Colin wrote: > I do feel > confident in arguing that there's been a Europe- > centered world economy for the last 400 years or so, > in the context of which the european industrial > revolution occurred. If that is granted and if it > can be shown that significant scale economies existed > in industries like textiles, and/or that leading > sectors drew surpluses from colonial activities (of > which slave trading was just part), then I think the > case for colonialism's decisive role in the > Industrial Revolution is fairly good, and the broader > point that we cannot treat European development as a > separate thing should be established. Colin, you are raising an important point which, as I said in a previous post, Frank also makes, the logic of which runs like this: the colonial trade was instrumental in the development of the British textile industry, an industry which in turn was the key propelling force of the industrial revolution. I guess if you want to make this case, your task is to offer us some data on, say, textile production as a percentage of GNP, textile exports as a percentage of total exports. Do you have time for this? > Relatedly, to say that the slave trade (or even the > totality of the colonial trade) "accelerated an > industrialization process which would have happened > only more slowly," as you quote Landes as saying, is > a bit vacuous. Apart from being a counterfactual > that we can't prove, it also begs the question of > how fast is "more slowly." Yes, every counterfactual raises more questions than it answers, but it is your position that needs counterfactuals, since numbers don't show the colonial trade was "decisive". Landes says, without elaborating, that such innovations as the steam engine and coke- smelted iron were "largely independent of the Atlantic system, so was the attempt initially to mechanize wool spinning" (121) > At this point I'm repeating myself. The scale- > economies argument, the leading-sector argument, and > the argument Barkley articulated that even modest > amounts of extra capital investment are significant > if maintained over time, all need to be addressed > directly if we're going to get any farther. As I said, I would appreciate if you could expand on the leading sector argument, by which, I guess, you mean the role of the textile industry. Why do you restrict the scale of economies argument to the colonial economy? The way I see Barkley's point, is that if small amounts of capital are important over time, so are bigger amounts. The same goes for the stuff on aggregates. > On the Asian sink question, I clearly misunderstood > your original post: > > > But even if Europe extracted a lot of capital > > from the colonies, did not Frank tell us that a high proportion of it > > ended up in Asia or China as the ultimate "sink"?! Whatever happened > > to Asia's "massive balance of trade surplus with > > Europe"? Really, this is a major unrecognized problem in > > Frank's very thesis. > > Can you tell me which AGF proposition the sink > disproves, and why? Or are you arguing that > there is an internal AGF contradiction and if so, > what is it? Since Green has just taken this point, I'll pick up there. thanks, ricardo
