Lecture 10

Western Europe

I. A long-term perspective:on the economic rise of Western Europe  • Trade-led development

• City-led proto-capitalism in the Mediterranean (Venice, Genoa, Seville) • Shift of “economic leadership” to the North Atlantic with the discovery of

the sea routes to America and to Asia (and to the barriers in Mediterranean trade due to conflict with the Ottoman Empire) (quotation of Adam Smith)

 • Age of exploration and beginning of the age of European colonial rule • The scientific and agricultural revolutions

II. The Industrial Revolution and Capitalism within Europe  Industrial Revolution begins in England (Why England? Again, Adam Smith) The spread of capitalism and technology to Western Europe, and the struggles within Europe (including the issues of Russian reform). Leaders, followers, and the Gerschenkron Hypothesis.)

III. The confrontation of Industrial Europe with the world   The challenge of industrial capitalism (Marx quotation) Timing of colonial rule Timing of European confrontation in Asia Timing of European confrontation in Africa

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

Marx and Engels, The CommunistManifesto, 1848