The first settlers of Virginia were European serfs who became free men after it became clear that they could just run away from the lords so the British colonies in North America are fine.
If slaves were the main reason for Industrilaztion it would be Spain and Portugal who would do it first not the British.
Indeed, the first settlers were indentured servants who partook in uprisings and social upheaval after their contracts were up, so much that slavery had to be introduced as an alternative. This is a rather interesting idea by Edmund Morgan, if you’d like to check it out. He calls it the American paradox.
I mean this is just not true. You can restate it as many times as you want, but you have failed to engage with, let alone refute, that (1) the Solow-Swan insight that economic output is not based on the initial level of capital over the long run or (2) the fact that the vast majority of investment for the industrial revolution came from domestic sources.
I have answered this before. (1) I do not consider the Solow model to be applicable to pre-industrial economies and (2) I still find Williams’ data more convincing than anything else. These may look like domestic sources when analyzed under the lens of microeconomics, but they are intrinsically tied to the colonial system when looking at the bigger picture of an Atlantic economy. You disregard Williams’ arguments, while I do not find your criticism convincing, especially in light of the entire field of the Great Divergence, including Pomeranz, Wallerstein and other big historians, who all consider the colonization of the Americas to have been essential to the development of capitalism. At this point we will just have to agree to disagree, rather than argue in circles.
Tell that to spain that used the natives of peru and bolivia for centuries in the silver and mercury mines despite the high casautlies
Indigenous enslavement where there was a prior indigenous urban civilization is much easier than elsewhere. The Spanish just basically adapted the Incan mita system in the Andes. Brazil on the other hand did not have a previous urban civilization with a central authority that already enforced the organization of labor and the workforce. Neither did the Caribbean, with the additional “difficulty” that the Europeans exterminated all the natives. Therefore, indigenous enslavement was far less practical, as history showed us (not to mention technically illegal after the mid-16th century). Why do you think African slavery was introduced in Brazil?
Adopted and made it bloodier but yeah brazil did have some civilzatations but they were completely wiped out by disease as compared to the inca which large parts of the population in some areas did survive , as for the caribbean disease but also Spanish got rid of some groups via war
they became crazy rich and while the high inflation of silver did make a problems the easy capital made by the spanish allow them to go on the offensive (not all wars were necessary tho) as for farmers the spanish turned the non mimining natives to serfs lima and other parts were just basicily a division of the lords and the natives as workforce
eh questionable the last thing if spain had no american colonies it would have been at the mercy of france sure no inflation but figthing a constant defensive war against france and (no american treasure does not go well with the ottomans) would mean that the habsburgs in spain would have to help out the ones in the germany just with that they had
I suppose so. I feel Williams's data is thoroughly unconvincing as he overestimated the scale of the profits taken from slavery, as shown by Engerman's rebuttal*; and he failed to account for how investments that would have gone into industrialisation instead went to slavery, an oversight that should have been obvious considering how the industrial revolution happened shortly after slavery was outlawed.
Ok, so which parts of the Solow model needed for that insight does not apply to an early industrial economy (not pre-industrial as our entire debate is about funding the industrial revolution)? Do you deny that capital had decreasing marginal returns? Do you have some reason to believe depreciation somehow reduced with scale? Those are the only two things you need to believe to realize that starting capital doesn't matter over the long run.
