this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2024
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Late Stage Capitalism
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I'd argue that it was the huge boats capable of crossing oceans, first built around the 14th century, which could comfortably sail around Africa. Look at the borders of the Portugese Empire, doing very similar stuff to what England was doing, but apparently that's different somehow? It's the boats that enabled them to become imperialists over huge distances.
You'd argue that because after the age of those ships, while capitalism is still around, we haven't got any of the things mentioned anymore?
Capitalism is the cancer of market economies.
Around that period there was a huge leap forward in the quality of the boats. England and Portugal were maritime powers. They were limited by the distance they could sail, and suddenly could sail much farther. Enforcing control on the opposite side of the world would have previously been unthinkable. Capitalism isn't the reason they started conquering the globe. It's the improved boats that allowed them to travel the globe in the first place. The spirit of imperialism was already there before capitalism came around.
"The spirit of imperialism" isn't the same as "the yearning for never-ending and ever-growing profits".
Infinite growth on a finite planet is literally impossible.
What propelled the hunger for exotic colonies? The foreign products which were so esteemed back in Europe.
We could argue all day what specific ideology it is what drove them, but I think it's enough to say it was greed and cruelty of some sorts.
Greed absolutely. But feels like this meme is pretending that money only started existing in the 16th century and no one was greedy before that.
The microblog is generally correct here. Your attempt at reading between the lines or whatever is off target.
They're referring to mercantile capitalism, which did come about around this time, though you could quibble that the Dutch technically beat the English with the Dutch East India Company and the Amsterdam stock exchange. However (and I'm going to grossly oversimplify this), the machination of using investment capital to extract wealth was pioneered by the English following the collapse of feudalism, caused by the black plague, and the war against Spain.
Greed obviously wasn't new, but the concept of using wealth to acquire more wealth was novel. Before this, landowners just piled their wealth up or used it to buy luxury goods.
interestingly, the neanderthals never did this, and they went fucking extinct....
something to think about i guess.