cocoa (left) and raw materials only, but his industrialisation plan was curtailed after he was overthrown
Nkrumah (below) tried to break the colonial plan for Ghana to produce
and queens from that family.” Confirming Reinert’s account, Chang succeeds in providing
more uncommon detail on Daniel Defoe. “Te author of Robin- son Crusoe, [Defoe] had a colourful life,” Chang narrates. “Before writing novels, he was a businessman, importing woollen goods, hosiery, wine and tobacco... He also worked in the government in the royal lotteries and in the Glass Duty Office that collected the notorious ‘window tax’... He was also an influential author of political pamphlets and led a double life as a government spy... “As if being a businessman, novelist, tax collector, political
commentator, and spy wasn’t providing sufficient stimulus, De- foe was also an economist. Tis aspect of his life is even less well known than his spying. Unlike his novels, which include Robin- son Crusoe, and Moll Flanders, Defoe’s main economic work, A Plan of the English Commerce [published in 1728], is almost for- gotten now... However, the book was a thorough and insightful account of Tudor industrial policy that has much to teach us today.” And what lessons does Defoe teach? In his book, he describes
Reinert tells the story better here: “King Henry VII had spent
his childhood and youth with an aunt in Burgundy. Tere he ob- served great affluence in an area with woollen textile production. Both the wool and the material used to clean it (Fuller’s Earth on aluminium silicate) were imported from England. “When Henry took over his destitute realm with several
years’ future wool production mortgaged to Italian bankers, he remembered his adolescence on the continent. In Burgundy not only the textile producers, but also the bakers and the other craftsmen were well off. England was in the wrong business, the king recognised and decided on a policy to make Eng- land into a textile-producing nation, not an exporter of raw materials. “So Henry VII created quite an extensive economic policy
toolbox. His first and most important tool was export duties, which ensured that foreign textile producers [who imported raw wool from England] had to process more expensive raw materials than their English counterparts. Newly established wool manu- facturers [in England] were also guaranteed tax exemption for a period, and were given monopolies in certain geographical areas for certain periods. “Tere was also a policy to attract craftsmen and entrepre-
neurs from abroad, especially from Holland and Italy. As English wool-manufacturing capacity grew, so did the export duties, until England had sufficient production capacity to process all the wool they produced. “Ten, about 100 years later, [Queen] Elizabeth I could place
an embargo on all raw wool exports from England. In the 18th century, Daniel Defoe and other historians saw the wisdom in this strategy, which they labelled the ‘Tudor Plan’, after the kings
how the Tudor kings and queens, especially Henry VII and Eliza- beth I, used protectionism, subsidies, distribution of monopoly rights, government-sponsored industrial espionage and other means of government intervention to develop England’s wool- len manufacturing industry, which became Europe’s high-tech industry at the time. “Until Tudor times,” Chang says, “Britain had been a relatively backward economy, relying on the exports of raw wool to finance imports. Te woollen manufacturing in- dustry was centred in the Low Countries (today’s Belgium and the Netherlands), especially Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres in Flan- ders. Britain exported its raw wool and made a reasonable profit. “But those foreigners who knew how to convert wool into
clothes were generating much greater profits. It is a law of com- petition that people who can do difficult things which others cannot, will earn more profit. Tis is the situation that Henry VII wanted to change in the late 15th century.” And here Defoe comes in handy. He tells in his now forgotten
book how “Henry VII sent royal missions to identify locations in England suited to woollen manufacturing. Like Edward III before him, he poached skilled workers from the Low Countries. He also increased the tax on the export of raw wool, and even temporarily banned its export, in order to encourage further processing of the raw material at home.” Henry VII also banned the export of unfinished cloth in 1489
in order to promote further processing at home. His son, Henry VIII, continued the policy and banned the export of unfinished cloth in 1512, 1513, and 1536. Defoe tells how Henry VII did not have any illusions at all
about how long it would take the English woollen manufacturers to catch up with their more advanced competitors in the Low Countries. As Chang points out: “It was not until 1578, in the middle of Elizabeth I’s reign (1558-1603) – nearly 100 years after Henry VII had started his ‘import substitution industrialisation’ policy in 1489 – that Britain had sufficient processing capacity to ban raw wool exports totally...”
Clever English For all their sins, and whatever anybody says about the English (or Britain, to use the union terminology), they are a clever people!
New African April 2011 | 13
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