Page:The Evolution of Modern Capitalism.djvu/30
10 THE EVOLUTION OF
wealth in Western Europe. Without far larger access to
monetary treasures as instruments of concentrated accumu-
lation, without larger opportunities of gathering the various
material resources for the development of the industrial arts,
modern capitalism would have been impossible in its exist-
ing dimensions. Western Europe supplied no adequate
output of precious metals from the mines: her agricultural
population afforded no increase of production in the form of
rents large enough to furnish a great stream of accumulating
wealth, nor could the productiveness of the industrial arts of
the towns yield a rapid growth of profit. The economy
of medieval Europe did not expose a large landless pro-
letarian population to the free exploitation of profit-seeking
masters. The labour basis of modern capitalism was
lacking.
The exploitation of other portions of the world through military plunder, unequal trade, and forced labour has been one great indispensable condition of the growth of European capitalism. ‘The riches of the Italian cities is quite incon- ceivable apart from the exploitation of the rest of the Mediterranean; just as the prosperity of Portugal, Spain, Holland, France, and England is unthinkable apart from the previous destruction of the Arab civilisation, the plundering of Africa, the impoverishment and desolation of Southern Asia, and its island world, the fruitful East Indies, and the thriving states of the Incas and Astecs.”?4
The Italian republics were the first to take this work in hand. The close of the Crusades saw them in virtual con- trol of numerous cities in Syria, Palestine, the A%gean, and the Black Sea. From the beginning of the twelfth century, Genoa, Pisa, and Venice fastened their economic fangs into the towns of Arsof, Caesarea, Acre, Sidon, Tyre, etc. The break up of the Eastern empire gave Venice a vast colonial power, not less than three-eighths of that empire falling under her single sway; while her rival, Genoa, also acquired large possessions among the Ionian islands and on the main- land. Asia Minor and the A%gean islands were full of rich natural resources, with large civilised populations inheriting arts of skilled industry as yet unknown to the Western world, ‘The Italian cities did not pretend to colonise in any
1 Sombart, vol. i. p. 326.