Question

what doe Beckert mean by war capitalism? How did war capitalism facilitate england's access to cheap raw cotton and enable england to make those investments and initiate innovations that led to the mechanization of cotton textile production? 500words min.

Answer 1

Sven Beckert highlights the concept of the mercantile capitalism as the war capitalism, according to the british policy of mercantile capitalism of the 19th century, they maintain a positive balance of trade between the britain and there so called colonies. They maintain this positive balance of payments by imposing brutal and unethical laws on the colonies. For Eg:- Britishers imposed high taxes on luxury goods imported from america, india, latin america.

• they controlled the cultivation of tea and coffee,
• they restricted the trade of the colonies by limiting them to use only british ships for trade,
• they controlled the heavy industries like iron and steel industries,
• they promoted the cheap manchester cloth in order to gain trade surplus,

thus resulting in drain of wealth from the colonies and making british empire more economically robust.

Now According to Beckert this policies are implimented by violating the interest of the people of this colonies, by taking off there fundamental rights, there freedom, imposing slavery, by making wars against the rebels, thus the human rights violations are the crux behind this policies, there is blood and war involved in order to maintain this positive balance of trade thereby he terms this means of trade as the policy of war capitalism.

Now this policy helped the british in importing the raw cotton from india, indonesia, latin america etc, on the erge of distroying the local cottage industries in this colonies, this wide abundancy and the prosperiority of the british economy provided the suitable environment for the research and innovations in the field of science and technology, the invention of automated spinning wheels, mechanic weaving machines further accelerated the production of the finished goods, thus making the economy more export oriented and further helped in maintaing positive balance of trade.