Conquest, Tribute and Trade

This new (and substantially revised) edition of Conquest, Tribute and Trade: How the Quest for Precious Metals Gave Birth to Globalization explains the birth of globalization in a new way and addresses three interrelated economic issues that have been under-analyzed to date. First, how and why the discovery, extraction and distribution of precious metals -- gold, copper and, above all, silver -- enabled the closely-related Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch to supersede the great Italian city-states, check the powerful Ottoman Empire and overturn centuries of Muslim domination in Africa and Asia. Second, how and why the Europeans squandered much of the metallic wealth of Africa, the Americas and the Far East on inconclusive military affairs; exploited (and even destroyed) indigenous societies across the globe; and left behind a wake of east-west animosities that has lasted for five centuries. And third, how and why a breakaway portion of the Spanish Netherlands, the Dutch Republic, managed to co-opt the achievements of the Iberians, gain control of increasingly large stocks of precious metals and serve as a “bridge” to the later triumphs of the British Empire (and United States). The narrative includes a discussion of the larger-than-life characters who made it all happen -- explorers like Columbus, Da Gama, Magellan and Drake; conquistadors like Cortés and Pizarro; and rulers like Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Felipe II of Spain and William of Orange and their merchant bankers -- as well as the obscure entrepreneurs who scoured the globe for precious metals, introduced important new technologies and helped to establish the first multinational corporations. Conquest, Tribute and Trade also explains how and why the sixteenth century European powers introduced patterns of economic development that are being repeated in the twenty-first century and generated a host of lessons to be studied by anyone interested in the processes through which commercial empires are won and lost. Readers will find some intriguing parallels, for example, between the Spanish state bankruptcies of the latter half of the sixteenth century and the massive U.S. government bail-outs of the 2008–09 period.