Giorgio Nebbia nebbia@quipo.it
At the root of the consumer society
Many are led to believe that ours is, par excellence, the "consumer society". On closer inspection, however, all companies in the past have been attracted by consumption, by the exhibition of wealth, from luxury goods and exotic sources, then as now, waste, fraud, corruption.
In Roman times, the advent of consumer society coincides with the conquest of the Mediterranean countries and contacts with the Hellenistic kingdoms, created by the heirs of Alexander the Great and grown, with varying fortune, in the three centuries before Christ, Egypt, Greece and Persia. The kingdoms Hellenistic were in an exceptional situation in terms of trade of luxury goods, made of silk and jade from China, with fragrances and flavors, coming from central Africa and Arabia, metals, gold and precious stones from India.
A society very rigid and austere, like that of republican Rome, found himself faced with costly and valuable goods, whose performance was a sign of social success, indicating membership in the wealthy classes. Oriental Goods arrived accompanied by new rituals and new religions, as is currently in Western Europe and the United States. Even Rome was powerful, had provided fertile land and rich harvests and industry able to build cities and bridges, roads and weapons, even Rome was proud and arrogant, and some classes were enriched with taxes in the countries subject robbed, with the purchase of cheap materials such as strategic grain, metals, industrial products, from resell at huge profits. The younger generation of the leisured classes could switch so lazy political practice and a little 'military business with the collection of revenue and taxes, and began to look curiously enlarged, to use new luxury goods and to adopt new habits.
When they arrived in Rome in the first century BC, the first silk fabrics, made in China and transported by nomadic merchants across Asia to Persia and the Mediterranean, their possession and their performance attracted men and women of the Roman upper classes. So much so that a stern and grumpy as the Como scholar Pliny could write, half of the first century after Christ, in his "Natural History", the words of disapproval of the Roman ladies who were wandering the city covered in transparent silk garments, the source of excitement and admiration for the idle. It also circulated aromas and perfumes and expensive drugs, not much different from drugs that are corroding the foundations of capitalist society. Even then there was an organization of merchants and adventurers who were to flow in the Mediterranean and spices, very high price, knowing dove andarle ad acquistare, nei lontani paesi asiatici. Si ebbe, insomma, nei due secoli prima e dopo Cristo, uno straordinario intreccio di commerci a grande distanza, per via di terra e di mare, la prima grande rivoluzione merceologica della storia, a dimensione, come si direbbe oggi, globale.
Negli ultimi cento anni l'esplorazione degli archivi e dei documenti ha messo a disposizione degli studiosi e dei curiosi informazioni abbastanza accurate sulle vie commerciali che univano l'Oriente e l'Occidente e sulle merci oggetto di scambio, in un flusso che prevalentemente andava dall'Asia verso il Mediterraneo e Roma.
La via della seta
Dal 1960 al 1970 nel corso di laurea in Lingue che esisteva, allora, presso the Faculty of Economics, University of Bari, was activated a supplementary teaching "History of the trade with the Orient" which was later removed when it was created the autonomous Faculty of Languages. It was and is, to my knowledge, the only course of its kind in Italy and perhaps in the world and its name was derived from the title of a famous treatise, written at the turn of the century by the German historian Wilhelm Heyd (1823-1906) , the goods were, of course, a central role and the rest one third of the Treaty of Heyd contains a great encyclopedia of goods traded with the eastern countries.
The aforementioned "Natural History" by Pliny --- published by Einaudi, in many volumes, in an accurate translation in modern Italian --- already offers an initial overview of the goods arriving in Rome from the East. At the time of Pliny the knowledge about the origin and ways of trading exotic goods were relatively scarce and imprecise. These trade routes connecting China with the Mediterranean is by land through Asia, both by sea. Pliny did not know the exact nature of which was the silk that attracted his indignation as a source of scandal. The silk, as is known, is a fiber developed by the bug to build, so to speak, within which the cocoon is transformed into a butterfly. Certainly
BC the Chinese had discovered that in order to recover intact, such as continuous filament, the long wire that the worm wrapped around its body, it was necessary to kill the bug, when immersed in hot water, or the butterfly from the cocoon in coming, he would wash and cut the cocoon silk thread in many short pieces and unusable for textiles. Then they knew that it was possible to slowly unravel the thread of the cocoon filament resulting in a subtle and polished, along with a thousand to two thousand metri.Il silk thread could then be transformed into a very light and beautiful fabrics that were transported to the West, and later China began exporting the yarn was woven in Syria and Europe, and some time after they arrived, the first in Central Asia and then in the West, eggs (called improperly "seeds") of the bug and the rearing technique the bug and production of yarn.
