Capitalism is fed by colonialism

Capitalism is fed by colonialism

It is no doubt true to say that capitalism has since its beginnings always been a world or ‘global’ system, in the sense that the rise of capitalism coincides with, and feeds upon, the rise of colonialism and inter-continental conquest. The markets of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were never in this sense merely markets for local produce, with local buyers and local sellers, but were supplemented with produce from colonies and overseas ‘possessions’ such as tobacco, wood and precious metals. But what is equally obvious is the degree to which, over the course of the development of the modern world, we see an ever-increasing interdependence between markets, producers and sellers. The ‘shopper’ in sixteenth-century Nottingham (where the author finds himself ...) would have been choosing goods that mostly came from the surrounding area, the odd pouch of tobacco notwithstanding. Today Nottingham’s shoppers are confronted by a vast array of goods from all over the world. Indeed the part of the world least represented on the shelves of the local shops would be Nottingham itself which, like so many other areas of post-industrial England, produces very little compared with even thirty years ago when it was known for the production of bicycles, lace, and cigarettes. The hero of Alan Sillitoe’s famous novel (and film) Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, set in the Nottingham of the 1950s, was an industrial factory worker living amongst other factory workers. Now he would be more likely to be a security guard or telesales operative. But what does this interdepend-ence actually mean? What does it mean to be increasingly interdependent apart from the fact that there is more stuff to buy in the shops?