Silt, nutmeg, and Total Football: Part 2

Still ignoring the US election? Read on, friend.

Last week we boarded VOC spice ships in Banten bay, silted up a river, and tracked nutmeg across space and time. This week we are looking at old boats and sexy footballers. If you haven’t read it, and you’d like this newsletter to make slightly more sense, you can do so here.

I’m not a football is life guy (not round ball, at least) but I am happy to concede that it is a microcosm of great historical forces. If there was one thing evident in last week’s newsletter it is that resources flow from the imperial periphery to the metropole. That’s kinda the whole thing with it. It is true of raw materials; just look how low those transport ships sit in the port of Amsterdam, pregnant with spice. It is also true of football players — a reality apparent to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear the 2018 World Cup final between France and Croatia. 87% of the victorious Les Bleus squad (not pictured) boasted immigrant origins. Kylian Mbappé’s heritage was such that he could have played for Algeria, Cameroon, or France. This can be an extraordinarily lucrative arrangement for the individuals while still reinforcing the broader extractive relationship (it would take a stupider man than I to argue that France has relinquished its mantle as a colonial power). But we are not here for the French — we are here for our close and personal friends The Dutch.

To explain this we need to return to the Second Anglo-Dutch War (total snore) and one history’s rawest deals, the Treaty of Breda. The antecedents of the conflict can broadly grouped under the geopolitical axiom: nobody likes the English. First among those who disliked the English was Charles II, King of England. Chuck did not like the fact that Parliament — that hallowed instrument of democratic will — controlled the budget. His budget. The situation called for a subtle hand for his immediate predecessor Charles I had gotten into a rude brawl over parliamentary oversight and lost his head for it. Wary, the Second decided leverage the Parliamentary boot off his frilled neck by making a little walking around money on the side. In the 1660s all of Europe was vying for the obscene wealth inside fragrant seeds, nuts, and fruit. The Dutch and English East India companies returned handsome profits to their shareholders. They were the model. Spying a quick buck, Charles II got in on the Atlantic slave trade by founding the Royal Africa Company. Conflict with the leading Dutch West India Company, the leading power along the Slave Coast, was inevitable.