimulated by opening a way to the markets first of Buenos Aires and then the
world. ..." - Mullet des Essards, Voyage en Cochinchine, p. 95.
- The above is drawn from Rock, Argentina, p. 25. On nails, see E. A. J. Clemens,
The La Plata Countries of Latin America (1886), cited in Rock, "Features of Indus
trial Development," p. 8; also Mullet des Essards, Voyage en Cochinchine, p. 89. - Rock, "Features of Industrial Development," p. 7.
- The words are Sarmiento's, writing in the 1840s, cited in Rock, ibid.
- Juan Bautista Alberdi, Bases e puntos de partida para la organizaciôn politica de la
Republica Argentina (1852), cited by Shumway, Invention of Argentina, p. 149. - "Even today, Argentine church leaders are arguably the most conservative, if not
reactionary, in Latin America"—Shumway, Invention of Argentina, p. 150. - Adelman, Frontier Development, p. 105.