Process
Status Items Highlights Done See section below Claims None Questions None Output None
Highlights
Time 0:11:06
- The Black Death in the 1340s strengthened peasants’ bargaining power, leading to the collapse of feudalism.
- From 1350 to 1500, a more egalitarian society emerged, improving living standards for commoners. Transcript: Speaker 6 And this effectively strengthened the bargaining power of peasants and workers and weakened the bargaining power of the feudal lords. And the peasant revolutionaries recognized that this was an extraordinary opportunity, and they took it and they managed to successfully overthrow feudalism. Fetalism basically collapses during this period, right? Speaker 1 Historians say by about 1400, the most restrictive form of feudalism, serfdom, had all but died out in England. Most peasants were no longer bound to their lord. They now paid rent in money and could move on if they could find a better deal on another manner. The diminished population also freed up land that effectively belonged to no one. So people shared it among themselves, for subsistence farming, grazing and hunting. Speaker 6 In the place of feudalism after its collapse, a more egalitarian, more democratic society emerged where peasants and workers had more direct control over the means of production, Along with basically collectively managed commons like the forests and the pastures and the rivers, etc. And the key principle that was at play here was that everyone should have access to the resources that are necessary for survival. This is considered kind of the right of habitation. And it was a remarkable period in the sense that during this era, more or less from 1350 to about 1500, living standards of commoners improved pretty dramatically. We see nutrition goes up, welfare ratios go up in terms of real wages, rents go down. Speaker 1 Some historians have talked
Time 0:12:46
- The 1400s were comparatively better for ordinary working people in England and some European countries.
- This period occurred between the crumbling of feudalism and the rise of capitalism. Transcript: Speaker 1 Some historians have talked about a golden age for the European peasantry in that century and a half, as feudalist arrangements crumbled and capitalist systems had not yet risen on A large scale. Others say golden age is a wild exaggeration. After all, most late medieval peasants were extremely poor by today’s standards. But most experts do agree the 1400s were a better time for ordinary working people in England and some other European countries, compared with their conditions before that period Or after.
Time 0:17:39
- Some historians argue that large-scale enslavement and colonization were not coincidental to capitalism’s rise in Western Europe.
- These industrial-scale moneymaking schemes were built on the subjugation and exploitation of people and resources in Africa, Asia, and the New World. Transcript: Speaker 1 As we discussed in our season five series, some historians make a powerful argument that large-scale projects of enslavement and colonization didn’t just happen to get rolling around The time that capitalism was taking root in Western Europe.
Time 0:17:39
- Large-scale enslavement and colonization projects weren’t just coincidental with capitalism’s rise in Western Europe.
- These exploitative ventures in Africa, Asia, and the New World were actually capitalism’s announcement of its arrival. Transcript: Speaker 1 As we discussed in our season five series, some historians make a powerful argument that large-scale projects of enslavement and colonization didn’t just happen to get rolling around The time that capitalism was taking root in Western Europe. The claim is instead that those industrial scale moneymaking schemes built on the subjugation and exploitation of people and resources in Africa, Asia, and the New World. That those ventures were capitalism announcing its arrival.
Time 0:20:37
- Adam Smith, the renowned capitalist thinker, viewed the voyages of Columbus and da Gama as crucial events in human history.
- Smith acknowledged the benefits for Europeans but also recognized the ‘dreadful misfortunes’ inflicted on indigenous peoples due to military superiority. Transcript: Speaker 1 If it seems like a radical, anti-capitalist argument to call those voyages an important starting gun for capitalism, it’s striking then to see what Adam Smith of all people had to say. Speaker 3 The discovery of America and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind. Speaker 1 Adam Smith, the Scottish philosopher and the 18th century’s greatest thinker on capitalism, in his landmark book, The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. In this remarkable passage, Smith reflects on the pros and cons of those world-altering discoveries and what they unleashed. For him, looking at it from the British Isles in the 1770s, the pros outweighed the cons. Speaker 3 By uniting in some measure the most distant parts of the world, by enabling them to relieve one another’s wants, to increase one another’s enjoyments, and to encourage one another’s Industry, their general tendency would seem to be beneficial. Speaker 1 One another’s is doing some serious work there, isn’t it? These economic relationships across the world, by then two and a half centuries old, had created great material benefit for some. But Smith did acknowledge the other side of the coin, what he called the dreadful misfortunes that befell people in the East and West Indies, since Europeans had found their lands. Benefits on one side, misery on the other. The reason? The imbalance of power. The more advanced ships and weapons that one side possessed. Speaker 3 At the particular time when these discoveries were made, the superiority of force happened to be so great on the side of the Europeans that they were unable to commit with impunity, Every sort of injustice in these remote countries. In
Time 0:22:47
- In the 16th century, elites began leveraging wealth to build new money-making capacity.
