------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Project 2000: Significant Works in Twentieth-Century Economic History
Fernand Braudel, _Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century_, in 3
volumes, New York: Harper and Row, 1981-84, original editions in French,
1979.
Review Essay by Alan Heston, Departments of Economics and South Asia
Regional Studies, University of Pennsylvania. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Fernand Braudel's _Civilization and Capitalism_
Fernand Braudel is associated with the influential Annales School (La
nouvelle histoire) that advocated a major break from the dominant narrative
paradigm of the early twentieth century embracing an approach to history
integrating the social sciences with a problem-focused history. Braudel is
uniformly praised as one of the most influential historians of the
twentieth century, but a hard act to follow. Braudel immersed himself into
masses of materials and emerged with plausible broad-brush stories to tell,
teaching others how to replicate this approach is problematic. While the
Annales School has made only a small dent in the economic history
curriculum in the United States, it has had much more influence on social
history worldwide and on economic history in France, Europe and the rest of
the world. Rondo Cameron (1989, p. 406) in speaking of _Civilization and
Capitalism_ says, "it contains a wealth of factual information, mostly
correct, but the brilliance of its author's rather idiosyncratic
interpretation has been exaggerated by the popular press." Whether one buys
the whole quotation, one can certainly agree with Cameron that Braudel
builds very idiosyncratic interpretations based upon a wealth of
information, often very imaginatively used.
This essay will not pretend to cover the three volumes of _Civilization and
Capitalism_ but rather touch on some broad themes that have had influence
on our understanding of world economic history. These themes include
Braudel's emphasis on the economic condition of every-man, on a global
approach to economic and social history, and on the process of capitalism
and its geographical spread. This essay will begin with Braudel's uses of
capitalism, and then take up themes from the volumes of _Civilization and
Capitalism_.
Before dealing with capitalism, some background on Braudel's career is
needed. Many consider _The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the
Age of Philip II_ (1966 English translation) published in France in 1949 as
his defining work. Braudel began this research in 1923 at age twenty-one
and it was envisaged as his doctoral dissertation and was to concentrate on
the policies of Philip II in the form of a conventional diplomatic history.
Braudel taught secondary school in Algeria from 1923 to 1932 and then lived
in Brazil where he taught at the University of Sao Paulo from 1935 to 1937.
During this period he kept up with developments in Paris including
establishment of Annales in 1929 by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre. The long
gestation period of this impressive work undoubtedly had much to do with
how different was the final product from the original design. Braudel says
that he began to see the sense of writing a history of the Mediterranean
world in discussions with Febvre circa 1927 but that he did not find models
upon which to build. And then in 1934 he began to find quantitative data on
ship arrivals and departures, cargoes, prices and other economic data that
he felt would be the bricks and mortar of an economic and social history of
the Mediterranean. By 1939 he had an outline of what he wished to say, but
he was captured by the Germans in 1940 and was imprisoned for the next five
years where amazingly he wrote the first draft of _The Mediterranean_
totally from memory. _The Mediterranean_ focuses on the history of one
world region in a wide-ranging intellectual breakthrough, involving the
geographic setting, transport and communications, urban and hinterland
developments, trade, empires and more political themes.
In 1950 his mentor, Lucien Febvre, asked Braudel, who was then teaching at
the College of Paris, to contribute a volume to a series on world history.
This series was to feature a volume on "Western Thought and Belief,
1400-1800," that Febvre would prepare while Braudel would focus on the
development of capitalism over the same period. Febvre died before he could
complete his volume. Braudel succeeded Febvre in 1956 at the Ecole Pratique
des Hautes Etudes where he headed the Sixth Section, history. Braudel took
responsibility for preparation of what became a three-volume series and was
sole editor of the _Annales_ during its most influential period. Braudel
published the first volume of _Civilization and Capitalism_ in 1967, and it
was translated as _Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800_ in 1973. Volume
II, _Les Jeux de l"Echange_ and volume III, _Le Temps du Monde_, were
published in France in 1979; volume II was translated and published as _The
Wheels of Commerce_ in 1982 and volume III as _The Perspective of the
World_ in 1984, a year before his death. (When the three-volume set was
prepared, Volume I, _Les Structures du Quotidien: Le Possible et
L'Impossible_, was a substantially rewritten version of the 1967 edition
and was published in France in 1979. The English translation, _The
Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible_, was published in
1981. That translation followed the form of the original translation,
_Capitalism and Material Life, 1400 - 1800_, incorporating new materials
and changes. In the text, Volume I will be referred to as _Capitalism and
Material Life_.)
