I think maybe there's apples to oranges comparisons in saying slave raids produce 5 times more man years in value than the cost of the expeditions, because the 250 man years produced does not include upkeep costs. Even slaves cost something to maintain, so the question is whether that cost is non-negligible. I'm sure that's been analyzed, somewhere.

All interesting stuff though. The Chinese really blew it.

I wish I could take this course.

You should be careful about overemphasizing the importance of silver shipments during Carlos' V's reign. I don't have the data on hand, but I believe that revenues from European Habsburg territories greatly exceeded those that came from the New World. The really large silver inflows didn't come until the 1570s. Also, if we want to get technical, for most of Carlos' reign more gold came from Spanish America than silver, IIRC.

I wonder how much of what is "known" about Zheng Ho's ships is factual. They were said to be nine-masted wooden ships about 400' long and 160' wide -- in the early fifteenth century! Yet the largest ship with wooden keel and hull that we know for certain to have been built was the schooner Wyoming, launched in Bath, Maine in 1909. The Wyoming was a mere 329' long, with 6 masts. Though she had 90 steel cross-braces, she was subject to snaking and hogging while underway; even in calm seas her planking coudn't be kept properly caulked because of the springing; she was perforce used mostly for close-in coastal hauls, generally in sight of land. (This information taken from a web site contesting the plausibility of Noah's Ark:
http://home.houston.rr.com/bybayouu/Noahs_ark.html). I'm not convinced that Zheng Ho ships, as described in literary sources, are all that much more plausible than Noah's. Absent physical evidence, I suggest great caution in accepting these tales!

Lee,

Isn't the point to silver inflows that they represented monetary expansion? The Hapsburg's production in Europe was vast, but different in nature from imports of what amounted to money. Printing internationally accepted money means you can divert domestic resources to non-productive efforts - like war. Spain could consume more goods and services than it produced, because it was importing internationally accepted money from its colonies.

Around 1675, the Governor of Virginia estimated that the population of the colony was 40,000, of which 8,000 were indentured servants and 4,000 slaves. Clearly, the planters had plenty of experience calculating the return on labor compared with maintence costs.

Casual reading suggests that at about this time the tobacco market boomed, the supply of indentured servants declined, slavery increased and economic inequality exploded.

It also depends on the trade winds. What can you ship downwind is more important than what you can ship crosswind.
Then, also, shipping costs TO the new world were much less than shipping costs FROM the new world because the cargo going east (which included ships built from high quality, plentifull, and accessible new world lumber) was more bulky than the cargo going east. Corn and cotton and tobacco vs cannon, paper (before wood pulping processes, paper was made of linen and cotton) and pipes for smoking.

"With France trying to get into the game"? With the exception of the 16th century religious wars, which actually helped French overseas expansion by allowing independent efforts to reach overseas, France was generally there before the British. Rather, France was NOT trying - that was what allowed British efforts to overthrow the local efforts of the Frenchmen on the spot.

Don't forget, the first attempt at European penetration of India on a more intensive scale than raid-or-trade was the French one; the British merely reacted, with no conscious imperialism until they found what had happened. The nearest thing to what you describe is the Fashoda Incident, in the halcyon days of maritime imperial growth. The French can (and do) blame Louis XV for squandering their opportunities, but they weren't trying to play catch up, they were falling back from a lead.

As to why they didn't focus on overseas empire, that's another story, driven by continental interests which they couldn't judge with hindsight.

Kharris,

I find little to disagree with in your statement. Indeed, even under Charles V the wealth starting to flow in from the New World provided an important incentive for bankers to extend loans to the Habsburg war effort. Let me just state again the central point of my correction of Brad: silver was much more important during Philip's reign than Charles'.

That thumbnail view of slaving seems to suggest that outside demand caused local chiefs to start raiding for slaves.

It was considerably more complex. There was already a local slaving tradition, producing domestic slaves (mostly female). This domestic slavery was milder in practice than the plantation use of slaves, but this omits the practice of raiding: although on a small scale, it had a huge bycatch of slaughtered males, as well as incidental wastage in the form of losses among desired slaves.

So the first effect of outside demand was actually to reduce the harm by providing a market for some males (who were preferred over females). This wasn't much of an improvement, and is no apologia, and besides that was well over by the 18th century. Maybe in Drake's day...

Anyhow, the outsiders weren't raiders so much as traders, and they grew slave raiding rather than setting it into motion. Whether this is a material distinction depends on what lesson you are trying to draw out here.

According to the records Cheng Ho's Chinese ships were the size of many modern ships.

I don't think the records can be trusted. Ships that size would be uncontrolable without steam engines, would break apart in swells if made of wood & to big to dock in contemporary harbours.

I think these records should be treated with the same caution that we treat medieval records of army sizes. This does not mean these voyages were unimportant but the idea that they involved 20,000+ soldiers is unlikely.

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