Os Portuguêses já foram pioneiros do Capitalismo

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Os Portuguêses já foram pioneiros do Capitalismo
« em: Setembro 13, 2005, 10:49:01 pm »
Extraído do livro “Three Billion New Capitalists”
de Clyde Prestowitz

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The First Wave, 1415-1914

“The present system of Americanized globalization is the crest of a Western swell that began to rise in Portugal nearly six hundred years ago. In 1415 China and the area we now call India produced about 75 percent of the global GDP. America was still undiscovered, and the countries of Europe were insignificant and backward. They were aware of the wealth of the East only because Arabs who controlled the overland trade routes deigned from time to time to let a few scraps fall from the table to the Western "infidel" dogs. In Lisbon , King John I's third son, Henry, wondered if it might be possible to get around the Arabs and go directly to the source of the wealth by sea. At Sagres (now Cape St. Vincent, the southwestern tip of Europe ) he established history's first national base for exploration and globalization. Think of it as an early version of Florida 's Cape Canaveral and Henry's project as a kind of Apollo mission. Except that the prince was aiming not for the moon but to get around Africa . To do so, his shipwrights developed the caravel, a fast, maneuverable ship without which none of the great expeditions, including that of Columbus, would have been possible 3 The caravel was not large because it was meant to carry a compact but highly valuable cargo—information.

The caravels were the information technology of the day, and Henry sent them as probes along Africa 's west coast, charging his captains to "boldly go where no man has gone before." They did, finding ivory, gold, and slaves from which come the names Ivory Coast , Gold Coast' and Slave Coast for parts of Africa . But the real prize wasn't the Africa . trade, it was the news that Bartolomeu Dias brought back in 1488

After rounding the southern tip of Africa into the Indian Ocean . That in­formation led to two seminal expeditions. Columbus had hoped that Portugal would fund his scheme of getting to the Indies by going west When he realized the Portuguese could get there on their own by going around Africa, he turned to Spain for help, with historic consequences Just as historic was the 1498 expedition of Vasco da Gama, who took a Portuguese flotilla to Calicut on India's west coast.

The sailing, navigational, and naval warfare technology of the Por­tuguese was superior to anything in Asia . By 1511 Portugal controlled the Straits of Hormuz on the Persian Gulf, had made Goa the capital of its possessions in India , and had taken control of Malacca. It dominated the Indian Ocean and opened sea trade with Siam , the Moluccas or Spice Islands, and China . Spices, drugs, gems, and silks-which for centuries had passed from China and the Indies across the Arabian Sea to the Middle East and then through Venice and Genoa to Europe-were now carried west around Africa on Portuguese ships. The effect was immediate and dramatic. The Egyptian sultans, for example had kept the price of pepper high by limiting shipments to 210 tons per year.4 With the Portuguese in the game, pepper prices in Lisbon fell to a fifth of those in Venice . Overnight, Egyptian-Venetian trade was de­stroyed, shifting the power of Venice to Portugal without a shot being fired. That was the first demonstration of the power of globalization.

This demonstration was not lost on the Spanish, Dutch, English and French, who quickly adopted and adapted the new Portuguese technology for expeditions of their own. Over the next four hundred years, these five countries (later to be joined by the fledgling United States and Japan) on the periphery of Europe, comprising less than 2 percent of the earth's surface and less than 20 percent of its popula­tion, exploited these advantages to create world-girdling empires that gave the West both economic and geopolitical dominance. The Indus­trial Revolution cemented this dominance, opening an enormous gap of productivity and wealth between the industrializing countries of the West and the rest. For example, as late as 1830, Latin America, Asia, and Africa accounted for 61 percent of the world's manufactured goods; by 1913 that share was down to 8 percent.

The industrial revolution also tied the world together tighter than ever before. Capital markets became internationalized as the gold standard established a common international medium of exchange that facilitated enormous capital flows. At its peak, for example, Britain 's net overseas investment was running at 9 percent of GDP.5 This was also a period of great movements of people, with annual im­migration into places like the United States and Argentina running at rates up to 26 percent of the existing population. Many contemporary observers felt the world economy was becoming so integrated as to make its fracturing and war impossible. Tragically, however, this view proved wrong; World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II put an end to globalization for nearly forty years.

In 1947, with the consequences of aborted globalization vividly in mind, Western leaders prepared for a second round. But it wasn't glob­alization of the whole world, as Asia accounted for only 8 percent of global output, and half the world's population was in the communist or socialist camp and wasn't playing.”

Globalization: The Second Wave, 1947-2000

“This second wave of globalization was orchestrated by America , and its purposes, philosophy, and actors were very different from those of the previous wave. Instead of expansion, the objective was to rebuild areas devastated by the war and regain living standards and opportuni­ties for a new generation. There was also the need to construct economies and a trading system that would avoid the pitfalls of the intervening forty-five years as I have met a number of world leaders and have asked myself what exactly is leadership. It is good to have in­telligent leaders, but intelligence is not leadership. Leaders may be in a position of high office, but all those who obtain these positions are not leaders. Just think of the high officials of 1914, blindly plunging the young men of Europe into the blood bath of World War I. Eloquence is a wonderful gift for a leader, but those who eloquently mouth the con­ventional wisdom are not leaders.

Essentially, a true leader strives to discover the facts, connect the dots, follow where they lead, and determine how best to face the prob­lem they present, and then shape events and persuade people to em­brace the results.


Six centuries ago, Portugal 's Prince Henry (the Navigator) was bold enough to connect certain dots, to think outside the box and so lead our forebears to the Far East and the New World . We too must think outside the box. The fact that we are now riding a new wave of globalization with 3 billion new surfers presents a unique opportunity for a still powerful America to turn from illusions of empire and exercise the ingenious entrepreneurial leadership that has long characterized it. To do so, we must be mindful of Shakespeare's lines in Julius Caesar:

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shal­lows and miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures. “
"Esta é a ditosa pátria minha amada."