THE STORY OF MAN
AN INTRODUCTION TO 150,000 YEARS
CARROLL & GRAF 2007
PART XI
Chapter 20: The Bridging of the Atlantic
Chapter 21: The Remaking of North America
Chapter 22: Wealth Real and Imaginary
Chapter 23: Europe’s Discovery of Art and Science
Chapter 24: Empires of East and South Asia
Chapter 25: The World in 1763
The three centuries following the printing of Gutenberg’s Great Bible had been a period of increased prosperity in many parts of the world. The total human population had doubled, from around 400 million to nearly 800 million, in spite of the huge reduction in numbers in the Americas. Half of this 800 million lived in India and China and they accounted for more than half of the world’s wealth and income. India’s population, having experienced a rapid expansion, had settled down at around 180 million. Of these, 35 million lived in the province of Bengal, whose stupendous wealth was now at Britain’s command, following Robert Clive’s victory over a Mughal army at Plassey in 1756. It is a stunning reflection that the population of Britain itself at this time was only about 8 million. Britain’s Indian empire had originated less than a hundred years earlier, when King Charles II, desperate for money, had leased Bombay to the East India Company, after acquiring it as part of his wife’s dowry. The company, had built a fort there, and had succeeded by a combination of trade, chicanery and force in obtaining control of a large part of the subcontinent.
China’s population, after suffering serious setbacks from the combined effects of famine and Mongol invasion, had once again overtaken India’s. It now exceeded 200 million, and was rising fast.
- It seems pretty certain that in 1763, average living standards were higher in China than they were in Europe, and a great deal higher than those in most of the rest of the world.
- The wealth of China came largely from its role as the hub of a vast network of trade from the Philippines to the coast of Africa.
- The center of gravity of world trade would eventually shift to the Atlantic, but in 1763, it was the seas leading to and from China that saw most of the action.
- The Japanese economy had prospered mightily, and the country’s population was now around 25 million.
- Unaffected by, and totally ignorant of, this hubbub of trade on the oceans to the north and west of them, the peoples of Australia continued in their traditional ways of life. Their numbers probably amounted to something like 500,000.
- Depending on how one defines a language, the total was somewhere between 1000 and 2000.
The doubling of the world’s population between 1456 and 1763 reflected a resumption of the pre-1250 rate of growth in Eurasia that had been interrupted by a cooling climate, by plague and by nomad assault. With a better climate, less plague and an end to the Mongol threat, the settled peoples of Europe and Asia had been able to exploit their improved technology to increase food production, and to extend the scale and the range of their trade with one another.
- The fastest transport on land was still horse-drawn; the fastest transport on water was still powered by the wind.
- In 1763 access to navigable water was still an overwhelming factor in the location of towns and industry.
At the heart of the Eurasian super-continent, a new Great Power – Russia – had appeared on the scene. This hitherto land-locked collection of peoples that had barely qualified as a nation in 1456 was now a force to be reckoned with. Under the leadership of two strong and ambitious rulers – Peter the great and his daughter Elizabeth – the country had been opened up to European ideas and European technology.
- Divided into a multitude of nation-states, the peoples of Europe had got into the habit of fighting wars. As the balance of power changed, so did the alliances.
- The cities of western Europe were not only large and numerous, they were expanding.
The growth of London’s population was the consequence, not of an increase in births, but of a reduction in the number of deaths. A turning-point had been reached in 1751, with the imposition of sharply increased taxes on liquor, and restrictions on its sale. Before that date, London’s notorious gin cellars, with their boast of ‘Drunk for a penny. Dead drunk for two pence’ had played a leading part in shortening the lives of its poorer citizens, for whom drink was a temporary escape from an often unbearable existence. After strong liquor was priced out of their reach, and beer, then tea, became the everyday drink, the death-rate came tumbling down. But the condition of many of the survivors remained pitiable, in a society characterized by extremes of poverty and wealth.
- The most populous, and the wealthiest, country in western Europe was still France. It was also the leading military power, despite having lost a worldwide seven-year war with Britain, which had a population of less than 10 million, compared with France’s 20 million.
- In North America, the British colonial settlements were still essentially confined to the eastern seaboard: none of them extended more than 300 miles inland.
To the south, in British, French and Portuguese colonies, plantation owners were growing rich, using armies of imported, short-lived slaves to grow crops of tobacco, sugar and cotton for export to Europe. Their economies were tied in to what became known as the ‘triangular trade’:
Side 1: ships sailed from ports such as Liverpool and Bristol, carrying manufactured goods to be sold in the slave ports of West Africa.
Side 2: slaves purchased in West Africa were transported – in darkness, filth and chains – to ports in the Americas, where they were sold.
Side 3: sugar, cotton and tobacco were purchased for resale in the home ports from which the ships had set out.
Its neatness was one of the marvels of the age. The hell on earth it created did not perturb those who managed it. And its reality was something from which the fragrant ladies, and the not-so-fragrant gentlemen, in Europe and America who lived on its proceeds were carefully protected.