/lit/ - Literature

>>19825272
It's a refutation of the point for a number of obvious reasons.
First of all, it means that global market integration pre-dated liberalism. It actually predated even the arrival of the Renaissance in the notoriously conservative Spanish monarchy. Colonialism originated along Crusader lines instead of any sort of characteristic Early Modern tendency, because the Spanish were extending the Reconquista to the New World. Furthermore, this means that globalization is practically something that liberalism co-opted, because first hundred plus years of that dynamic were defined by the Spanish spreading theocratic agrarian imperialism across an entire continent - and their exported feudalism was nothing like Anglo-Dutch economized Atlanticism. Here is a concrete example of one globalizing tendency being replaced by another, and it didn't have to happen this way at all.
That leads to the second point. The New World was ONLY discovered by Europeans because of a confluence of factors that precipitated it, and it was only conquered because of its own historical foibles. The Turks blocked trade from the Orient, the Spanish were triumphant off the heels of the Reconquista, Columbus was forward-thinking enough to establish a base on Hispaniola, the native societies were already going through apocalyptic warfare even before the European plagues ravaged their societies, and the system was ripe for collapse anyways. The native societies could have adapted to the Europeans with less initiative or competence on the part of Spain. If another Black Death hit Europe during the Great Turkish Wars while leaving the Ottomans unscathed then all of Europe would have been Muslim long ago, and writing triumphalist literature about THAT outcome instead.
Without the Royal Navy and the VOC, liberalism does not have free reign. Without the Habsburgs the Royal Navy is never strengthened and the VOC is less driven. Without American gold the Habsburgs never have the power to fight England over the Netherlands. Without the factors I just mentioned, Spain doesn't have American gold; and also, the Netherlands is less developed because the Northern Hansa trade route remains more viable, and the German lowlands don't receive the same investment and never become as developed.