- This shift was driven by the need to fund constant warfare between Western European aristocracies. Transcript: Speaker 1 The last episode, we made the point that before capitalism, the people at the top of the social order mostly just sat on their wealth, or spent it on cathedrals or castles or nice things For themselves. For the most part, they didn’t leverage it to build new money-making capacity. Starting in the 16th century, this changed. By that time, elites had begun to see how they could amass bigger piles of wealth than ever before and use those piles to make even bigger piles.
Time 0:23:05
- Before the 16th century, elites primarily spent their wealth on non-productive assets.
- Starting in the 16th century, they began leveraging their wealth to generate more wealth, driven by motives such as financing wars. Transcript: Speaker 1 Starting in the 16th century, this changed. By that time, elites had begun to see how they could amass bigger piles of wealth than ever before and use those piles to make even bigger piles. The Western European aristocracy’s had strong motives for doing so. For one, they were constantly at war with one another. They needed gold and silver coin to build better armies and weapons. Enter mercantilism, a brand of capitalism designed not to lift the general welfare, but to fill the nation’s coffers. Kingdoms sent ships across oceans to trade, consistently using force to colonize other lands, to take what they wanted for
Time 0:24:23
- Recent research suggests Europe’s development stemmed from resources plundered from colonized nations, not the other way around.
- Colonial powers enabled rapid capital accumulation through this plunder, facilitating European investment and growth. Transcript: Speaker 1 We, quote unquote, the West, developed places like India by bringing our more advanced societies and systems to that part of the world. What do you say to that? Speaker 3 Well, there’s a lot of recent economic history research that suggests that the causation was really the other way around, that Europe was able to develop and able to find the resources
Time 0:24:36
- Recent research suggests Europe’s development stemmed from plundering colonized nations, not the other way around.
- Resources extracted from these countries, like India, fueled Europe’s Industrial and Agrarian Revolutions. Transcript: Speaker 3 Well, there’s a lot of recent economic history research that suggests that the causation was really the other way around, that Europe was able to develop and able to find the resources To invest and have rapid capital accumulation because of the plunder that was enabled by these colonial powers. Speaker 1 Ghosh cites a recent book by two other renowned Indian scholars, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, called and Imperialism. Speaker 3 Which basically talks about the significant role played by the transfer, the drain, from countries like India. India was one of the countries, but there were many others, in enabling not just the Industrial Revolution, but even the Agrarian Revolution before that.
Time 0:24:36
- Recent research suggests that European development was fueled by resources extracted from colonized countries like India.
- This challenges the narrative that colonization led to the development of these regions. Transcript: Speaker 3 Well, there’s a lot of recent economic history research that suggests that the causation was really the other way around, that Europe was able to develop and able to find the resources To invest and have rapid capital accumulation because of the plunder that was enabled by these colonial powers. Speaker 1 Ghosh cites a recent book by two other renowned Indian scholars, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, called and Imperialism. Speaker 3 Which basically talks about the significant role played by the transfer, the drain, from countries like India. India was one of the countries, but there were many others, in enabling not just the Industrial Revolution, but even the Agrarian Revolution before that. Speaker 1 In the early years of their trade with India, the British were more or less normal customers. They bought things like rice, textiles, and spices, and paid with silver, just like French traders in India. But the East India Company gradually colonized the subcontinent, starting with the Battle of Plassie in 1757. The British defeated a stronger Indian force thanks to a betrayal. The head of the Bengali army switched sides to help the Brits, in return for being made Britain’s puppet ruler of Bengal. The British then used that foothold to push out the leaders of other Indian principalities or pressure to support British interests. As Britain gained complete control, it forced Indians to sell their products for low prices and pay more for British goods. It also imposed taxes on Indian peasants and small business people, and used those tax receipts to buy Indian goods. Under that scheme, the British weren’t paying for the stuff they loaded onto their ships, Indians were. In their recent book, the Potnayaks analyzed historical records and came up with a stunning estimate. That between 1765 and 1938, Britain extracted the equivalent of $45 trillion
Time 0:28:51
- Marx called “primitive accumulation” the process by which nations acquired initial wealth, later used to become richer.
