Work by Andrea Komlosy

Author:Andrea Komlosy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC (Publisher Services)

1700

Characteristics

The expansive global economic dynamic characterizing the ‘long’ sixteenth century had reached its limits by the mid-seventeenth century. Population growth, economic growth and overall demand began to decline, and with them prices and profits. In Europe, the crisis is often associated with the Thirty Years War, which had particularly disastrous effects on Central Europe. Globally speaking, however, we find no evidence for an overall negative or backwards developmental trend. Important parameters of development remained in effect: the division of labour between North-Western and North-Eastern Europe continued to provide inexpensive grain from the manorial economy. Dutch agriculture benefited from a cheap seasonal workforce, the northern German Hollandgänger who brought home their additional income to supplement their peasant existence. In the Americas, precious metals and agricultural products were supplied for export to Western Europe by native unfree labourers forced to work under the mita colonial contract with the Spanish rulers, and black plantation slaves. Following the War of the Spanish Succession which reflected ongoing rivalries between Britain and France, the United Kingdom secured a monopoly over the transatlantic slave trade, the so-called Asiento (1713). The slave trade would reach its peak under the British in the eighteenth century; about half of the ten to twelve million slaves who survived the journey are estimated to have been brought over from Africa in the 1700s. The North American colonies were also based on slave labour, most notably the tobacco plantations of Virginia. Central European traders who themselves had little to do with the slave trade nonetheless profited from colonial slavery through the means of exchange.

Until 1700, Spaniards and Portuguese had constituted the largest settler group in Latin America, with over a million people. The initially low number of British immigrants, however, now rose in the American colonies, to 800,000 between 1700 and 1800 alone.87 In addition to religious refugees who founded agricultural settlements, other immigrant groups mainly comprised the impoverished, criminal and social fringes, employed as contract workers on colonial farms as servants and maids. This contract work is known as indentured servitude. As the name suggests, indentured servitude meant that contracts could not be terminated at will, nor was their choice to work free. This was an elaborate system, often based on expulsions and deportations. Workers could not change their place of employment or quit during the indentured period, usually between five and ten years. The first black settlers in North America were originally indentured servants as well, until slavery was legally institutionalized and their aspirations for eventual freedom extinguished. Sugar cane and cotton were the two main cash crops. Cotton spurred the growth of the European textile industry. The New England colonies extended the transatlantic trade network, receiving English finished products in exchange for fish and timber, which they in turn traded for Caribbean sugar and molasses.

The availability of cotton changed the Western European textile industry.88 Cotton overtook the other raw materials of Central Europe as well, particularly in conjunction with flax (fustian). This cotton, however, came from Syria and Egypt, the spoils of victory enjoyed by the Habsburgs after defeating the Ottomans.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.