| Students
taking the World History, Advanced Placement exam in 2006 were asked to
"analyze the social and economic effects of the global flow of silver
from the mid sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century." Had they
read Stanley J. and Barbara Steins' Silver, Trade, and War: Spain and
America in the Making of Early Modern Europe (a challenge for school
level learners), or were taught by teacher who incorporated the book in
his/her lesson plans (a much more probable scenario), their performance
on this Document-based Question would have been greatly enhanced. In their
densely packed economic history, Stein and Stein provide a complex but
satisfying explanation for Spain's decline in the 16th and
17th centuries and the reason for the government's failure
to successfully reform its economic and colonial policies in the face
of that decline. It was, indeed, Spain's continuing reliance on American
silver that "remained a principle factor in the so-called crisis of the
seventeenth century in western Europe." (6)
Students
of the silver trade will find nothing new in such a statement. However,
Stein and Stein go beyond simply reasserting that a dependency on bullion
discouraged Spanish rulers from considering or enacting any innovative
economic policies and improvements, but rather portrays an integrated
system of public and private interests that resisted any reforms that
might have solved the state's growing debt and resulting political stultification.
Indeed, it was the active maintenance of state paralysis that allowed
for profit-taking to take place amongst certain Spanish interests and
their New World partners, along with their political rivals—Holland,
England and France. The one-port monopoly coming out of the medieval economic
development in Spain benefited Sevilla through its merchant guild, the
Consulado, and focused all trade relations (shipping, supplies, naval
protection, adjudication) with the colonies in America to the advantage
of the merchant community of Castille in silver payment. The Spanish government
and many individuals within it became dependent on loans the Castillian
merchant and banking class provided to fund both public and private ambitions.
At the same time, the Sevillan community, in collaboration with their
business associates in the New World, benefited from smuggling silver
into Spain, reducing its costs through the avoidance of legal importation
and trade restrictions, and passing it into the wider European economy.
This localization of trade benefits inhibited any sense of national interest
that might have developed, and Seville's dependence on silver production
in America ensured that any diversification of economic activity (outside
of mining) in the Spanish colonies would be arrested. In turn, the wars
of the sixteenth and seventeenth century that so drained the Spanish treasury
should be seen, according to the authors, not necessarily as evidence
of Spanish aggression but rather as a defense against attempts by England,
Holland and France to acquire Spanish colonial silver to fund their more
diversified (modernizing?) home and colonial economies.
In
their chapter, "Critical Voices, 1720–1759," Stein and Stein come
to grips with the notion of Spanish inability to reform to deal with their
loss of power on the European stage. Here, they recount the various ideas
put forward by the more conservative reformers Campillo and Ulloa and
the radical economic reformers Leggara, Mecanaz and Gandara. Clearly,
with the establishment of the Bourbon monarchy, ideas were generated by
Spanish intellects looking to end the policy of silver dependence and
create a more diverse, manufacturing based economy in both the metropole
and the colonies. The failure of these innovative programs to be implemented
by the new Spanish government is a lesson in the obstacles to effective
government reform and the strength of systemic understandings of history.
The
body of the book consists of closely- packed, though not impenetrable,
information chronologically tracing the development of Seville's one-port
monopoly and its increasing dependency on silver bullion coming from the
Americas. A healthy understanding of economic history and a willingness
to constantly backtrack one's reading to keep straight the various Spanish
regions, cities, trade and political institutions and vocabulary is a
must in approaching the text. While acceptable for graduate students familiar
with economic history, undergraduates and school-level students would
easily get lost and most likely frustrated plowing through the myriad
of concepts and unfamiliar terms utilized by Stein and Stein. The authors
also assume that their readers possess a more than working familiarity
with European diplomatic history running from the Thirty Years War and
the Treaty of Westphalia to the War of the Spanish Succession and the
Treaty of Utrecht. Nevertheless, with the aid of a knowledgeable instructor,
the basic arguments, assertions and evidence in the book could be laid
out in a lecture or two providing students with a sophisticated understanding
of the interrelationship between Spain, its regions, its colonies in America,
and the wider economic and diplomatic scenario in early modern Europe.
But
that is only part of the story of silver and world history. While Stein
and Stein give occasional passing comment to the role silver played in
shaping not only the economies and communities of Europe and the Americas,
but also that of India, China and the Pacific, and in turn credit the
silver trade with strengthening the development of a global economy in
the period, Asia is not the focus of the work. It is the bleeding of Spanish
silver into its European rival economies, and not of its transfer into
China that takes center stage, not surprising in a book subtitled . . . the
making of Early Modern Europe. Teachers and students looking for that
part of the silver story will need to look elsewhere.
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