1) Demand. Most economists treat it almost exclusively from the 
individual standpoint. The world historic development of demand, 
its first universal development, depends firstly on the products of the 
various countries of the world becoming known to each other. If in 
the further course of development demand creates intercourse, 
initially it is intercourse which creates demand. Demand is the 
material content of intercourse, the totality of the objects of 
exchange, of the commodities which come into exchange and trade. 
Wars, voyages of discovery, etc., all historical events whereby nations 
are brought into contact, are all so many conditions of expanding 
demand, of the formation of the world market. The growth of 
demand consists directly in the first place in the fact that already 
existing products of various countries <in contact, in A) are being 
exchanged. Demand gradually loses its local etc. character and 
becomes cosmopolitan. The production of all countries thus enters 
more and more into the consumption of the individuals of all 
regions) of a country. 

The Crusades, for example, by making known the products of the 
Orient, greatly increased the demand for such products in Western 
Europe. (Cf. J., Notebook III, p. 106.) Places where these products 
stream together for exchange constitute the world market towns; 
the world market appeared in this form in particular before the 
discovery of America. In the 14th and 15th centuries Constan- 
tinople, the Italian cities, Bruges and London. 

Also still at the same time like fairs, namely the caravan-like 
streaming together of merchants. In the 19th century, for example, 
fairs are of quite subordinate significance. (Cf. J., Notebook ITI, 
p. 106.) 


Demand 575 


How much less these market places depend on their own industry 
than the latter and its prosperity depend simply on their being the 
general stores, is proved by the decay of the trade of the Italian cities 
after 1498, from the moment when Lisbon became the chief market 
for Indian fabrics and spices. Antwerp, too, still had the same limited 
character in the 16th century as Bruges etc. earlier. 

Trade supremacy. The first dominant trading nation are the Dutch 
(from end of the 16th to the middle of the 17th century). Until then 
there were only first trading towns. The Spaniards and Portuguese 
form the transition from dominant trading towns to dominant 
trading nations. Carrying trade and fisheries nevertheless still form a 
decisive constituent of Dutch supremacy. 

The <agricultural> European North-East in the relation of an 
agricultural country to the European West. In the same measure in 
which here industry and shipbuilding increase, the demand for the 
raw products of the North-East increases and with it their 
production. 

Holland as the first trading and industrial nation, from the end of 
the 16th to the middle of the 17th century, is also the first nation for 
whom its domestic agriculture is insufficient and where the 
population is growing in far too great a proportion to domestic 
agriculture. Therefore carries on the first large-scale trade in grain. 
Amsterdam becomes the chief granary of Western Europe. (Cf. J., 
Notebook III, p. 107).