GROWTH BREAKS LOOSE

AFTER ABOUT 1480 EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES BRING EXPONENTIAL GROWTH

Capitalism destabilizes the backwater that borders the Atlantic, with a speed that its relatively primitive states cannot contain.

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Behind each vessel is a whole chain of production,

like that the trans-Saharan exchanges bring the African savannah 

Storm at Sea by Pieter Breughel the Elder, toward 1610 / zoom

Ship-building requires planks, sails, nails, ropes, tar, supplies, barrels like the one that has fallen into the sea. They in turn need warehouses, wagons, tools, donkeys, horses... .

Those chains of production have been developing since about the year 1000, especially around the Mediterranean. Growth in the rest of Europe has been gradual.

Now proximity to the Atlantic means that trade and production there expand with unprecedented speed.  

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The new revenues first strengthen, the destabilize the social system as in Djimini, but the European caste of nobles absorbs the newcomers for a time: 

• The owner of the medieval castle in the background may be a former merchant, who has bought land to join a caste he reveres. 

Springtime by Pieter Breugel the Younger, about 1600 / zoom (with a traditional analysis in French)

 /

• That purchase may mean acquiring a title. At least it helps marry a daughter to an impoverished noble, making his grandchildren nobles (with somewhat tarnished escutcheons). 

The choice is not mercantile. Continuing business activities means losing noble status, and the income from the land diminishes with inflation.

The prestige of the nobility 

leads to the newly-rich spending gains 

instead of investing them. 

The practice slows growth

but does not stop it. 

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Next, 

Violence that has nothing to do with religion