A Mendacious Triangular Trade (Part I)

In the "good old pre-Lincolnian days" (and dating back to the early 1700s) the American economy was sustained by what later came to be called "the triangle trade." English and French merchants shipped gunpowder and weapons to West Africa, took slaves as payment, traded the slaves to Carribean and North American "interests" for sugar and molasses, transported these "makings" back to home base where they were swapped for hard cash with which they bought more gunpowder and guns, and round and round she went for almost two centuries. Weaponry, slaves, and demon rum were the hard currencies of the day.

The industrial revolution and the Emancipation Proclamation killed this golden goose, temporarily replacing it with an eastward-looking opium-for-tea, more-or-less straight line trade, collapsing the triangle and depriving the Americans of their rightful share of the proceeds. But not to worry. America had been settled by a hardy lot, people who, by definition, were willing to risk the dangers of a trip into the unknown. Unlike Europe, which was people rich and land poor, the North American continent had land to spare but not enough people. Apart from a few minor skirmishes to rid the land of its original occupants (who had, in any case, never filed their quitclaims) the way west was an open invitation to industrious people everywhere. Europeans streamed westward by the millions, the vast majority of them made of the same sort of ambitious stock that had settled the eastern seaboard "in the beginning." The slaves of the triangle trade were replaced by free men and their women (women were not yet free) moving their ambitions away from the class-conscious confines of withering and war-plagued Europe. In no time, the American "colonies" were exporting more tradable goods than they were taking in. Wealth accumulated and, in defiance of the European model described by Oliver Goldsmith, American men did not decay, but grew in wisdom and stature.

Well, in stature anyhow. Wealth and power are apparently not deprived of their corrupting effects by rhetorical wishes and dreams. After two great "world wars" -- actually, eastern wars, European and Asian -- the northern region of the New World was finally established as the one great superpower destined to rule the world.

But "rule" had always meant exactly what it means today. It meant and means: "to consume more than a reasonably and morally justifiable share of the world's produce." If the British, French and Dutch had not ruled the seas, none of the great trade routes -- triangular, rectangular, or whateever -- could have survived for more than a few years. Rule entitled. Rule justified. Rule excused.

And rule destroyed.

[Hmmm. It just occurred to me that a circle of no more than 300 miles in radius, drawn on the surface of the globe with Antwerp as its center, would enclose all three of these great rulers of the pre-modern seas.]

To be continued.