Eric Hobsbawm - Age Of Revolution 1789 -1848

THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONRussian Poland was rather more advanced, but, like the rest of EasternEurope, from Scandinavia in the north to the Balkan peninsula in thesouth, the age of major economic transformation was not yet at hand.Nor was it in Southern Italy and Spain, except for small patches ofCatalonia and the Basque country. And even in Northern Italy, whereeconomic changes were very much larger, they were far more obviousas yet in agriculture (always, in this region, a major outlet for capitalinvestment and business enterprise) and in trade and shipping than inmanufactures. But the development of these was handicapped all overSouthern Europe by the acute shortage of what was then still the onlyimportant source of industrial power, coal.One part of the world thus swept forward towards industrial power;another lagged. But the two phenomena are not unconnected with eachother. Economic stagnation, sluggishness, or even regression was theproduct of economic advance. For how could the relatively backwardeconomies resist the force—or in certain instances the attraction—of thenew centres of wealth, industry and commerce? The English and certainother European areas could plainly undersell all competitors. To be theworkshop of the world suited them. Nothing seemed more 'natural'than that the less advanced should produce food and perhaps minerals,exchanging these non-competitive goods for British (or other West-European) manufactures. The sun,' Richard Cobden told the Italians'is your coal'. 20 Where local power was in the hands of large landownersor even progressive farmers or ranchers, the exchange suited both sides.Cuban plantation owners were quite happy to make their money bysugar, and to import the foreign goods which allowed the foreigners tobuy sugar. Where local manufacturers could make their voice heard, orlocal governments appreciated the advantages of balanced economicdevelopment or merely the disadvantages of dependence, the dispositionwas less sunny. Frederick List, the German economist—as usualwearing the congenial costume of philosophic abstraction—rejected aninternational economy which in effect made Britain the chief or onlyindustrial power and demanded protectionism; and so, as we haveseen—minus the philosophy—did the Americans.All this assumed that an economy'was politically independent andstrong enough to accept or reject the role for which the pioneer industrializationof one small sector of the world had cast it. Where itwas not independent, as in colonies, it had no choice. India, as we haveseen, was in the process of de-industrialization, Egypt provided aneven more vivid illustration of the process. For there the local ruler,Mohammed AIi, had in fact systematically set out to turn his countryinto a modern, i.e. among other things an industrial, economy. Not only180