RE: Role of the Colonial Trade in the Industrialization of

> 2) What about Deane's claim that the colonial re-exports allowed
> Europe to acquire essential raw materials - never mind profit
> margins? First, O'Brien says that colonial foodstuffs contributed
> marginally to the supplies of calories available to Europeans.
> Second, that without the imported colonial produtcs, Europe would
> merely have experienced, *in the short run*, before substitutions were
> found, "a decline of not more than 3% or 4% in industrial output.

Western Europe could have become the monster it did without new world 
slaves, Indian-labor sugar, coffee, tobacco, gold, silver, cotton, and 
labor of the industrial working class everywhere it existed?  Could such an 
assertion, and "what if" statistics, stand up to the mounds of historical 
evidence that it could not have?  I think not.  Perhaps that is why few 
have bothered to respond to O'Brien on this list.