El Defenso Del Economic History

(if you get the title joke, you know your Latin American historical texts)

            Believe it or not, the way that history is taught is a choice.

            “Well, of course it is!” You might say. “It would be practically impossible to fit the entire canon of human history into a single class!” To which I would say:

The totality of human history (in 3 sentences): A bunch of people lived. They did stuff, and made more people to do more things. Then they all died…eventually.

There, boom, end of story…except not really. See, dear reader, the drama is in the details. There are only so many historic events that someone can reasonably cover in one year. But, that’s an old problem, and one that most people already know. What’s equally important is what lens we view history through.

“Lens? Who cares about lenses. My historical vision is fine, 20/20, absolutely crystal clear!” Oh, really? Then what do you think of this little statement:

The Spanish colonization of the Americas led to the downfall of imperial China.

You pause for a moment, then look at me, wondering if I’m serious. I am—really, truly, unequivocally so.

“Preposterous…asinine…completely indefensible,” you might say, “those are two utterly disparate facts. They share not an iota of historical commonality among them. I know my history. I did well in high school.” Nice SAT words, dear reader. And from a social lens, I’d agree. There just wasn’t enough direct social interaction between Spain and China between the 15^th and 20^th centuries to justify this view.

But what about from an economic lens? Let’s look at things from the point of view of—wait for it…wait for iiiiit—Economic HISTORY (video game-style-crescendo bum-bum-bum-buuuuuuuum! Wooo!)

Economic history looks at the world in terms of two ideas: trade and resources. Using that point of view, I can actually defend that statement (you: grumble mumble mumble). See, since Antiquity, the flow of trade from west to east—and east to west, with north and south thrown in there as well, but slightly less important right now—had been fairly constant. Oh, a war here and there had interrupted it, but by and large what would later be known as the Silk Road (aside from the name, no relation to the website) was already around during the time of the Romans.

So, what the Bactrian does that have to do with Spanish colonization?

Well, Europe, Africa, and Asia—all playing equal parts here—were largely a closed system for several thousands of years. Compared to the modern day, there wasn’t a lot of resource mining, so for the most part the supply of bouillon was fairly set. China especially benefitted here, being able to set up a stable system that lasted from antiquity into the modern era.

But all of that changed when Spain began colonizing the Americas (dun-dun-duuuuuh).

The idea that many people have about los conquistadores is a group of men destroying empires—Tenochticlan, the capital of the Aztec empire, has a reasonable estimate of about 50,000 people (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&ved=0ahUKEwjVt9rF0K7PAhVM8GMKHbEpAuYQFgg6MAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fanth.la.psu.edu%2Fdocuments%2Fevans_2013_tenochtitlan&usg=AFQjCNHIiC1VZ_qBwND-VU7OdYsmfHeBDw&sig2=0qweTmZJkyhCHxCFQxheHw&cad=rja)—and bringing back gold. Plentiful gold. Mountains and mountains of gold. But, we’re not going to care about gold here. Instead, the culprit in this case is gold’s brother, silver. (warning: while the rest of this is generally accurate, I haven’t had time to dive in depth as much as I’d like. Some of it may be edited at a later date, when I have better info). See, one of the great stable features of China was that it was on the silver standard. I’m not saying that people were carrying around silver coins—the average peasant would probably never see any silver in their lifetime—but that the value of everything was tied to the value of silver.

That’s all fine and dandy when the supply of silver is all but set. However, when the amount of silver in the system changes drastically, it can cause problems. Lose a lot, and you suffer deflation, and suddenly people hoard goods because they are rising in value so fast. Have the opposite problem, and you suffer inflation, where suddenly all currency is worthless. Want some contemporary examples? Deflation: Japan. Inflation: Weimer-era Germany, and Zimbabwe.

It might have taken a century or two, but eventually the hoard of Spanish silver…well, formerly-American silver flooded into China through legitimate trade. The resultant inflation weakened the imperial economy, causing wide-spread problems. Add in discontent from the opium wars, and you have a once-stable system ripe for a fall.

So, what does all of this have to do with history class?

The lens that we view history through affects the narrative that we tell. Most history classes are told from a social point of view, to the effect that it could be called the standard POV. But that view is limited—just like all of them—in that it cannot always tell the whole story.

How, then, to take this into teaching?

Well, as far as I can see there are two paths. Path one involves focusing on one kind of history—social, military, economic, intellectual, or conflict, to name a few—with the goal of presenting a single, solid narrative. Path two involves mixing the lenses. Both have their pros, and their cons, and in the end it’s the teacher’s decision. The only bad choice is to ignore the options in terms of simplicity, because that choice helps no one, and only teaches students a diminished view of what history can be.