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10. In the sixteenth century, Ottoman Admiral Piri Reis harassed the thinly stretched Portuguese forces in the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf over a career that spanned several decades. By courtesy of business-with-turkey.com.
11. The Portuguese soldier of fortune Fernão de Magalhães, spurned by King Manuel, convinced the Spanish crown that the Spice Islands lay on its side of the Tordesillas Line in the East, and accomplished the first circumnavigation of the globe. He is today known in the English-speaking world as Ferdinand Magellan. From the Granger Collection, New York.
12. The three-cylinder mill, which could be operated by three or four slaves, revolutionized sugar production in the New World. Note the three counter-rotating vertical rollers at the center of the device, and the two slaves feeding cane stalks to each other from opposite directions. By courtesy of the University of Virginia special collections.
13. In 1611, Dutch East India Company captain Henrik Brouwer rounded the Cape of Good Hope, sailed southeast into the vastness of the Indian Ocean, and became the first commander to exploit the speed and temperate weather of the roaring forties route to the Spice Islands.
14. After serving as the secretary to the Portuguese archbishop of Goa, Jan Huyghen van Linschoten returned to his native Holland and acquainted his countrymen with the secrets of the Spice Islands. The navigational and trade data contained in his Itinerario, published in 1596, paved the way for the success of the Dutch East India Company.
15. Dutch East India Company merchant Jan Pieterszoon Coen wielded the ledger book and the sword with equal efficiency and brutality in his monomaniacal pursuit of a spice trade monopoly.
16. The great Dutch legal scholar Hugo Grotius preached the principle of Mare Liberum: the right of every nation to freely navigate the open ocean. But he would not extend this privilege to the English when they challenged the Dutch East India Company’s monopoly in the Spice Islands.
17. Sir Josiah Child, governor of the English East India Company, spoke forcefully against protectionism in public and liberally greased palms in private. In 1697, anti-globalization mobs attacked his home, along with Parliament and the East India House. By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London.
18. Josiah Wedgwood’s technical skill and marketing savvy made his cups and pots, filled with tea and sugar from opposite sides of the globe, the essential totem of England’s upwardly mobile masses. From the Granger Collection, New York.
19. Before 1757, the English East India Company’s territorial presence in India was limited to small trading colonies needed to support the cotton trade. In that year, a young colonel, Robert Clive, defeated a French-supported native force at Plassey and gained for the Company its first substantial conquest in India, a huge swath of territory in the Bengal. By courtesy of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England.
20. This schematic drawing demonstrates the conditions of extreme crowding on a slave ship. From an abstract of Evidence delivered before a select committee of the House of Commons in 1790 and 1791.
21. William Jardine began his career with the English East India Company as a surgeon’s mate, earned vast profits in the China opium trade, and founded a trading venture with James Matheson that still bears their names.
22. Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, a Bombay Parsi unhappy with his inherited profession of bottle merchant, set out for China on the ill-fated East Indiaman Brunswick, where he formed a life-long association with William Jardine. Both would earn fortunes and knighthoods.
23. James Matheson, the scion of a wealthy Scottish family, was able to buy his way directly into the “country trade”between China and India, thus avoiding the long apprenticeship with the East India Company endured by William Jardine. The two would eventually join forces to dominate the opium trade.
24. David Sassoon, a Jewish merchant from Bombay whose ancestors hailed from Baghdad, seized the China opium trade from his larger English rivals in the wake of the legalization forced by the Second Opium War. His descendants would achieve distinction in the arts and business in England. From the Jewish Encyclopedia.
25. The issue of a wealthy Portuguese Jewish merchant family, David Ricardo formulated the law of comparative advantage, which demonstrated how all nations could benefit from trade.
26. Richard Cobden, a textile printer by trade, became the foremost opponent of the corn laws. His exploitation of the transport and communication advances of the day—the railroad, telegraph, and penny post—finally led to repeal in 1846.
27. Tory prime minister Sir Robert Peel eventually saw the wisdom of corn law repeal, famously commenting to his deputy, Sidney Herbert, in response to a speech by Richard Cobden, “You must answer this, for I cannot.” This heroic decision, which saved the ruling class of aristocratic landowners from itself, cost him his political career. From the Granger Collection, New York.
28. This Punch cartoon satirizes the persuasive Richard Cobden’s conversion of prime minister Sir Robert Peel toward support of corn law repeal. By courtesy of Punch Limited, London.
29. After his triumphant 1846 parliamentary victory in the fight over corn law repeal, Richard Cobden turned his attention to the Continent, where he influenced Napoleon III and eventually pushed through the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty, which lowered tariffs between France and England and brought both nations back from the brink of war. By courtesy of Punch Limited, London.
30. Vice president under both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun shared the anger of his fellow South Carolinians against northern protectionism and was the architect of the nullification crisis of 1833, which nearly triggered the Civil War a generation early.
31. English scientist Henry Bessemer’s blast technique for the manufacture of inexpensive high-quality steel led, in turn, to steel tracks and high-pressure steam engines, the flooding of Europe with cheap New World grain, and a wave of worldwide protectionism. From the Granger Collection, New York.