A number of centers that focus on aspects of his work were begun during
Braudel's lifetime. Immanuel Wallerstein was instrumental in establishing
the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton University (SUNY) in 1976. Their
journal, _Review_, begun in 1977, explores a variety of issues relating to
the evolution of capitalism, and the study of world systems, about which
more below. The Fernand Braudel Institute in Sao Paulo is a think tank that
has a strong social dimension to its studies. The economic history emerging
from these centers is likely to emphasize the impact of capitalism on the
social structures of society and the dependencies involved in the evolution
of a worldwide economy over the past five hundred years.
1. Capitalism
Braudel emphasizes that capitalism is something different from the market
economy, a distinction that should be kept in mind in understanding
_Civilization and Capitalism_. In lectures in 1976, he said, "...despite
what is usually said, capitalism does not overlay the entire economy and
all of working society: it never encompasses both of them within one
perfect system all its own. The triptych I have described--material life,
the market economy, and the capitalist economy--is still an amazingly valid
explanation, even though capitalism today has expanded in scope."
(_-Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism_, p. 112) Whether
or not one agrees with Braudel, this is his explanation of the order of the
three volumes moving from the lower level of the daily material life of
everyman to the market economy to the highest level of capitalism. It is a
structure of thinking that is rather alien to trends in economic research
that seek to explain the behavior of households, markets and business firms
using similar economic models, a point discussed further below.
What is capitalism? For Wallerstein capitalism is a system built upon the
international division of labor in which the core of the resulting world
system prospers, if not at the expense of the others, at least relative to
others. A familiar enough theme from the recent Seattle World Trade
Organization protests. While Wallerstein took inspiration from Braudel,
this is not what Braudel means by capitalism. Braudel viewed the capitalist
economy as in the above paragraph, namely as something above everyday
material life and the operation of markets. Capitalism takes advantage of
high profit opportunities generated by linking markets into a world
economy. Braudel distinguishes between _the_ world economy and _a_ world
economy, a distinction that is not felicitous, but as one searches for
alternatives, such as "regional economy" for a "world economy," it seems
better to stay with his language.
For Braudel a world economy features a core capitalist city whose
commercial and financial spread may be well beyond national political
boundaries. However, for Braudel there may be several world economies
operating at the same time, and for each there will be a dominant core
city. Capitalism may utilize an international or larger spatial division of
labor but the hegemony of any particular core city for a world economy will
wax and wane over time. Further, Braudel believes there have been
capitalist worlds from the Italian city states or earlier, whereas
Wallerstein's analysis relies more on a Marxian progression from feudalism
to capitalism. Further, Wallerstein treats the political empires like Rome,
the Ottomans or the Mughals as non-capitalist systems while Braudel would
be inclined to see in them some capitalistic features. He says, "...I am
personally inclined to think that even under the constraints of an
oppressive empire with little concern for the particular interests of its
different possessions, a world-economy could, even if rudely handled and
closely watched, still survive and organize itself, extending significantly
beyond the imperial frontiers; the Romans traded in the Red Sea and the
Indian Ocean, the Armenian merchants of Julfa, the suburb of Isfahan,
spread over almost the entire world; the Indian Banyans went as far as
Moscow; Chinese merchants frequented all the ports of the East Indies;
Muscovy established its ascendancy over the mighty periphery of Siberia in
record time" (_Perspective of the World_, p. 55). Braudel's position would
clearly find support in Mancur Olson's work.
One further point on capitalism concerns its origins. Wallerstein seeks the
origins of the capitalist world system in the feudal breakdown of the
agrarian society of Northern Europe in the sixteenth century. Braudel is
less concerned with questions of origins, but would certainly place a
European world economy much earlier, perhaps in fourteenth-century Italy.
Braudel is equally uncomfortable with Max Weber and any attempt to tie
capitalism to the Protestant reformation (see Stanley Engerman's essay in
this project). Again, his first line of attack would be to point to all of
the developments in the Italian city states that long pre-dated Luther and
Calvin.
