Large historical problems are stimulating to debate but difficult to specify and answer in ways that might carry forward our long-standing discourses in global economic history. The papers which form the basis of our essay deal with a meta question and are focused upon the economic consequences (the costs and benefits) for those European societies most actively involved in territorial expansion, colonization, world trade, capital exports and emigration to other continents over the past five centuries. Our symbolic dates mark (rather than demarcate) the beginning and ending of European imperialism. Colonisation occurred in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages but between 1415 and 1789 European powers, particularly Britain but also Spain, Portugal, Holland, France and Italy, founded hundreds of colonies. Individual articles have concentrated upon periods of significance for particular countries and are, moreover, analysed within the context of an international economy, evolving through four eras (or orders) of mercantilism (1415–1846), liberalism (1846–1914), neo-mercantilism (1914–48), and decolonisation (1948–74). Our Introduction draws heavily upon six national case studies as well as discussions that took place at a conference in Madrid in 1997. We do not intend to cite particular contributions to the inferences and conclusions in this essay. Our views represent an elaboration upon and an interpretation of the articles that follow.

The assessment of the economic consequences of empires from the fifteenth century to the present raises a set of problems which should not be concealed, if we are to provide any meaningful answers to the questions implied in such a survey. First, it is useful to remember that these questions, as so many addressed by social scientists, are immersed in the interminable ideological debate about the development of nations. For example, it is not easy to avoid the judgement of empires as inherendy good or bad, and to evade the prevailing notion that they are evil structures resting on some kind of violence, on which consequently it is not decent for any nation to have built its wealth. Anyway, even if we could easily do away with ideological controversies, and we cannot, we would still lack the appropriate statistical data, at least for most of the period under examination, which could support an accurate evaluation of the true economic consequences of empire. In fact, since we may never construct a plausible cost-benefit matrix or an acceptable estimate of the relative significance of imperial ventures1, controversy will always continue, not only about the interpretation of the effects of imperialism, but about the facts and figures themselves.

The Spanish Empire in America —so envied by other countries— has never been regarded by economic historians as an unmixed blessing. For Hamilton, the precious metals from the Americas caused a parallel rise in prices and wages, reducing industrial investment and thus aborting the development of capitalism. For Vilar, a critic of that view, the Empire, as «the supreme phase of feudalism», led to a primitive accumulation of capital responsible for freezing structures inhibiting to capitalism. Wallerstein recognised that America was essential for the conversion of Spain into a semi-periphery of the world market1. To that can be added other less general but equally negative approaches concerning the effects of emigration or of American treasure, seen by many as contributing to an absolutism powerful enough to impose a foreign policy alien to the interests of the country and highly damaging to the Spanish economy, and to that of Castile in particular.

How much did the Dutch economy benefit from its expansion beyond the borders of Europe? The simple answer is provided by the Dutch spectators at international soccer games, when they start to encourage their team by singing about the great achievements of Piet Heyn, who as an admiral of the Dutch fleet captured the Spanish flota off the Cuban coast in 1628. This song implies that the Dutch economy was gready stimulated by a one-time injection of «Spanish coins» and oranges. No doubt, both were very welcome indeed, but they did not seem to have constituted die economic impetus that made a difference to the Dutch economy at the time.

Among the colonial powers of the early modern period, France was the last to emerge. Although, the French had not abstained from the exploration of fhe New World in the 16th century: G. de Verrazano discovered the site of New York (1524), during a voyage sponsored by King Francis I; Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence to Quebec and Montreal (1535). From the early 16th century, many ships from ports such as Dieppe, St. Malo, La Rochelle, went on privateering and or trading expeditions to the Guinea coast, to Brazil, to the Caribbean, to the Spanish Main. Many French boats did fish off Newfoundland. Some traded in furs on the near-by Continent. Moreover, during the 16th century, sporadic attempts were made to establish French settlements in «Equinoctial France» (Brazil), in Florida, in modern Canada, but they failed utterly. Undoubtedly, foreign wars against the Habsburgs, during the first half of the 16th and of the 17th centuries, civil «wars of religion» during the second half of the 16th century, political disorders like the blockade of La Rochelle or the Fronde during the first part of the 17th century, absorbed the attention and resources of French rulers, despite some ambitious projects, like those of Richelieu, for overseas trade. As for the port cities they tried to trade overseas but they were isolated and not strong enough (specially during die wars of religion) to create «colonies». Some small companies, which had been started in 1601 and 1604, to trade with the East Indies, were very short-lived, and the French did not engage seriously in Asian trade before 1664.

Writing on the eve of one of the major transformations in the British Empire, Adam Smith more or less repeated the remark made by the Abbé Raynal several years earlier that «the discovery of America, and that of passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind»l. Both of these great events of the 1490's, Columbus's discovery of the Americas and the sailing to India, a few years later, by Vasco de Gama, had no immediate impact on the British economy, but the opening up of this wider world for colonization and trading would soon have profound impacts on Britain and the other nations of Western Europe. In the same decade Britain, however, did make its first claim to New World territory, when John Cabot landed on Newfoundland in 1497, but it was to be about a century before title was clear and setdement begun. Not the first to establish an empire, the British rose to world-wide dominance over the course of the next three centuries.

From the independence of Brazil in 1822 down to the independence of the African colonies in 1975, successive Portuguese governments became engaged in maintaining, enlarging, developing and, ultimately, in defending an empire in Africa. The literature on the Portuguese African empire is largely concerned with discussing the economic and political motives behind imperial policy1. Thus, the evaluation of the costs and benefits of the empire for the metropolitan economy —or, for that matter, the colonial economies— has not received much attention. This paper attempts to provide some of the evidence necessary to conduct such an evaluation2.

Two interrelated ideas are developed in this essay: first, that the consequences for the Spanish economy of loosing the last colonies —Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines— at the end of the nineteenth century were relatively small, and that it hardly can be regarded, as many historians have done as the Disaster of 1898. Second, that despite its small overall direct impact on the Spanish economy, the independence wars fought with the colonies, and the defeat at the hands of the Americans in 1898, started a process of intense political nationalism that resulted in the adoption of western Europe's most stringent autarchy at the beginning of the twentieth century. The colonial Disaster was therefore, an indirect one. Its economic consequences were first felt by Bentham's «ruling few» —in Spain's case, the wheat, flour, and textile traders of Castile and Catalonia— and later reached the «subject many» by way of their influence on the adoption of extreme protective measures («integral protection», as it became known by Spanish nationalists) facilitated by the general climate caused by the colonial loss.