Day of Empire

by Amy Chua

  An example of the indispensability of Jewish financiers can be seen in the fourteenth-century civil war between King Peter “the Cruel” of Castile and his bastard half brother Henry of Trastä-mara. Peter's chief treasurer was the powerful Jewish financier Samuel Halevi, who built the stunning synagogue in Toledo that still stands today. As part of his strategy for usurping Peter, Henry painted his bid for the throne as a Christian crusade against the “evil presence” of Jewish financiers and tax collectors in the royal court. But after defeating Peter, Henry too found he could not do without Jewish capital and financial expertise; his chief royal financial officer would turn out to be a Jew, as would his private physician. A century later, it would be Jewish bankers’ money that financed Spain's initial expeditions to the New World.6

  INQUISITION AND INTOLERANCE

  In 1478 the Spanish Inquisition was founded by papal bull. Thus ended the era of Spanish relative tolerance.

  A church institution led by the Dominican order and vested with draconian powers, the Inquisition was charged with purifying the country of heretics. Interestingly, “heretics” referred not to openly practicing Jews or Muslims but rather to false Christians. Starting in 1480 the Inquisition began hunting down, trying, and often torturing and executing conversos who despite their professed Christianity were universally suspected of secretly practicing Judaism. Soon, however, Spain would turn to the business of eliminating every Jew and every Muslim from its territory.

  In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella issued their famous decree giving Jews the choice either to convert to Catholicism or to leave Spain within four months. According to one estimate, 200,000 Jews left Spain, roughly 120,000 of them going to Portugal and the rest to Italy and the Ottoman lands. In 1502, the Muslims of Castile were ordered to convert or emigrate. Almost all chose to convert, creating a massive new group called Moriscos. A similar decree soon followed for the Muslims of Aragon. In 1526 the Inquisition began prosecuting Moriscos for failing to practice Christianity. The Spanish monarchy had officially embraced intolerance, and for an empire hoping to rise in global preeminence, this was a staggeringly bad move.7

  The first wave of the Inquisition decimated Spain's converso population. In Valencia between 1494 and 1530, nearly one thousand converses were convicted of “judaizing” and sentenced to death. In Seville over roughly the same period, an estimated four thousand converses were burned at the stake. Terrified, tens of thousands of converso families fled.

  The mass exodus of Spain's converses and Jews left a catastrophic financial vacuum. Castilian culture did not favor finance or trade. There was a distinctly anti-entrepreneurial streak among Spain's Castilian elite, who exalted instead the warrior, the priest, and the aristocratic landowner. Nevertheless, before 1492, foreign bankers played virtually no role in Spain. As the Spaniards themselves saw it, “[0]ur kings…did not need bankers foreign to the kingdom. The Abrahams, Isaacs, and Samuels sufficed.” This domination of finance by Jews and converses was in many respects a healthy state of affairs: Jews had a powerful interest in maintaining the strength of the Spanish state, on which they depended for their protection. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, this symbiotic relationship served the Spanish kings well. By the end of the 1400s, the Spanish crown united under Ferdinand and Isabella was one of the richest in Europe, and Spain “the greatest power on earth.”

  But by attacking its Jews and conversos, Spain destroyed its own primary source of credit and thereafter became completely dependent on foreign bankers, including the Dutch, the Germans, the French, and especially the hated Genoese (“white Moors,” as a resentful Spaniard called them). The price of capital increased. As early as 1509, the Genoese were making loans at such high rates of interest that the archbishop of Seville sought to ban them, but Ferdinand sanctioned them on grounds of necessity.

  Within a few decades, Genoese bankers controlled the provisioning of the Spanish fleet, and “[f]oreign bankers ran the Crown's finances.” This dependence on foreign financiers was particularly perilous because these were the years of Spain's most aggressive imperial expansion, particularly in the Americas, with naval expeditions and warfare calling for seemingly limitless sums of money. Hence the ironic emergence of an empire that was essentially insolvent even as it discovered and exploited the vastest reserves of precious metals yet encountered.8

  The fantastic gold and silver mines of Central and South America poured their ore onto Spanish ships, but the ore was pledged in advance to foreign bankers who had financed the ships, the army, and the luxurious opulence of the Spanish crown. Royal bankruptcies occurred in 1557 and 1575. Suddenly, the crown reawakened to the utility of Jewish financiers.

