From Trade to Empire

Abstract

These changes in the nature of the European state were the basis for developing colonial power. They made themselves felt overseas only slowly and in erratic fashion. But as overseas trade and conquest became increasingly important factors in the European power struggle, peoples in the Americas or Asia became pawns in the game of European politics. Conquests could become negotiating chips. English gains from France in the colonies, for instance, could be exchanged for parts of the Low Countries vital to the security of the British isles. It was all summed up in the famous comment by Macaulay on the importance of a war, around 1740, between the King of Prussia and the Empress of Austria, about possession of the central European province of Silesia: