The Mercantile System and its Historical Significance [23]
which not only had its roots in the earlier stubborn struggles between towns and territories, but was strengthened just at this time by the circumstance that the possession of colonies, of the Indian Spice Islands, and of the silver mines of America had fallen to the several nations only as the result of war and bloodshed. It seemed unavoidable that one nation should have to recede when another pressed in. In reality, all social bodies, and therefore economic bodies among them, - at first towns and districts, and afterwards nations and states, - stand to one another in a double relation; a relation of action and reaction by which they mutually supplement one another, and a relation of dependence, exploitation, and struggle for supremacy. The latter is the original one; and only slowly, in the course of centuries and millenniums, is the antagonism softened. Even to-day the great economic Powers seek to utilise their economic superiority in all their international relations, and to retain weaker nations in dependence; even to-day any half-civilised nation or tribe, among whom the English or French establish themselves, is in danger, first, of a sort of slavery for debt and an unfavourable balance of trade, and, following closely in the wake, of political annexation and economic exploitation, - though this, indeed, may turn into an economic education for it. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the relations, and especially the economic relations, between states were particularly hostile and harsh, because the new economico-political creations were for the first time trying their strength, and because it was the first time that such considerable political forces were available for the pursuit of commercial, agricultural, and industrial ends,forces which might seem, if only properly employed, to promise untold wealth to every state. In all ages history has been wont to treat national power and national wealth as sisters; perhaps they were never so closely associated as then. The temptation to the greater states of that time to use their political power for conflict with their economic competitors, and when they could, for their destruction, was too great for them not to succumb time after time, and either to set international law at naught or twist it to their purposes. Commercial competition, even in times nominally of peace, degenerated into a state of undeclared hostility: it plunged nations into one war after another, and gave all wars a turn in the direction of trade, industry, and colonial gain, such as they never had before or after. It has been often enough remarked that the period of the wars of religion was followed by one in which economic and commercial interests governed the whole foreign policy of European states. It is true that even the expedition of Gustavus Adolphus to Germany was a move in the game which was being played for the trade of the Baltic. In like manner, the later wars of Sweden, aiming at the conquest of Poland, and the aggressive movements of Russia towards the Swedish and German provinces on the Baltic, were all directed towards the acquisition and domination of the Baltic trade. As in the East Indies, the ancient source of supply for Oriental wares, for pearls and spices, the Portuguese violently pushed their way in first, annihilated Arabian trade with unheard-of brutality, and imposed upon all the Asiatic tribes and states the rule that they should carry on trade with Portuguese alone; so in later times the Dutch were able to drive the Portuguese out, to get for themselves a like monopoly of the spice trade, to keep other Europeans away by craft and by mercantile talent, - if need were, by insolent violence and bloodshed, and to hold the people of the East in commercial subjection. The heroic struggle of the Dutch for religious liberty and for freedom from the Spanish yoke displays itself, when looked at in a "dry light," as a century-long war for the conquest of East Indian colonies, and an equally long privateering assault on the silver fleets of Spain and the Spanish-American