  In 1580, Spain absorbed the kingdom of Portugal and, desperate for capital, Philip II began to accept loans from Portuguese Jews and “New Christians” (the conversos of Portugal). Many of these New Christians attained great wealth, becoming important investors in Spanish international trade, making fortunes in Brazilian sugar, Asian spices, and African slaves. Some Portuguese New Christians emigrated to the Spanish American colonies, where, for example, they dominated the Pacific trade in and out of Lima. Others returned to Spain—the land their ancestors had fled a century before—believing that the period of persecution was over.9

  They were mistaken. Perversely but predictably, a new paroxysm of religious intolerance surged through Spain. In the 1590s, the dormant Inquisition came back to life, starting with a relentless campaign of persecution, torture, and execution directed at New Christians in La Mancha, who were denounced as secret Jews by their debtors. Limpieza de sangre—or “purity of blood”—once again became a battle cry, as old statutes were resurrected banning anyone with Jewish blood from holding positions in government, universities and colleges, and military and religious institutions. In 1600, the Inquisition of Lima attacked Portuguese New Christians in Peru. In 1609, Spain commenced another mass expulsion, this time directed not at Jews but at Muslims and “secret” Muslims. By 1614, Spain had driven out about a quarter million Moriscos, destroying its own agricultural base in the south.10

  With ebbs and flows, Spain persisted in this fanatical, self-destructive intolerance throughout the seventeenth century. In 1625, thirty-nine New Christians were executed at an auto-da-fé in Cordoba. In 1632, the Inquisition celebrated another act of faith in Madrid, burning seven “judaizers” to death before King Philip IV. At Granada in 1672, seventy-nine more were burned at the stake. And at Madrid again in 1680, twenty-one “perfidious Jews…God's worst enemies” were executed before Charles II and his court. All told, the Inquisition burned some 32,000 “heretics” at the stake. At the same time, the empire took on the mission of defender of the faith in Europe, spending fortunes on wars against Protestants in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. In 1767, King Charles III actually expelled Spain's Jesuits, supposedly because of “machinations” so “abominable” that the king had to keep “the most absolute silence on th[e] subject.”11

  Why sixteenth-century Spain declined has been a favorite topic of historians. Technological backwardness, entrenched feudal traditions, crushing foreign debt, the lack of a significant industrial and entrepreneurial sector, demographic decline, a weak state apparatus, and chronic budgetary crises are some of the contributing factors most often cited.12 In fact, many of these factors can be traced, directly or indirectly, to the Spanish crown's official embrace of religious purging and burning beginning in the 1480s.

  This is not to suggest that the Inquisition was the source of all of Spain's ills—a position mocked by one writer of the nineteenth century: “Why was there no industry in Spain? On account of the Inquisition…Why are Spaniards lazy? On account of the Inquisition. Why are there bull-fights in Spain? On account of the Inquisition. Why do Spaniards take a siesta? On account of the Inquisition.”13

  Nevertheless, the fact remains that Spanish intolerance—the combination of the Inquisition, the expulsions, the limpieza de san-gre statutes, and so on—inflicte
d catastrophic costs on the empire. Even putting aside the horrendous killing and human suffering, Spain's religious persecutions required a colossal waste of resources. For example, to expel its quarter-million-strong Morisco community, Spain had to put into service its entire navy and militia. The trials and torture chambers of the Inquisition were deadweight losses, generating no knowledge or wealth, only hatred and paranoia. Moreover, with each new round of violent fanaticism, Spain either destroyed or drove out its most valuable sources of human, financial, and social capital. Eventually, Spain's “purification” campaigns tore into every level of society: its rural population, its artisans, its doctors and scientists, its merchants and financiers, even its Catholic nobility, many (if not most) of whom had Jewish ancestry.

