A Short History Of Progress

by Ronald Wright

What took place in the early 1500s was truly exceptional, something that had never happened before and never will again. Two cultural experiments, running in isolation for 15,000 years or more, at last came face to face. Amazingly, after all that time, each could recognize the other’s institutions. When Cortés landed in Mexico he found roads, canals, cities, palaces, schools, law courts, markets, irrigation works, kings, priests, temples, peasants, artisans, armies, astronomers, merchants, sports, theatre, art, music, and books. High civilization, differing in detail but alike in essentials, had evolved independently on both sides of the earth.

Karl Marx was among the first economists to see that, financially, the Industrial Revolution begins with Atahuallpa’s gold. “An indispensable condition for the establishment of manufacturing industry,” he said in 1847, “was the accumulation of capital facilitated by the discovery of America and the importation of its precious metals.”20 The Genoese and German bankers who underwrote Spain’s empire were awash in bullion looking for something to do. Much found its way to northern Europe, financing shipbuilding, gun foundries, and other imperial ventures. Much