Just look at a map to realize the difficulties that merchants had to face to bring the silk in the Mediterranean two thousand years ago. A documentary in one episode, broadcast by RAI in the summer of 1990, from 10 am to 11 am (unfortunately inaccessible to those working hours), told in great detail the land of thirst. Who wants to buy out the two most beautiful volumes entitled "The Silk Road," published by the Italian Touring Club (I am a bit 'expensive for non-members, are cheaper for members and the price difference covers almost the share of association with TCI that 'the right also to many other publications). The documentary and the first of two volumes describing a trip from Beijing to Venice did a few years ago by a Japanese TV crew in search of remnants of traders of silk, jade and oriental goods.
The sources of these trips are represented by Western accounts of 1200-1300, from Arabic texts 800-1200's travel and, for a time much older, from the reports drawn up in China --- and fortunately come down us in a complete set of events --- the Chinese empire for two thousand years now. From the Chinese records, writings, and kept tidy by special officials, mandarins, extremely efficient and accurate, it appears that two thousand years ago came to the Chinese court strange characters who claimed to be ambassadors of distant kingdoms, Asia and even in the, kingdoms rich and willing to give tribute to the great Emperor of China and to offer valuable gifts. The gifts were often things of little value, picked up in the vast territories of Asia, but mostly unknown to the Chinese.
Faced with such a respectful homage to the great emperor could not let go empty handed to the ambassadors left laden with precious silk and other Chinese goods. They were mostly merchants claiming to be an ambassador and that, after crossing Asia, presented themselves to the lords of India, Turkey, Persia, Arabia, the Christian world, posing again as ambassadors the great emperor of China sent his gifts, in exchange for money or some other equally precious gift. A flourishing barter trade was so practiced by merchants, adventurers, swindlers, who profited transporting goods across burning deserts and snowy mountains, across plains or uninhabited lands occupied by people constantly at war and robbers.
The Chinese records say that a few more curious emperor sent military expeditions and Buddhist missionaries to Central Asia, a bit 'as they would a few centuries after the Christian kings and the popes of Rome when they sent the Franciscans and, later, the Jesuits, to convert the peoples of Asia, but also to understand how were made and what level of material life were infidels. Back at home, Chinese warriors and monks have told their travels, the people known, the products of the various land, more or less hospitality. In the second century AD, a Chinese traveler who wanted to reach the Mediterranean and the land of the "Romans" - that were said then the final buyers of silk - was stopped and sent back by the lords of Arabia, they purchased goods from China and resold in the Mediterranean with good earnings and had no intention of tolerating direct trade relations between China and Rome.
The journey from Syria to China and vice versa lasted a year or more, depending on political conditions and military of the countries visited, and the comparison of Chinese and Arabic sources and Western's 1200-1300 shows that the path has not changed much over the course of fifteen centuries. The famous "Million" by Marco Polo and the "manual" (the "mercatura practices") as that of the Florentine Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, are real travel guides with information on Asian countries met on the road, on the goods and their quality, prices, on the coins used by various peoples, and so on.
What they said these people --- Chinese, Turkish, Arabic, Latin, Persian --- terrible during long trips? How communicated with dozens of people who spoke different languages? There was anche allora una specie di lingua "universale", un po' come l'inglese oggi, parlato e capito più o meno bene in Arabia, in Persia, in Russia, fra le cime nevose dell'Himalaya, nei deserti della Siberia e dell’Asia centrale, nelle fertili pianure cinesi ? Che cosa vedevano e copiavano e raccoglievano ?
