Lecture 40: The Early Modern Cycle, 1350–1700
expanded, it sucked in silver for coinage. This bene¿ ted European middlemen
who used brutal methods to extract silver by force from American mines
such as Potosi in modern Bolivia. Increasing commercialization began to
transform the lives of China’s peasants.The emergence of a global network of exchanges transformed the global
geography of wealth and power. For most of the Agrarian era, the Atlantic
region was marginal to world history. In Afro-Eurasia, the major centers
of economic and political power were in the eastern Mediterranean, North
India, and China; in the American world zone, they lay in Mesoamerica and
the Andes. Suddenly, Europe found itself at the center of the ¿ rst global
world system. European merchants not only pioneered the ¿ rst transoceanic
exchange networks but also maintained control of them for several centuries.
A durable pattern of small- or medium-sized
states, engaged in constant competition, forced
European rulers to seek commercial sources of
revenue. So European states were generally more
supportive of commerce than the great empires of
the Muslim world or China.With supportive governments and a central
position in global commercial networks, European
societies became increasingly capitalistic, and
their governments became more supportive of entrepreneurial activity. In
Britain, these changes are evident from the remarkable statistics assembled
by Gregory King (1648–1712), one of the pioneers of modern statistics.According to King, in 1688, 43% of the British population consisted of
“cottagers and paupers” or of “laboring people and out servants.” In other
words, almost half of Britain’s population had no land and had to survive
entirely from wage labor. Modern studies suggest that in the late 17th
century, more than half of British national income came from commercial
activities (Christian, Maps of Time, p. 413). By the early 18th century, most
of the revenues of the British government came from commercial sources,
which ensured that the government would aggressively back commerce.
The importance of commerce was evident from the many merchants in the
British Parliament.Between 1400
and 1700, the
populations of
China, India, and
Europe all doubled.