Econ 210a: Memo Question for January 26, 2011
"The treasure captured outside Europe by undisguised looting, enslavement and murder, floated back to the mother-country and were there turned into capital."
-- Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 Ch. 32.
Do the other assigned readings for January 26 provide any basis for assessing the general truth of this passage from Marx? In what sense did colonial trade in the 1497-1800 period contribute to capital formation in Europe?
January 26. The Commercial Revolution (deVries)
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson (2005), "The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth," American Economic Review 95, pp. 546-79.
Karl Marx (1867), "The So-called Primitive Capital Accumulation," Capital, Vol. 1, Part VIII, Primitive Accumulation, chapters 26-32. http://tinyurl.com/dl20090112k
Jan de Vries, "The Limits to Globalization in the Early Modern World," Economic History Review 63 (2010), pp. 710-33.
Jeffrey Williamson and Kevin O'Rourke (2002), "After Columbus: Explaining the Global Trade Boom 1500-1800," Journal of Economic History 62:2, pp. 417-56. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2698186
Ralph Austen and Woodruff Smith (1990), "Private Tooth Decay as Public Economic Virtue: The Slave-Sugar Triangle, Consumerism, and European Industrialization," Social Science History 14:1, pp. 95-115. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1171366