Non c'è dubbio che attraverso la via terrestre della seta sono arrivati in occidente la carta e la polvere da sparo, la tecnica di stampa a caratteri mobili e gli stupefacenti, la bussola e la giada. Insomma, nel bene e nel male, la conoscenza --- se non vogliamo usare il termine "civiltà" --- ha potuto circolare grazie ai mercanti; gli stessi occhi che sapevano riconoscere la qualità delle merci e la dabbenaggine Buyers, recognized gains and told the news in their countries of origin.
has therefore done well to UNESCO, the UN organization for education and science, to launch its own program called "The Silk Road", with the aim to remind people the great unity 'of mankind to show that the contacts between peoples, as well as businesses and the goods are the major vehicles for knowledge and peace. To this end, UNESCO organized two major expeditions along the ancient Silk Road by land and sea.
The land route started from Beijing, crossed Hami (Kamulia), in western China, and skirted the Taklamakan desert of terrible passing through the city caravan of Aksu and Kashgar, Kashi today. From here, along two different paths to be over the Himalayas, the merchants reached Samarkand and Bokhara, in today's Uzbekistan, and then, through Iran, reached the shores of the Mediterranean.
The monopoly of this trade and the conquest of cities and caravan led war toppled empires already in Roman times, the wars against the Parthians, who held Saudi and Persia, they also view as the conquest of the terminal Western strategic and valuable goods, such as those from the East. A little 'as you do today to win wars, or to defend the oil wells or mines of copper, cobalt or tungsten. Non si creda che, per l'economia di duemila anni fa, la seta, le droghe, le spezie, l'ambra, la giada avessero minore importanza del gas naturale o del cobalto.
Il vasto immenso mare
Per raggiungere dal Mediterraneo la Cina c'era, come alternativa alla via terrestre della seta, la via altrettanto terribile dell'Oceano Indiano. Mentre per la conoscenza della strada terrestre della seta ci sono a disposizioni fonti cinesi e, solo molto più tardi, abbiamo fonti arabe e poi quelle europee (le già citate opere di Marco Polo, Pegolotii, e altri), la via marittima è stata descritta già duemila anni fa in un poco noto papiro greco scritto da un mercante di cui non si conosce il nome.
Come il Pegolotti book was a guide for his colleagues in 1300 who wanted to go to China through Asia, so the 'Periplus of the Eritrean Sea ", explains exactly how does one go from Egypt to Ceylon and back. The book was probably written for other merchants of the same companies' or group, or its memory, and his writing goes back to an uncertain date that goes in a few years before Christ and a few years after Christ. At that time it was discovered the regularity of the monsoon winds --- --- who run the Indian Ocean. These winds ranging from Africa to India and Malaysia during the summer months, from August to October, and go in the opposite direction in the spring, from February to April. Once you know this
phenomenon or an Egyptian merchant greek-Egyptian, as was probably the author of the "Periplus," could begin in January from Alexandria, could cross the Red Sea to Aden, then he could sail on monsoon winds to be in India and Malaysia in late spring. You could trade the goods and return the sea, driven by monsoon autumn, starting in India in August, could return home to Egypt in December. It 'amazing that little human beings in front of the immensity of the oceans, and intercontinental geographic events could observe about them organize their lives and their trades.
The "Periplus," said a merchant who departed from Alexandria and reached the Red Sea, probabilmente attraverso canali e laghi navigabili per i piccoli battelli del tempo. Da qui cominciava la navigazione del Mar Rosso, una strada ben nota già agli Egiziani; un bassorilievo di oltre mille anni prima di Cristo, a Deir el-Bahri, mostra un grande battello della spedizione che la regine Hashepsut organizzò per andare ad acquistare spezie e droghe nella Sabea, l'attuale Yemen, e in Africa orientale. Dalla Sabea veniva la favolosa regina di Saba che visito' Salomone, portandogli - e ricevendone - doni preziosi, una delle forma di baratto a livello statale che era comune nel commercio fra oriente e occidente.
