Author: Lonely Han
Economy, in simple terms, is the problem of money, of course, everyone will say, no money, whether you want to build guns or cannons, is not realistic, even in ancient times, to form an elite army, but also need a lot of money, to win the battle to buy a head for the bonus, to lose to spend more money to make up for the shortfall, in short, there is no money what do you play war games? But
Have you ever seen someone too rich to play a war game? Ever seen someone win a war because you're too poor?
In 1545, Spanish colonists discovered silver in what is now Potosí, Bolivia, and in 1546, the same Spaniards, found silver in what is now Zacatecas, Mexico, and the two silver mines were so vast that they even affected the Spanish proverb "If life has great value, become a Potosian" and "Zacatecas, who is the Blessed Virgin of God"
It should be known that whether it is the slave society two thousand years ago or the modern settlement system, gold exists at the highest settlement level of the standard system rather than as a daily circulating currency. (Of course, if you insist on raising the bar to say that ancient Greece or something is used in gold coins, Xiao Lonely is not rudderless, after all, this topic Xiao Lonely can write a 100,000-word paper to facilitate our in-depth exchange of views)
In the era when there was no paper money, one or two silver could be exchanged for 370 pounds of rice or a smaller pig, when you found two huge silver mines, it was almost a sentence of "This is not going to the bank to grab money, this is getting permission to print money in your own home." ”
Benefiting from the steady output of these huge precious metal mines, from 1550 onwards, more than 240 tons of silver and 5 tons of gold were shipped back to Spain every year, and 30 years later, from 1580 onwards, this figure was followed by a 0! Or if you don't have any intuitive concept of pure numbers, then say that in the same period of 1580, 80% of the world's silver was controlled by the Spanish royal family or merchants, even in the United States at the end of World War II, it was not crazy to this extent.
Money is omnipotent, but when it comes too easily and too much, it is not necessarily a good thing for the country and the people as a whole. Faced with "great wealth at your fingertips", the whole of Spain went crazy: farming? No, I am a freedman, and my goal is the sea of stars, not the acre and three points of land under my feet. Industrial production? No, no kidding, I'm investing in the silver mines of the Americas, what, what to do with the British contract, don't worry, just buy it from Milan and change it into Spanish packaging. That's the mentality of the whole of Spain up and down...
As for the soldiers risking being hacked to death to earn pay, man, don't kid yourself, I'd rather go to the Treasure Fleet for a long voyage. With endless silver mines, a famous phalanx of Spanish spear infantry, and a large naval fleet, the king of Spain was extremely floating.
In 1557, the war between Spain and France ended, Spain won a decisive victory in the Battle of Saint-Quentin, so that France was devastated for the next hundred years, at this time, the Western European continent, only Spain was left with a huge empire, but its ruler Philip II did not feel any joy, because the father of the powerful secular ruler of Western Europe, Charles V, abdicated because of this battle, so Philip II declared the Spanish royal family bankrupt shortly after the end of the battle... The royal family with the largest silver mine in the world and the largest income went bankrupt after a battle... What is this operation? Don't worry, let's look back first, and then analyze the reasons after reading it.
In 1571, while maintaining the Eighty Years' War with the Netherlands, Spain responded to the Pope's call and fought a major battle with the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean in Genoa, and the Spanish and Papal alliance successfully overpowered the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto, achieving the largest Naval Victory of Christianity over Islam in history. At the same time, the Spanish infantry also made good progress in North Africa... The more good news came, the more tragic Philip II became, and in 1575 he declared bankruptcy again...
In 1588, Spain and Britain went to war, the huge Armada six conquests of Britain, natural and man-made disasters are not alone, the British broke the jar and broke nothing, after all, the poor and white island country itself is a vote to survive and declare bankruptcy, the problem is that our richest comrade Philip II declared bankruptcy again in 1598 when he was dying... Liquidated after his death, he was in debt of 73 million gold coins (about 3.5 grams of gold each), and the European gold-to-silver ratio was about 12:1 at that time. If it were replaced by the net income of the Spanish royal family every year except for the war, it would have been paid off for about 15 years, of course, the successor Philip III had to spend a little, and at the same time, he did not have to pay interest... In the end, in the hands of Philip II's sons and grandsons, the war he initiated or accepted was finally fought, and Spain successfully fell into a second-rate state until today.
Okay, now let's go back and look at why Spain broke itself. Let's not talk about economic inflation, let's just say that our topic ———— war.
First of all, in order to obtain the colony, the Spanish royal family had to go to war with the natives, which was a small fight, a thousand people and a European beggar expeditionary force and a few hundred broken sailing ships with tonnage, which could not cost a few dollars. But the situation was different after the discovery of gold and silver mines (the traditional view is that the colonists mainly relied on the accumulation of local indigenous peoples to get rich, in fact, it is not accurate), the first to find the French, the political trigger is secondary, the most primitive driving force is still looking at the wealth of the legendary New World (when the war began in 1525, when the huge gold and silver mines in the Americas were still honestly staying on the mountain, but by 1550, it was tainted). ）
Second, in order to get political recognition from the pope for the huge wealth that the royal family has seized from the Americas, the Spanish royal family has to carry on the pope's wishes and engage in various religious wars... The expulsion of Jews, war with Muslims, breaks with Protestantism, and expulsion of Muscovites... Thus, in addition to the Spaniards themselves (except catalonia, the Ming Dynasty's East Asian sphere of influence at that time was also an exception), the Spaniards began to fight all over the world, without allies, without hesitation... Even Rome under the pope's nose will have to go to such a fight with the Spaniards.
Third, in order to cope with the increasingly endless war, the Spanish royal family had to continuously increase the export of silver ore in the Americas and taxes in foreign provinces such as the Netherlands, and then brought riots and uprisings, and then it was necessary to spend money to hire soldiers to build a naval fleet to quell, and the number of times, the wage money also rose, and the strategic materials for building warships did not fall from the sky, and the price would naturally increase, and it entered a vicious circle of "war - tax collection, mining - uprising - hiring soldiers to fight - collecting taxes, mining - mining - Hire more soldiers to fight...". This vicious circle came directly for eighty years, until the destruction of the Spanish Empire...
Fourth, the treasure fleet grew larger and larger, the British and other enemy countries became more and more popular, and finally the government funded the pirates to fight together, and then Spain had to build a huge escort fleet ———— the Armada (privately think that this translation is too much, the literal translation should be the lucky invincible fleet), so what does the fleet do when there is no escort mission? After all, the treasure fleet is once a year, and it is not okay to raise it for so long, then fight a war, anyway, we have money... Then we saw the Six Expeditions to England...
Finally, at its peak, Spain once had to take more than 90 percent of its annual income to meet the war expenses and the interest on the war expenses, and the entire middle class within the country was almost completely bankrupt, and in the 1617th century, when capitalism completed the primitive accumulation, Spain, with the "Blessed Virgin", completely missed the opportunity for primitive accumulation and industrial upgrading. All wars are for money, and everything is the curse of money!
As Cervantes described in don Quixote, Spain, conquered by money, reached the pinnacle of culture and art, while also destroying the Spanish economic, political, and military balance. When Cervantes took part in the Battle of Lepanto, his commander Don Juan, looked at the burning Ottoman warships and floating corpses on the Mediterranean Sea after the war, saying: "My time was spent building castles in the air, but in the end, both me and my pavilions will drift away with the wind." (In other words, Xiao Lonely really wondered how such an army, who was so artistic from commander to soldier, could hold up the national fortunes for more than a hundred years)