32. French farmers, devastated by the avalanche of New World grain, found their voice in Félix Jules Méline, who engineered the passage of a drastic tariff law in 1892. Photograph by Harlingue-H. Roger-Viollet.
33. Economists Eli Heckscher (left) and Bertil Ohlin (right) described how the prices of land, labor, and capital converged in an increasingly globalized economy. Heckscher photo by courtesy of the Stockholm School of Economics.
34. Representative Willis Hawley and Senator Reed Smoot congratulate each other on the signing of their 1930 tariff bill. This disastrous legislation gave rise to virulent anti-Americanism, devastated international commerce, and contributed in no small part to the outbreak of the Second World War.
35. Cordell Hull, the longest-serving American secretary of state, clearly discerned the damage to world security done by the tariff wars of the early twentieth century and laid the groundwork for the GATT and WTO. By courtesy of the United States House of Representatives.
36. This photograph of economists Wolfgang Stolper (left) and Paul Samuelson (right) was taken fifty years after they developed a theorem that explained who wins, and who loses, with free trade. By courtesy of the University of Michigan Press.
1. This ancient rock carving from Bergbuten in Norway clearly shows a hunter in the bow of a sewn skin boat. The paddler stands in the rear. Source: The Earliest Ships, Conway Maritime Press.
2. The north Arabian saddle, which has been in continuous use for the past two thousand years, solved the difficult problem of mounting cargo over the soft, moveable hump of the dromedary camel. In one day, a single driver leading three to six animals could convey over two tons of goods thirty miles. Source: The Pastoral Taureg, Thames & Hudson.
3. A Bactrian camel struggles to rise under its load. This Tang Dynasty (ca. ninth century AD) ceramic was found in the tomb of a Chinese Silk Road merchant. By courtesy of the Field Museum, Chicago.
4. Marco Polo’s fantastical but true tales of places where widows threw themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres, where hashish-addled ass
assins thought themselves in heaven, and where the sun never set in summer nor rose in winter evoked widespread ridicule in Europe.
5. The modern government of China has revived the story of eunuch admiral Zheng He’s seven massive expeditions into the Indian Ocean in the fifteenth century in order to demonstrate its peaceful intentions in the twenty-first century. By courtesy of David Kootnikoff.
6. Doge Enrico Dandolo saw the Fourth Crusade as a threat to Venice’s spice trade with Egypt. He sabotaged the expedition and at age ninety led its remaining forces in the sacking of Constantinople. From the Granger Collection, New York.
7. Infante Dom Henrique (later known as Prince Henry the Navigator), the youngest son of King João I and Queen Philippa of Portugal, participated in the kingdom’s Moroccan campaigns. On beholding the edge of the vast North African desert, he realized the futility of his mother’s dream of a trans-Saharan route to the Indies. After returning home, he sponsored the fifteenth-century Portuguese exploration of the African coast, which eventually lead to the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope by Diaz and da Gama.
8. Portugal’s slow crawl down the African coast in the fifteenth century foundered on the adverse winds which grew stronger the farther the vessels proceeded south. Vasco da Gama solved the problem with a “wide swing” to the southwest before heading eastward to the Cape of Good Hope. His reputation for brutality preceded him in most of the African and Asian ports he subsequently visited and snarled trade and diplomatic relations. By courtesy of National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England.
9. Afonso de Albuquerque built Portugal’s empire in the Indian Ocean. He seized the critical chokepoints at Malacca and Hormuz, but could not stanch the flow of spices on Muslim ships through Bab el Mandeb. From the Granger Collection, New York.
10. In the sixteenth century, Ottoman Admiral Piri Reis harassed the thinly stretched Portuguese forces in the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf over a career that spanned several decades. By courtesy of business-with-turkey.com.
11. The Portuguese soldier of fortune Fernão de Magalhães, spurned by King Manuel, convinced the Spanish crown that the Spice Islands lay on its side of the Tordesillas Line in the East, and accomplished the first circumnavigation of the globe. He is today known in the English-speaking world as Ferdinand Magellan. From the Granger Collection, New York.
12. The three-cylinder mill, which could be operated by three or four slaves, revolutionized sugar production in the New World. Note the three counter-rotating vertical rollers at the center of the device, and the two slaves feeding cane stalks to each other from opposite directions. By courtesy of the University of Virginia special collections.
13. In 1611, Dutch East India Company captain Henrik Brouwer rounded the Cape of Good Hope, sailed southeast into the vastness of the Indian Ocean, and became the first commander to exploit the speed and temperate weather of the roaring forties route to the Spice Islands.
14. After serving as the secretary to the Portuguese archbishop of Goa, Jan Huyghen van Linschoten returned to his native Holland and acquainted his countrymen with the secrets of the Spice Islands. The navigational and trade data contained in his Itinerario, published in 1596, paved the way for the success of the Dutch East India Company.