Nel bassorilievo merceologico di Deir el-Bahri appaiono ben disegnate le piante e le merci acquistate e delle stesse merci parla the "Periplus," explaining in which ports were good quality products such as ports and the goods were shoddy. Of each port are given the seabed, the reception given to foreigners by the people, in some cases are cited the kings and capitals of the interior. Arrived in Aden the merchant was in front of the great ocean, for a while 'ships sailed close to the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula and then there were probably one or two months at sea offshore to the west coast of India.
The second volume of the already 'mentioned the book "Silk Road", published by the Italian Touring Club, tells and shows the sea route to China, a path followed not only by Western merchants, but also by Chinese ships coming, already 'in the early Christian era, to the shores of East Africa where they were certainly found porcelain imported from China.
The "Periplus of the Eritrean Sea" and similar reports for sea travel between the Mediterranean and China leave unanswered many curiosities': how many were on board ocean liners (do not forget that we are talking about events that took place 1500 years before the trip Columbus, on routes more or less the same length)? what they were doing in the endless nights and hot days? what were the sanitary conditions on board? where they got water to drink and food?
What were in ports African or Indian? languages \u200b\u200bin which the goods exchanged Mediterranean with silk, amber, spices and drugs? What did they know that even more countries' east: Ceylon, Malaysia (which the Greeks knew as the "Golden Chersonese"), and seas further afield?
The Western merchants could buy silk and Chinese market 'in town' by the Chinese, Indian replenished regularly by land or by sea and in port Indians probably met skinned European, Semitic, dark-skinned peoples of Africa , slant-eyed Chinese. The rich and lively ports in India were something like London or New York or Antwerp of our day, melting pot of peoples and conoscenze, di civiltà e di avventure già venti secoli fa.
Alcuni passi della nota raccolta di novelle "Le mille e una notte" e specialmente il lungo racconto del marinaio Sindbad, parlano di eventi e paesi la cui conoscenza proviene certamente dai marinai arabi che allora ormai arrivavano ai porti cinesi; anche le fonti cinesi --- i resoconti delle "ambascerie" --- contengono, già mille anni fa, notizie accurate dei paesi incontrati dai marinai cinesi nei loro viaggi verso Occidente.
Ancora una volta si resta sbalorditi davanti al coraggio dei naviganti che affrontavano spazi sterminati, affidando le loro ricchezze a fragili barche e vele in un mare pieno di tempeste e insidie come l'Oceano Indiano. E' stato probabilmente to overcome the uncertainties of a navigation based solely on the stars that some Chinese sailor has decided to apply for practical purposes the curious observation that certain pieces of iron will always have with the tip pointing in the same direction, which coincided with that of the stars of the north. The ships have on board, all the night without stars, a certain orientation must have been a revolution similar to the invention of radio. The Arabs copied by the Chinese compass (as we call it in the West) and the Christians copied by the Arabs or Chinese.
Wars silk and alum
Meanwhile, the technology of silk that had arrived in Byzantium from the seventh century, became 'the center of cultivation of mulberry, the leaves of which feeds the silkworm, silkworm breeding and production of raw silk, silk had other productions in the Arab countries did not move now the most precious commodity, but technology had moved and China was losing importance as a source of valuable fiber.
merchants traveled the Silk Road carrying goods and other information, while changing the geopolitical balance in Asia. The Empire of the Mongols in about 1200, stretched from Russia to China, its streets safe and secure, merchants and missionaries were opened to Western, Arabic and Chinese. A great era of civility and mutual respect in Asia and is characterized in this period, which lasted about a century that Marco Polo reached China by land, returning to Venice by sea.
flow of goods was, for better or worse, continued during the expansion of Islam and the Mongols, with Venice and Genoa who did not hesitate to traffic in the name of profit, with the enemies of Christianity. In 1400
occur some revolutionary events. The rapid expansion since the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Turks, another nomadic people, in Asia and then to the Mediterranean, and the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 had finally stopped by land and sea supply goods to the ' West: spices, drugs, silk, sugar, paper, together with scientific knowledge, linguistic, technical, geographical.
With the growth and the triumph of the Turks a new imperial power came to control the entire land and sea of \u200b\u200btraffic from the Mediterranean to China. In these conditions, the Western empires, which have arisen in the meantime, they sought an alternative way by initiating 'the second revolution of goods. For example, dealing with Asia Minor, the Turks took possession of the rich mines of alum, which is essential for the industry of leather tanning and textile dyeing. Almost immediately alum deposits were discovered in northern Lazio and Tuscany, Tolfa, and the papacy would not hesitate 'to replace its monopoly to the turkish alum and organize a boycott of the hated infidels.
Pope Paul II issued in 1465, an anathema "commodity" which prohibited the Christians, under pain of excommunication, to buy alum other than Tolfa. Julius II with a bubble of 1506 confirmed the excommunication of those who tried to buy the alum hated by the Turks and, at any rate on provident important to apply a tax of export goods, he said, would finance a new great crusade. As evidence of the importance of alum, Lorenzo de 'Medici manifested his glory winning with iron and fire its mines and Volterra (1472) and for their part, the British did not hesitate to buy from the infidels in at least the precious raw material .
For the popes sin was so serious that the excommunication for buyers turkish alum was so severe as to be excluded from that fee waived, according to the order of Leo X in 1517 (the famous one that led the outraged Luther to hang in the same year , near the church of Wittenberg, the 95 theses that gave rise to the Protestant Reformation.
Moreover, the practice of mixing business and salvation of the soul was not strange. A bull of Julius III in 1553 prohibiting the import salt in the states of church, in competition with those produced in their salt of Cervia and the ban was reinforced by a penalty of excommunication by the bull of Gregory XIII in 1577, and then, with penalties in money, but without excommunication, by Clement VIII in 1597.
Let's find the spice route
However business is business and if the Turks were to have control trade between East and West, perhaps you could try to reach the East by sea. In this atmosphere of tension, war, shortages of goods, increased prices of high-quality goods, the Portuguese tried to reach the Indies and the Far East, and their goods around Africa (1497-98) and Colombia are trying ' to be financed an expedition with the goal of sailing west to reach China (1492).
In search of a new road for China the Europeans found themselves in front of an entire continent "Conquer" and submit, with old and new goods even more precious than Indian and Chinese, with boundless lands to be shared.
E 'this is the aspect of imperialist "discovery" of America, the long trail of blood and pain and oppression that accompanied and followed the "conquest," motivated not by the scientific spirit of genuine interest or spread the culture and "civilization" white and Christian, but genuine and rapacious greed of conquest of lands and goods. It 'was, in short, a large commodity transaction in a time of great crisis commodity at a time of economic expansion of Europe, where the demand for oriental goods or their surrogates not only increased, but became essential for the survival of industries and trades.
"Vamos a buscar las vias de la specierias. And the spice route brought to Columbus and his run into another continent, vast and full of goods in part similar to those in the eastern part of the whole and new. Rich, among other silver and gold that the natives knew how to extract and work and urge that 'the greed of the Spaniards at once.
Thus begins a dramatic story of exploitation of Native American land and resources and the export of strategic goods. The new states are formed, first as a colony and then as independent states, are unleashed in the struggle for the preservation of the monopoly of trade, stirred up by Western countries exercising their imperialism to control the supply of goods and local raw materials.
The mechanism is always the same: first a colonial exploitation begins, then comes the technical and financial assistance of Western companies in the states have become independent, then the independent countries that possess the required goods from Europe are trying to get through taxes on 'export some material benefit from their territory, then the number of neighboring countries are at war with each other.
Wars rubber
The first new goods "strategic" plan, intended to have strategic importance, and led to wars and massacres, was discovered already 'in early years of conquest: it was an elastic material, taken from incisions in the bark of a tree which the natives called with a name that was translated as 'rubber' "and has the botanical name of Hevea brasiliensis.
recordings came out from a liquid latex that coagulates the fire and turned in a solid spring in which, legend says, the natives were the kind of balls.
First the rubber was considered a curiosity, but when the conquerors came in the Amazon met with entire forests of Hevea and brought with them 'in Europe, a few samples of new material.
