Glenda B. Claborne
Soc 500b
March 29, 1999
Blaut, J.M. (1993). The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History. New York: The Guilford Press.

Why and when, according to Blaut, did capitalism and the West rise?

Blaut argues that capitalism and the West rose after 1492 when feudal societies started to decay and colonialism started bringing wealth into Europe from colonial enterprises in the Americas. Before 1492, Blaut asserts that Europe had no unique qualities or particular advantage over other civilizations but was broadly similar to Asian and African civilizations in terms of modes of production (feudalism), class structures (landlord-peasant), systems of spatial exchange, and urbanization. The developmental processes in these feudal societies were similar in civilizations in all the three continents of Europe, Asia and Africa. The crises that beset them were also similar and they were in some ways connected hemispherically (criss-cross diffusion) and were at similar stages of protocapitalist development at around 1492 when Europe suddenly gained advantage through its conquest of the Americas. Blaut argues that the conquest of the Americas signaled the steady and sharp transformation of Europe from a sluggish economy around 1492 to its symbolic "Glorious Revolution" in 1688 on to the Industrial Revolution. It was the wealth from the Americas which fueled the rise of the West into becoming the center of economic and political power after 1492. The siphoning of wealth from the Americas and then later from conquered Asian and African states catapulted the West to unprecedented powers and which impoverished the rest.

Reason why Europeans, not Africans and Asians, reached and conquered America.

The Americas were more accessible to Spanish and Portuguese ports than most of the maritime-mercantile centers in Asia and Africa. Blaut defines accessibility as a matter of sailing distance and sailing conditions, both favoring the Iberian centers than any other. Blaut speculates that had the Americas been more accessible to South Indian centers than to European centers, then India would have become the center of capitalism and world power. Blaut entertains the counterargument of why, if location and accessibility were crucial factors to the conquest of America, did not the West African centers which were closer to the Americas than the Iberian ports conquer America instead? Blaut defends his argument of Iberian locational advantage by pointing out that the West African sea trade centers were "not oriented to commerce by sea (as were those of East Africa)." Furthermore, other trading cities which could have reached America were in a "political and commercial slump." The Iberians really had no advantage in terms of maritime and commercial capacities, they were just darn lucky at a crucial juncture in history.

Reason why the conquest of the Americas was successful

In line with his argumentation approach of leveling the playing field before discussing any conflict between civilizations, Blaut brings up the expected challenge of why, if world civilizations were are at a more or less similar level of development before 1492, did not the civilizations of the Americas conquer Europe instead of the other way around. Blaut answers that challenge by explaining why the civilizations of the Americas succumbed to the European colonizers: it was not because of the European's superior military technology - the civilazations of the Americas had also significant military capacity and organizational structures. Blaut places paramount importance to the decimation of the majority of native populations in the Americas by pandemics of diseases introduced by European colonizers. Needless to say, this depopulation drastically weakened any resistance on the part of the natives of the Americas towards the European conquest. With a decimated and weakened native population, the Europeans had not much difficulty destroying the then well-organized states of the Americas and subjugating their populations for hard labor in gold and silver mines and other colonial enterprises.

How colonial enterprise in the 16th C produced capital.

  1. Gold and silver mining
  2. Plantation agriculture
  3. Trade with Asia in spices, cloth, and the like.
  4. Profit returned to European investors from:
  5. slaving
  6. piracy