  Perhaps he was just posturing, but Ferdinand himself seemed to be aware of the self-destructiveness of the Jewish expulsion he ordered. In a letter sent on the same day the decree was issued, Ferdinand wrote that he had been persuaded by the Holy Office of the Inquisition to expel the Jews “despite the great harm to ourselves, seeking and preferring the salvation of souls above our own profit and that of individuals.”14

  In any case, by 1640 Spain was on the brink of collapse, no longer even one of Europe's premier powers. It continued to decline thereafter, becoming increasingly marginal on the world stage. While it is by no means clear that a tolerant Spain could have become a hyperpower—to reiterate my thesis, tolerance is a necessary but not sufficient condition of world dominance—there is no question that imperial Spain's intolerance stymied its ascent and precipitated its downward spiral.

  Although Spain “specialized in expulsions,” it was certainly not the only European power consumed by religious zeal. On the contrary, in pre-Enlightenment Europe, religious persecution and warfare were the rule, not the exception. In Germany in 1524, for example, peasants spurred by the Reformation slaughtered scores of Roman Catholics, who retaliated with even greater atrocities, triggering the so-called Peasants’ War in which an estimated 100,000 ultimately died. In Italy in 1569, Pope Pius V expelled all Jews from the Papal States. In France in 1572, as many as 10,000 Huguenots were slaughtered in celebration of St. Bartholomew's Day. In Poland over 50,000 Jews were massacred between 1648 and 1654.

  Nor was the Spanish monarchy alone in attempting to force religious uniformity on its subjects. In the German states, ruling princes vied to impose either absolute Calvinism or absolute Lutheranism on their territories. In Sweden, there was a single state church; nonattenders were fined and religious education was mandatory. Catholic Bohemia expelled its entire Protestant nobility in 1627. In Hungary, there was coercive Catholicization. In England, where Catholics were frequently attacked, the Anglican Church was established by law, with criminal penalties for nonconformity.15

  At the dawn of the seventeenth century, the population of France was roughly 16 million. Spain and Portugal combined could boast about 10 million. Taken together, the various principalities of Germany had a population of perhaps 20 million.16 Smaller than all these was the Netherlands, with a population of no more than two million. Yet it would be the tiny Dutch Republic that, within a half century, would eclipse all the other powers of Europe.

  SIX

  Diamonds, Damask, and Every

  “Mongrel Sect in Christendom”

  So, Amsterdam has risen through the hand of God to the peak of prosperity and greatness…The whole world stands amazed at its riches and from east and west, north and south they come to behold it.

  — DUTCH AUTHOR, 1662

  This Citty is nott divided in to parishes as with us, butt every one goes to what church hee pleases, there beeing only 8 or 9 publicise churches besides the English, French, Lutherans, Anabaptists, etts., and Jewish Sinagogues…Organs they have in some of them, butt are nott played til the people depart, soe thatt itt seemes they serve to blowe them outt off church…Few hol-idaies observed, Christmas, Easter, Whitesontide and Sondaies excepted; the latter butt badly kept. A Tolleration here off all sects [of] religion.

  — ENGLISHMAN PETER MUNDY ON AMSTERDAM, 1640

  The Dutch are famous for many things—clogs, windmills, tulips, Rembrandt, Vermeer—but these days it's often forgotten that the Dutch once presided over the world's preeminent maritime trading empire, the immediate predecessor to Britain's. It's often forgotten too that the Dutch were once the world's greatest producers of civet.

  Civet is derived from civet cats, which are actually not cats at all but members of the mongoose family, native to Asia and Africa. In southern China, civet meat is a great delicacy—the “tiger” in the celebrated dragon, tiger, and phoenix soup. In 2004, civet cats were linked to the SARS outbreak and thousands were destroyed. In addition to its culinary importance, the civet cat also has a gland near its anus containing a musky, buttery substance. This secretion, called civet, has long been used to make some of the world's most expensive perfumes.

  In the medieval era, civet was included in sweet-smelling pomanders thought to have the power to ward off disease. In the sixteenth century, it became a precious ingredient in high-end fragrances, coveted by the finest parfumiers of Paris. Before the advent of regular bathing and deodorants, fragrances strong enough to cover body odor were in great demand by the wealthy. Indeed, few things cost more per ounce than the highest-quality civet—in some cases, not even gold.