- This process often involved theft, such as enslavement, unfair trade, and seizing resources. Transcript: Speaker 1 He wrote about primitive accumulation, not just at the level of the individual businessperson, but on a bigger scale. How did some nations first acquire the wealth that they then used to get much, much richer? The answer, for Marx, was theft. The theft of people’s labor through enslavement, the theft of raw and manufactured goods through one-sided trading relationships leveraged by
Time 0:30:46
- In medieval England, peasants divided their time between working on a lord’s land and their own plots, including common lands.
- Starting in the 15th century, the ‘enclosure’ movement led to the fencing off of these common lands, forcing peasants to work for wages and paving the way for industrialization. Transcript: Speaker 1 In episode two, we talked about peasants under feudalism and the typical division in their lives. They’d work roughly half the time on the Lord’s Land and the other half doing subsistence farming on their own smaller plots, assigned for their use under customary agreements and On common lands that local peasant families shared. Speaker 4 And they would be given areas for grazing for animals. They would be given certain rights. Rights, for example, to take wood from the woods so that they could use it for fuel. Speaker 1 That is Silvia Federici, the well-known feminist philosopher and social scientist, a professor emerita at Hofstra University. Speaker 4 By the 15th century and then more later, you begin to have a process whereby these peasants who had been sitting and working and reproducing themselves on the lands the nobility of the Aristocracy you know are increasingly expelled. And the process of expulsion is called the enclosure because literally the lands that they used to have for grazing, for taking fuel, for agricultural product, they would be fenced Off, and they would be pushed off and then forced to continue to work in the same villages but now for the pittance, for the wage.
Time 0:32:24
- Enclosure, starting in the 1500s, privatized formerly common lands in Britain.
- This forced peasants into towns and cities, marking a shift in the concept of land ownership from communal to individual. Transcript: Speaker 1 And closure. I’ll admit I had never heard of it until a few years ago. But it looms large in European history, nowhere more than in Britain. It marked a deep shift in how Westerners think about land. Is either privately owned, an individual, or say a corporation, holds the deed, or it’s public. And even with public land, we can point to the government entity that owns it, federal, state, county, city. Get the hell off my property. What? I’m just saying. And don’t come back. That’s from Breaking Bad. Most of human history, people didn’t treat land as personal property. In medieval times, in Europe and some other places, only kings and emperors owned land. Or think of indigenous people in the Americas, Africa, Australia, right up to the recent past and even today in some places. Tribes formed customary understandings about their territory and would sometimes fight over incursions or invasions. But individuals didn’t draw lines and say, this patch of the earth is officially and legally mine. Okay, but enclosure was a big deal. Speaker 4 Oh, enclosure was a huge big deal. Speaker 1 Because historian Ellen or Janneke of the London School of Economics. She says enclosure shoved millions of people against will out of the only life they knew in the countryside. Speaker 4 Where you have a community, where you have obligations that go both ways. So you have obligations to your landlord, but your landlord has obligations to you as well. And then that turns into land can be land is owned, owned, you need to get out of here. And I don’t know. Good luck to you. You know. Speaker 1 Over several centuries, starting in the 1500s, the British Parliament passed thousands of acts, privatizing almost seven million acres of formerly common
Time 0:34:13
- Starting in the 1500s, British Parliament passed acts privatizing common lands, displacing peasants.
- This was partly driven by technological advancements like improved plows and crop rotation, which reduced the need for farm labor. Transcript: Speaker 1 Over several centuries, starting in the 1500s, the British Parliament passed thousands of acts, privatizing almost seven million acres of formerly common lands, allowing landlords To send peasants away. Speaker 4 It’s a displacement. You know, like, you had to go somewhere, and that somewhere was often towns and cities, you know. And so it’s a huge reimagining of what the workforce is. Speaker 1 Why does this happen? Yannick says part of the answer is technology. In the same way that powerful machinery has whittled down the need for farm labor right up to the present. That happened hundreds of years ago too. Improved crop rotation practices, better heavier plows, the use of horses instead of cattle to pull the plow faster. Many landowners stopped raising crops and got into the wool business because grazing sheep took a lot less labor and they could make bigger profits.
