I think the European colonization of the Americas is probably the most telling and complete example of the law of unintended consequences, particularly with respect to the strengths and weaknesses of the capitalist system.
If the native Americans had any idea what was in store for them, they would have been well advised to kill every European on sight, and let not one soul survive to return from whence they came.
(for another related side note, its hard to escape the euro-centrism of geography. we typically refer to native Americans as “Indians” because that is where the first European explorers wishfully thought they were. but acknowledging that error, we try the term “native American”, but America is coined from the name of the 17th century geographer Amerigo Vespucci, who had never taken a single breath outside Italy. the natives of these continents and islands of the western hemisphere had no word for it — to them it was simply the world. in fact they had little idea of one another — the Algonquin must have had only the dimmest concept of what was going on in the Aztec empire, and no idea at all of earlier Mayan civilizations or of the heights of the Incas in what is now Peru. going eastward, “Asia” originally referred to the Greek colonies of western Anatolia, what is now Turkey. all of the vast continent, the long and varied history of some of the greatest civilizations on earth is boiled down — now even in the vocabulary of native orientals — into the one word, itself an absurd extension of an obsolete misnomer: “Asia”. its funny, really. we don’t even have a way to express it that isn’t in some way euro centric. even “oriental” simply means “easterner”, that is from the point of view of a European.)
but that’s not what I wanted to write about at all.
my thinking was prompted by this recent piece I saw on the history channel — the story of Henry Hudson. if you’re not familiar with it, do look it up.
he was one of a number of bold and enterprising men who made the connection — who saw the potential in the recent discoveries of the Portuguese and Spanish, and their consequences. there were several such men, but not very many — dozens perhaps — who had the wherewithal to command a vessel and to converse with investors and persuade them to fund an expedition.
very enterprising and entrepreneurial, not unlike some folks these days. there’s food for thought — some of our most admirable qualities are enabled by some of our most base. we discover new worlds because we are greedy. we reach for the stars because we hunger for power.
so Hudson approached certain investors to fund his various trips — all ill-fated.
he accidentally discovered the river that would bear his name, and explored its upper reaches in the futile hope of finding a northwest passage to Java.
but what motivated the dutch to fund his trip? greed. envy. they had seen what the Portuguese, Spanish and English had discovered, and recently achieving independence from Spain, they were impelled with the energy of enterprising traders to seek out that which was valuable, and sell it at profit.
the whole accidental discovery of the new world and its subsequent exploitation is one long list of such happy discoveries impelled by selfishness, greed, and just plain wrongheadedness. we paint them with the courage of intrepid explorers and “those seeking freedom from persecution” when the pilgrims of Plymouth colony and the catholic priests of the Spanish colonies represented the most repressive and totalitarian forms of persecution ever conceived by the European mind. (they’d still have a long way to go to match the Pharaohs or certain Chinese emperors).
and Hudson failed his investors. he never reached Java. in fact, he came to a tragic end, but not before he discovered — and claimed for the Netherlands the area from the Delaware gap to the Connecticut river — and the history of the native American peoples who inhabited that land already — for example, the north shore of Long Island was the sole source for the native commodity “wampum” — decorative breast plates made exclusively from oyster shells indigenous to that area, but also manufactured by expert craftsmen of the Montauk tribes that lived there. Its ironic, perhaps, that New York was in some ways the financial center even of the pre-Colombian new world.
so, looking for Java, he found what would become the middle Atlantic states, filled with resources his investors never thought to seek — timber, coal, fish, whales, rich farmland, even wampum. but not spices.
the Dutch did lay claim to this land, but lacking the colonists or the national will to “change the reality on the ground” (life in the Netherlands at the time just didn’t suck enough to motivate enough folks to emigrate. —
the Dutch eventually lost the land to English forces. (another aside — the phrase “change the reality on the ground” is borrowed from Jewish “settlers” on Palestinian land. the word “settlers” is consciously chosen in an attempt to redefine what is actually happening in terms acceptable to Americans, almost all themselves descended from European settlers on native American land. is such a use of the word “settlers” creative interpretation or propaganda? you decide. but the fact is that modern history is, like modern world music, something like an echo chamber. with African and even Persian and Indian pop music reflecting American hip hop styles, itself embedded in American rock and folk, in turn derived from European and African folk themes. its enough to make your head spin.)
ultimately it always comes down to force. originally the few English colonists trying to escape the oppression of the puritans in Plymouth colony, landed in eastern Long Island. thinking of themselves as yet English, they were forced by the then Dutch mayor backed up by force to swear loyalty to the Dutch. later, Dutch settlers in the Hudson valley and on western Long Island, enjoying claims from the government of the Netherlands were forced to swear oaths of loyalty to the English crown.
but both claims were equally worthless, having nothing behind them but the force of arms.
anywhere you look, the only ultimate source for legitimacy is power. and power is always motivated by selfishness and greed.
this is what led us to first discover and then conquer the new world. and this is what yet drives us today.