World Accumulation 1492-1789

304 Pages·2008·2.85 MB·English

by  Andre Gunder Frank

World Accmzuhion
1492-1 789

W A ,
ORLD CCUMULATION
1492 - 1789
Andre Gunder Frank
Algora Publishing
New York
C 1978 by Andre Gunder Frank.
W Rights Reserved.
uww.algora.com
No portion of thsb ook (beyond what is permitted by
Sections 107 or 108 of the United States Copyright Act of 1976)
may be reproduced by any process, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmittedin any form, or by any means, without the
express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 0-87586-204-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Frank, Andre Gunder, 1929-
World Accumulation, 1492-1789 / Andre Gunder Frank
p. cm.
Bibliography: p. 273
Includes Index.
ISBK 0-87586,191-1
1. Economic history 2. Capitalism-History I. Title.
HCSLF68 330.9
77-091746
Printed in the United States
To the memory of
my student, friend, and cornpahero in Chile
Dagoberto Perez Vargas and his comrades
who put these theoretical concerns behind them
to fight and die to end
accumulation through expropriation
and exploitation
The inquiry into this question would be an inquiry into
what the economists call Previous, or Original Accurnula-
tion, but which ought to be called Original Expropriation.
- Karl Marx,
“Wages, Price and Profit” (1969:56)
Indeed, the booty brought back by Drake in the Golden
Hind may fairly be considered the fountain and origin of
British Foreign Investment. Elizabeth paid off out of the
proceed the whole of her foreign debt and invested a part of
the balance (about i42,OOO) in the Levant Company;
largely out of the projits of the Levant Company there was
formed the East India Company, the profts of which
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the
main foundation of England’s foreign connections; and so
on. . . this is quite sufficient to illustrate our argument
,
. . that the greater part of the fruits of the economic
,
progress and capital accumulation of the Elizabethan and
Jacobean age accrued to the profiteer rather than to the
wage-earner. . Never in the annals of the modern
, ,
world has there existed so prolonged and so rich an oppor-
tunity for the businessman, the speculator and the prof
iteer. In these golden years modern capitalism was born.
. . . Thus the rate at which the world's wealth has
accumulated has been far more variable than habits of
thrijt have been. . . It is characteristic of our historians
,
that, for example, the Cambridge Modern History should
make no mention of these economic factors as moulding the
Elizabethan Age and making possible its greatness. . .
,
We were just in a financial position to afford Shakespeare
at the moment when he presented himself? . . . It would
be a fascinating task to re-write Economic History, in the
light of these ideas.
- John Maynard Keynes,
A Treatise on Money (1930)

Contents
Preface 11
1. The Sixteenth-Century Expansion 25
2. The Seventeenth-Century Depression 65
3. The Political Economy of Cyclical
Expansion and Rivalry, 1689-1763 103
4. The Transition in India to the
Transformation of Asia 135
5. Depression and Revolution, 1762-1789 167
6. The Eighteenth-Century Commercial
Revolution in .%ccumulation 213
7. Conclusions: On So-called Primitive
Accumulation 238
Bibliography 273
Index 291