  As a result, there was a thriving international trade in civet cats in the seventeenth century, and many tried to profit from it. England's Daniel Defoe, for example, earned a living by breeding civet cats before he wrote Robinson Crusoe. By the 1620s, however, the Dutch had cornered the civet trade.

  Large merchant firms in Amsterdam sent Dutch ships to India, Java, and Guinea and brought back civet cats by the thousands. The civet cats were then raised in cages in Amsterdam, where they were fed milk and egg whites so that the civet they produced would be white, as opposed to its natural yellow or brownish color. Every several days, trained workers pinned down the live animals, squeezed open their perineal glands, and carefully scraped out the secretion. The civet was then quickly bottled—civet darkens and thickens when exposed to air—and exported along with certificates of purity to luxury markets throughout Europe.

  Civet was just one commodity in Europe's “rich trades”—the immensely lucrative traffic in luxury commodities—which the Dutch Republic dominated for much of the seventeenth century. The formula was straightforward. Dutch ships traveled to far-flung corners of the world, carrying back East Indies pepper and spices, sugar from Brazil and Sào Tome, Turkish mohair, Castilian wool, and Indian cotton and raw diamonds. The Dutch either traded these riches throughout Europe or brought them back to Holland, where the raw materials were processed and reexported at enormous profit in the form of luxury tapestries, patterned silks, fine linens, and exquisitely cut gemstones. So spectacularly profitable was this global trade that the English, French, Germans, Venetians, and especially Spanish all vied to control it—or even just parts of it.1

  A note on nomenclature, which in the case of the Netherlands can be quite confusing: The European country that today is officially named the Kingdom of the Netherlands is often called Holland, even by the Dutch themselves. Technically, however, Holland refers only to the Netherlands’ two most economically and politically important provinces, North Holland and South Holland, which include the major cities of Amsterdam, Delft, Haarlem, The Hague, Leiden, and Rotterdam.

  To complicate matters further, the Netherlands’ borders and political configuration have changed significantly over time. In the Middle Ages, the territory roughly covering modern Belgium, Luxembourg, northwest France, and the Netherlands was known as the Low Countries. (Belgium and Luxembourg achieved independence in the 1830s.) The Reformation brought dramatic changes. For a time, southern Netherlands came under the authority of the Catholic Hapsburgs, while Protestant-dominated northern Netherlands became known as the United Provinces, and eventually the Republic of the United Provinces.2

  I
n this chapter, I will use all these terms—the Low Countries, the Netherlands, the Dutch Republic, the United Provinces— depending on the historical context. Holland will generally refer only to the provinces of that name.

  BEFORE THE RISE

  Like the Great Mongol Empire, the Dutch Republic that shot to global prominence in the seventeenth century could not have had humbler beginnings. Before 1200, Holland and the other low-lying western regions of the Netherlands were practically—and in some cases, literally—under water. (The elevation of the Netherlands falls as one moves from east to west, toward the North Sea. The country's highest point is in the southeast. Even today, approximately 27 percent of the country, home to 60 percent of the population, is below sea level.) Lying in the swampy deltas of three rivers, this “sand and mud dump left over from the ice age” was barely populated, unfit for agriculture, and, because of constant flooding, often dangerous.

  Starting in the thirteenth century, major areas of waterlogged Holland, including modern Amsterdam and Rotterdam, were reclaimed through the construction of ingenious dams, dikes, and drainage systems. Although the windmill was not invented in Holland—early versions existed in Persia in the ninth century—the Dutch perfected the technology, using wind power to pump water to safer areas. Even the English lampoonist Owen Felltham, who called the Dutch Republic a “universali quagmire” and “a green cheese in a pickle,” conceded that the Dutch were “in some sort Gods, for they set bounds to the Ocean and allow it to come and go as they list.”3

  Nevertheless, as late as 1350, the Low Countries were an unremarkable spot on the broad European map, largely dependent on subsistence farming and collectively no larger than the state of Tennessee. Unlike in Spain or France, both of which were ruled by strong monarchies, government in the Low Countries was local and decentralized. In terms of religious tolerance, or rather the lack thereof, the Low Countries were also unexceptional. As throughout Europe, the bubonic plague in the Netherlands was blamed on many things—the unfavorable alignment of the planets, the sins of the world—but particularly on Jews: