Jim Blaut makes some excellent general points about the importance of the New World. I would like to make a few comments:(posted 8749 days ago)1) I know Ken Pomeranz will agree that access to New World resources made a big difference for Europe. And this was a point that, although it came up, did not get as thorough discussion as some other points either in the discussion on Ken's work last year on this discussion list, or when I have seen Ken present his work.
2) I think it is important to think about the role of New World wealth. I don't think gold and silver was the most important stuff. After all, the Industrial Revolution starts in England, not in Spain. You may argue that the gold and silver flowed from Spain into England, in return for manufactured goods. But a fair amount of the gold and silver also flowed into CHINA, to pay for silk and tea and china.
3) If we return to Ken's own analysis, as I understand it, it is that the New World provided raw materials such as cotton and sugar that complemented the raw materials available in Europe. The market economy was also spreading geographically in Asia, but (perhaps) the complementarities between the new and old regions was different. (Although if I understand Bob Marks' work, even this isn't clear.
4) I do not know how access to New World wealth altered the distribution of wealth and power among different elements in the European ruling classes. It seems to have relatively different outcomes in different nations. Perhaps one interpretation is that the New World was destabilizing. It was not a foregone conclusion that the new equilibrium would put the "capitalists" on top, it didn't in France or Spain. But it did in Holland and England. Why? are we back to pre-modern institutions? Or was their a certain random character to the outcome of political struggles. Maybe Europe does better (or worse, depends on how you feel about capitalism. I like it) because you only needed one or two states to end up with the "right" people in control. In this story, China is handicapped because it is a unified state, only gets to run the "experiment" on one government. Or maybe the geo-political nature of China meant if the ruling structure imploded the result was invasion and the imposition of a foreign ruling class, rather than a Glorious Revolution.
5) To tie two threads together, the New World and the credit markets, how much did the need to modernize the financial systems, both to fund wars and to organize the large scale enterprises needed to take advantage of new economic opportunities (plantations and trade both ran on European based credit) driven by the New World discoveries. In this story the "wealth" created is the new institutions called into being to help exploit the new natural resources.
I am sure this only scratches the surface of the questions raised by bringing the New World into the picture.
Rebecca Menes Department of Political Science University of California--Los A