As is well known, the juice, or latex, which comes from the bark of trees Hevea and 'an emulsion, which is a very fine dispersion in water of a macromolecule, poly-isoprene, if left to' or heated, the emulsion breaks and separates the raw rubber. Some samples of raw rubber were tested in Europe at the end of 1700, in the early 1800s, the English Macintosh discover 'that the raw rubber melted in turpentine, and if a cloth was impregnated with this solution becomes impermeable to water. Thus was born the waterproof garment that is still in England is called "Macintosh."
For this and a few other applications, the raw rubber begin 'to be imported into Europe. In early 1800 the wheels of the vehicles were made of wood covered with a tire iron to which the movement of vehicles was slow and noisy. Some people think 'to replace the tire iron with a layer of raw rubber, but the rubber cover, though flexible, silent and lasted a little rubber, the heat and the cold, becoming brittle or sticky.
Dozens of people tried to chemically modify the rubber to make it more durable. Among these was one of the most stubborn Charles Goodyear (1800-1860) who, in 1839, the United States to find out 'that a mixture of rubber, sulfur and lead white, properly heated, turned into an entirely new material, resistant, elastic, stable, who was called vulcanized rubber.
The discovery was revolutionary consequences: it discover 'that the vulcanized rubber had numerous applications, for example, was finally adapted to the preparation of good covers for vehicle wheels. The increased demand for raw rubber 'and Brazil, in whose territory they were very extensive forests of rubber trees, was placed in a monopoly position and was hit by a wave of wealth. The demand for rubber pass' from 800 tonnes in 1840 to 30,000 tonnes in 1890. Rich city 'of the rubber rose on the top course of the Amazon, aull'Orinoco and Madeira.
In the rush to extract the maximum amount of rubber as soon as the rubber tappers were practicing deep cuts in plants so that 'died. With this barbarous manner of exploitation, rubber trees were killed by the millions with serious consequences for the future. But the future did not think anyone, there, in front of you ', and other (seemingly) endless forests to exploit. Already in the last century is so began the great assault on the Amazon, and growing, even in our days, even if they are different goods snatched the great tropical forest.
for the extraction of rubber and for the transportation of raw rubber were used, in conditions of slavery, the natives, while the rubber fever brought incredible wealth in the cities built on rivers near the forests, the population of natives died 'for disease, fatigue, hunger, in one of the great genocides caused by the greed of goods.
forests of rubber trees were in an area by the uncertain boundaries, including Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia. Bolivia was one of the countries that began 'to produce rubber in competition with Brazil, so he began a long war between Brazil and Bolivia, which lasted until the treaty of Petropolis, 1903. Bolivia, Brazil had to cede the vast territories of the region of Acre, but now there remained only a few rubber trees.
While countries in control of the raw materials they should slaughter one another, the industrial countries looked away: now most of the rubber could not 'do without for the manufacture of electrical cables, pipes, roofing per le ruote delle carrozze, delle biciclette e, a partire dalla fine del 1800, delle automobili. L'Inghilterra fu la prima a rompere il monopolio del Brasile. Benche' il Brasile sorvegliasse strettamente le esportazioni, per evitare che venissero portati altrove i semi delle preziose piante di Hevea, il governo inglese incarico' il coltivatore Henry Wickham di far uscire dal Brasile alcune piante per trasferirne la coltivazione nelle colonie inglesi. Dopo un viaggio avventuroso, nel 1876 le prime piantine della gomma furono messe a dimora e coltivate nel giardino botanico di Londra; da li le piante furono trasferite a Ceylon e poi in Malesia dove la produzione di gomma "inglese" comincio' nel 1907.
Gli olandesi cominciarono a coltivare gomma nelle their colonies in Java, the Belgians in their African colonies. Finally, during the First World War, was first developed a method for producing "synthetic" rubber that was then perfected, so that today the production of synthetic rubber more than double the production of natural rubber. The advantage of the destruction of forests South American 'was ephemeral, but the ecological consequences of such destruction are enduring.