Time 0:35:32
- Thomas More criticized enclosure in his 1516 book Utopia, arguing that sheep were “devouring men” due to landlords driving peasants off the land for wool production.
- This led to a rise in vagrancy and theft. Transcript: Speaker 1 Thomas Moore, best known as a Catholic writer, judge, and government official under Henry VIII, was a critic of enclosure. He wrote in his book Utopia in 1516 that because landlords were enclosing land and driving off peasants to raise wool, the sheep of England were in effect feasting on the people. For sooth, my lord, your sheep were wont to be so meek and tame and so small eaters. Speaker 3 Now, as I hear say, they become great devourers and so wild that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves. Speaker 1 Thomas More also blamed enclosure and the resulting waves of rural refugees turned loose across the land, for an alarming rise in vagrancy and theft. Speaker 3 Away they trudge, I say, out of their known and accustomed houses, finding no place to rest in. What can they then else do but steal, and then justly be hanged or else
Time 0:36:40
- 16th-century vagrancy was a significant social issue stemming from people resisting the new rules of enclosure and exploitation.
- They viewed wage labor as a form of slavery, choosing to become beggars, bandits, and migrants instead. Transcript: Speaker 1 Begging. Speaker 4 Yeah, many people became vagrant. You know, the 16th century is the century of the great vagrancy. Sylvia Federici. All these people without nothing who do not want to submit to the new rules, they don’t want to submit to the new forms of exploitation, who look at wage labor as a form of slavery. And they take the road, they become beggars, they become bandits, they become, you know, people, sometimes migrants. So vagrancy is considered one of the main social problems in Europe of the 16th century. Speaker 1 Just as peasants had revolted against feudalism, now a couple centuries later, people rose up against enclosure.
Time 0:41:37
- While slavery existed throughout history, the New World slave economy differed drastically in scale.
- It became industrial in its vastness, contrasting with smaller-scale caste-based systems. Transcript: Speaker 1 And that question of scale is crucial. Lots of people today, and I’m thinking of white folks here in the US, like to say, well, all through history, everybody did slavery. There was nothing new about the slave-based economy that Westerners built in the New World. Speaker 2 Well, that’s about half right, isn’t it? Slavery was commonplace across the world up until a couple hundred years ago, but it was often based on systems of caste, where people fighting wars would capture some individuals And haul them away as slaves.
Time 0:41:55
- While slavery existed before the New World, the chattel slavery system was distinct.
- It was designed as the foundation of a mode of production, operating on an industrial scale, marking a shift from previous slavery practices. Transcript: Speaker 2 Well, that’s about half right, isn’t it? Slavery was commonplace across the world up until a couple hundred years ago, but it was often based on systems of caste, where people fighting wars would capture some individuals And haul them away as slaves. Speaker 1 Right. But to get at the point that this was something different, Professor Cherise Burdin Steli again, with a clip that some listeners will remember from season five. Speaker 2 As many scholars have pointed out, slavery has been a feature of many societies, But slavery as
Time 0:48:24
- Widespread human well-being didn’t dramatically improve until 350 years after the dawn of capitalism (around 1870).
- This suggests other factors besides capitalism contributed to increased standards of living. Transcript: Speaker 2 We’re placing the dawn of capitalism at the beginning of the 1500s, that means we had 350 years of capitalism before a large swath of humanity started to live with comfort and abundance. Hmm. Speaker 1 Maybe capitalism the sure ticket to human well-being all by itself. Maybe some other things had to happen. Speaker 2 So, stay tuned, but it feels like we need to say a little more about these two big developments and what unites them. Colonization and slavery on one hand and closure on the other. How are they related? Speaker 1 I think if we could put it into one word, it would be commodification. In season five, our climate series, we talked about thingification, quoting Amé Césaire and Dr. King. Speaker 2 In other words, the fact that you’re asserting ownership over aspects of the world that people previously didn’t treat that way, or even think of in that way, and then using those newly Objectified or thingified things to produce profit. In this case, we’re talking mainly about land and human beings. Speaker 1 The right to enslave or colonize so you can steal their labor or buy it at a very low price. And land that had been shared and understood as a fundamental resource that provided a life and a way of life for everyone, however unequal and unjust those arrangements were.