How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going

by Vaclav Smil

But these early exchanges had limited economic impact, as they never reached beyond the small segments of people who benefited from the new ventures. The countryside was left with its traditional ways. This was just an incipient, selective, and limited globalization without any substantial nationwide impacts, to say nothing about truly global consequences. For example, economist Angus Maddison estimated that in 1698–1700 commodity exports from the East Indies accounted for just 1.8 percent of the Dutch net domestic product, and that the Indonesian export surplus was a mere 1.1 percent of the Dutch GDP—and nearly a century later (1778–1780) both of these shares were still only 1.7 percent.[25]