15. Dutch East India Company merchant Jan Pieterszoon Coen wielded the ledger book and the sword with equal efficiency and brutality in his monomaniacal pursuit of a spice trade monopoly.
16. The great Dutch legal scholar Hugo Grotius preached the principle of Mare Liberum: the right of every nation to freely navigate the open ocean. But he would not extend this privilege to the English when they challenged the Dutch East India Company’s monopoly in the Spice Islands.
17. Sir Josiah Child, governor of the English East India Company, spoke forcefully against protectionism in public and liberally greased palms in private. In 1697, anti-globalization mobs attacked his home, along with Parliament and the East India House. By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London.
18. Josiah Wedgwood’s technical skill and marketing savvy made his cups and pots, filled with tea and sugar from opposite sides of the globe, the essential totem of England’s upwardly mobile masses. From the Granger Collection, New York.
19. Before 1757, the English East India Company’s territorial presence in India was limited to small trading colonies needed to support the cotton trade. In that year, a young colonel, Robert Clive, defeated a French-supported native force at Plassey and gained for the Company its first substantial conquest in India, a huge swath of territory in the Bengal. By courtesy of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England.
20. This schematic drawing demonstrates the conditions of extreme crowding on a slave ship. From an abstract of Evidence delivered before a select committee of the House of Commons in 1790 and 1791.
21. William Jardine began his career with the English East India Company as a surgeon’s mate, earned vast profits in the China opium trade, and founded a trading venture with James Matheson that still bears their names.
22. Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, a Bombay Parsi unhappy with his inherited profession of bottle merchant, set out for China on the ill-fated East Indiaman Brunswick, where he formed a life-long association with William Jardine. Both would earn fortunes and knighthoods.
23. James Matheson, the scion of a wealthy Scottish family, was able to buy his way directly into the “country trade”between China and India, thus avoiding the long apprenticeship with the East India Company endured by William Jardine. The two would eventually join forces to dominate the opium trade.
24. David Sassoon, a Jewish merchant from Bombay whose ancestors hailed from Baghdad, seized the China opium trade from his larger English rivals in the wake of the legalization forced by the Second Opium War. His descendants would achieve distinction in the arts and business in England. From the Jewish Encyclopedia.
25. The issue of a wealthy Portuguese Jewish merchant family, David Ricardo formulated the law of comparative advantage, which demonstrated how all nations could benefit from trade.
26. Richard Cobden, a textile printer by trade, became the foremost opponent of the corn laws. His exploitation of the transport and communication advances of the day—the railroad, telegraph, and penny post—finally led to repeal in 1846.
27. Tory prime minister Sir Robert Peel eventually saw the wisdom of corn law repeal, famously commenting to his deputy, Sidney Herbert, in response to a speech by Richard Cobden, “You must answer this, for I cannot.” This heroic decision, which saved the ruling class of aristocratic landowners from itself, cost him his political career. From the Granger Collection, New York.
PAPA COBDEN TAKING MASTER ROBERT A FREE TRADE WALK.
28. This Punch cartoon satirizes the persuasive Richard Cobden’s conversion of prime minister Sir Robert Peel toward support of corn law repeal. By courtesy of Punch Limited, London.
DANE COBDEN’S NEW PUPIL.
29. After his triumphant 1846 parliamentary victory in the fight over corn law repeal, Richard Cobden turned his attention to the Continent, where he influenced Napoleon III and eventually pushed through the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty, which lowered tariffs between France and England and brought both nations back from the brink of war. By courtesy of Punch Limited, London.
30. Vice president under both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun shared the anger of his fellow South Carolinians against northern protectionism and was the architect of the nullification crisis of 1833, which nearly triggered the Civil War a generation early.
31. English scientist Henry Bessemer’s blast technique for the manufacture of inexpensive high-quality steel led, in turn, to steel tracks and high-pressure steam engines, the flooding of Europe with cheap New World grain, and a wave of worldwide protectionism. From the Granger Collection, New York.
32. French farmers, devastated by the avalanche of New World grain, found their voice in Félix Jules Méline, who engineered the passage of a drastic tariff law in 1892. Photog
raph by Harlingue-H. Roger-Viollet.
33. Economists Eli Heckscher (left) and Bertil Ohlin (right) described how the prices of land, labor, and capital converged in an increasingly globalized economy. Heckscher photo by courtesy of the Stockholm School of Economics.
34. Representative Willis Hawley and Senator Reed Smoot congratulate each other on the signing of their 1930 tariff bill. This disastrous legislation gave rise to virulent anti-Americanism, devastated international commerce, and contributed in no small part to the outbreak of the Second World War.
35. Cordell Hull, the longest-serving American secretary of state, clearly discerned the damage to world security done by the tariff wars of the early twentieth century and laid the groundwork for the GATT and WTO. By courtesy of the United States House of Representatives.
36. This photograph of economists Wolfgang Stolper (left) and Paul Samuelson (right) was taken fifty years after they developed a theorem that explained who wins, and who loses, with free trade. By courtesy of the University of Michigan Press.