5.2. GROWTH BREAKS LOOSE

FROM ABOUT 1480 EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES BRING EXPONENTIAL GROWTH

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

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Behind each vessel is a whole chain of production, like that

which 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 on the borders of the mid-Atlantic expands with unprecedented speed (Spain is an exception). 

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The new revenues threaten the nobles, but their social system absorbs many of the most dynamic newcomers: 

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

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

• Some lands let the owner automatically acquire a title. Or owning them helps marry a daughter to an impoverished noble, meaning one's grandchildren will be 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.

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Nobles' prestige leads the newly-rich 

to spend gains instead of investing them. 

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Next, 

V.3. 

Economic growth and the "Wars of Religion"