of their institutions. By the middle of the eighteenth century,
there were already notable differences in political and
economic institutions around the world. But where did these
differences come from?
English political institutions were on their way to much
greater pluralism by 1688, compared with those in France
and Spain, but if we go back in time one hundred years, to
1588, the differences shrink to almost nothing. All three
countries were ruled by relatively absolutist monarchs:
Elizabeth I in England, Philip II in Spain, and Henry II in
France. All were battling with assemblies of citizens—such
as the Parliament in England, the Cortes in Spain, and the
Estates-General in France—that were demanding more
rights and control over the monarchy. These assemblies all
had somewhat different powers and scopes. For instance,
the English Parliament and the Spanish Cortes had power
over taxation, while the Estates-General did not. In Spain
this mattered little, because after 1492 the Spanish Crown
had a vast American empire and benefited massively from
the gold and silver found there. In England the situation was
different. Elizabeth I was far less financially independent, so
she had to beg Parliament for more taxes. In exchange,
Parliament demanded concessions, in particular
restrictions on the right of Elizabeth to create monopolies. It
was a conflict Parliament gradually won. In Spain the
Cortes lost a similar conflict. Trade wasn’t just
monopolized; it was monopolized by the Spanish
monarchy.
These distinctions, which initially appeared small, started
to matter a great deal in the seventeenth century. Though
the Americas had been discovered by 1492 and Vasco da
Gama had reached India by rounding the Cape of Good
Hope, at the southern tip of Africa, in 1498, it was only after
1600 that a huge expansion of world trade, particularly in
the Atlantic, started to take place. In 1585 the first English
colonization of North America began at Roanoke, in what is
now North Carolina. In 1600 the English East India
Company was formed. In 1602 it was followed by the Dutch
equivalent. In 1607 the colony of Jamestown was founded
by the Virginia Company. By the 1620s the Caribbean was
being colonized, with Barbados occupied in 1627. France
was also expanding in the Atlantic, founding Quebec City in