The wars of saltpetre
History of nitrate --- the other major strategic goods "American" --- starts later, in the early of 1800, imperialist wars between France, England, Germany, Austria demanded increasing amounts of explosives and in that the only time available was the explosive black powder, consisting of a mixture of carbon, sulfur, potassium nitrate (which could be replaced with sodium nitrate). At the same time, biologists studying and find that the yield of plants depends on the soil of nutrients, including nitrogen has an important role: the addition of sodium nitrate to the soil to increase agricultural production in a time when is increasing world population, living standards in Europe and North America, demand for food.
the 1820s explorers discovered the presence of large deposits of sodium nitrate in the Plateau of the Atacama desert, an uninhabited area that lies between the Andes and the Pacific assigned to the partition of Bolivia in South America, south of Peru and northern Chile sodium nitrate was formed over millennia by the mineralization in hot and arid conditions of the plateau, with large deposits of guano, a material rich in nitrogen and phosphorus consists of bird droppings.
The guano can be used as fertilizer, sodium nitrate as an ingredient for gunpowder. In 1820, the exploitation of these deposits began to work of some companies' Anglo-Chilean. Bolivia, which owns the land, when he realized that the production increased, try 'to gain an advantage by applying a tax on exports (in this case similar to the tax that countries oil producers apply the oil extracted from their territory). Such imposition
offered the excuse for military intervention in Chile, apparently to protect the interests of Chilean entrepreneurs, but in reality in view of the possibility to reap more profits from the valuable nitrates. In the long war of nitrates intervened on the side of Peru against Chile and Bolivia, Chile defeated Peru and Bolivia in various battles, February 14, 1879 the Chilean Antofagasta won, the port where the Bolivian embarked most of saltpetre for Europe, then occupied Tacna and Arica, and eventually Callao and Lima. Bolivia, Chile, forced to give him all the coasts and the plateau, thus excluding ' dall'accesso al mare e dai preziosi giacimenti di salnitro.
Il Cile, avendo conquistato alla fine il monopolio quasi assoluto di questa sostanza, per ripagarsi i costi della guerra aumento' i dazi di esportazione e il prezzo del salnitro aumentò, nei decenni che videro le grandi guerre imperialiste e l'avvio dell'agricoltura moderna. Ma anche in questo caso i vantaggi derivanti al Cile dal monopolio dei nitrati durarono poco: erano ormai maturi i tempi per "estrarre" l'azoto presente in quantità quasi illimitate nell'atmosfera. I primi sistemi per la produzione di nitrati e di ammoniaca sintetica risalgono agli ultimi anni del 1800 e il monopolio cileno declinò, anche per il rapido graduale esaurimento dei giacimenti, e finì già nei primi anni del 1900.
Oro, argento, gomma, nitrati, furono soltanto alcune delle merci rese disponibili dalla conquista. Del resto le guerre merceologiche americane avevano la stessa sequenza a cui abbiamo assistito nei recenti eventi petroliferi: nel 1953 l'iraniano Mossadeq si ribella al controllo inglese del petrolio, ed è abbattuto poco dopo col ritorno dello Scia; nel 1956 inglesi e francesi intervengono a Suez sempre per il controllo del petrolio, e devono poi ritirarsi, ma contribuiscono a scatenare, l'anno dopo, la III guerra arabo-israeliana, con conseguente chiusura del canale di Suez; nel 1969 Gheddafi conquista il potere e nazionalizza il petrolio della Libia; nel 1973 i paesi petroliferi applicano nuove tasse sul oil; Khomeini seized power in 1979 and nationalized Iran's oil, but a year later he was stirring up the war lasted ten years, with the neighboring country Iraq oil. In those years, split the cartel of oil-producing countries, oil prices back to "normal" values, thanks to the influx of oil and natural gas in Russia now "decomunistizzata", for deposits of various underdeveloped countries, and resumes consumption growth, not disturbed by the 1991 war between Iraq and Kuwait, with the blessing and the weapons of the industrial countries. And also for oil is questionable, as alum, rubber and saltpetre, till when? The
rethink the relationship between goods and power raises the question of whether humans will never learn to put aside greed and oppression, instead of trying to draw from the earth and the nature of their wealth, regarded as the "common good" of all humanity considered not unlimited as goods to be used with care, thinking of future generations. To borrow a modern term, humans will ever invent a less unsustainable development of the human and ---?
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