One point deserves further mention, namely the emphasis that Braudel gives
to the ebb and flow of world economies over time and space. There is an
element of Joseph Schumpeter's creative destruction in Braudel's view of
the process but with a spatial spin. Schumpeter saw new innovations
involving new entrepreneurs replacing older businesses along with their
technologies and labor force. For Braudel the slowly shifting boundaries of
world economies have two important implications. First, some areas never
become involved with a world economy and their economic level remains very
low. And second, some areas that were in a world economy, and were perhaps
a core city, lose their place as boundaries of world economies change over
time.
2. Capitalism and Material Life
Braudel and the Annales School represented a reaction to traditional
narrative history with its emphasis on major actors, usually political or
economic elites. More problem-oriented social and economic history has been
mainstream for such a long period that present-day readers are unlikely to
see anything revolutionary in Braudel's work. However, in Volume I the
chapter headings at that time were themselves a statement, beginning at the
lowest level of economic and social organization.
Braudel begins Volume I of _Civilization and Capitalism_ with a discussion
of world population during the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, including
an evaluation of the reliability of the numbers and a description of the
balance of peoples around the world. Beginning his study with counting all
of humanity, Braudel starts off with a global view, involving the rich and
the poor, and all regions of the world. He takes on social classifications,
like civilized and barbaric, providing an overview of global social
divisions. Public health receives major emphasis throughout but certainly
the importance of the education of mothers on the health of children does
not find its way into Braudel's treatment. It is a man's world and although
his wife, Paule, was an important contributor to his research, one has to
look hard in Braudel for that half of humanity.
Braudel follows population in _Capitalism and Material Life_ with chapters
on the major categories of consumer expenditure, bread and cereals, other
foods and drink, and clothing and housing. These chapters, enriched with
appropriate illustrations, include the diets of the poor, food fashions of
the rich, the lack of furnishings of the homes of the poor and middle
classes, and the increasingly elaborate interiors of the more affluent. The
treatment of fashion and necessity in clothing is wide ranging. While much
of this is based on the research of others, it is an extraordinary
synthesis of materials from many sources and it is good reading.
The focus on everyday life in _Capitalism and Material Life_ represents a
concern shaping many areas of study after 1950, a movement from the study
of elites to those of more ordinary people. This entered archaeology, as
excavations moved from the palaces and temples to remains of foods, bones,
and the dwellings of the poor, or lack thereof. Braudel's emphasis thus fit
very well into much Marxian history and with a view that capitalism grew at
the expense of the lower classes. The following quotation referring to
Naples is in his chapter Towns and Cities, and is from one of several
sketches of cities of the era. It gives the tone of Braudel's treatment of
income inequality.
"Both sordid and beautiful, abjectly poor and very rich, certainly
gay and lively, Naples counted 400,000, probably 500,000 inhabitants on the
eve of the French Revolution. It was the fourth town in Europe, coming
equal with Madrid after London, Paris and Istanbul. A major breakthrough
after 1695 extended it in the direction of Borgo de Chiaja, facing the
second bay of Naples (the first being Marinella.) Only the rich benefited,
as authorization to build outside the walls, granted in 1717, almost
exclusively concerned them. As for the poor, their district stretched
out from the vast Largo del Castello, where burlesque quarrels over the
free distribution of victuals took place, to the Mercato, their fief,
facing the Paludi plain that began outside the ramparts. They were so
crowded that their life encroached and overflowed on to the streets. �
These ragged poor numbered at the lowest estimate 100,000 people at the end
of the century" (Volume I, p. 532).
Here in the midst of a description of impoverishment in Naples we also have
imbedded an estimate of the homeless as 20 to 25 percent of society, a
typical quantitative illustration that Braudel uses to great effect. He
also tells us that the rich have the political power to live in more
desirable locations, nothing new there. It is not surprising that Marxist
historians would find much to like in Braudel, but there is very little
ideological in his writings.
In fact, Braudel is much more interested in putting the everyday life of
all peoples in perspective by comparisons of 1400 to 1800 and to
contemporary levels of living. Braudel admired Simon Kuznets' work on
national income but does not appear familiar with concepts like urban
versus rural versus national growth rates, and his career predates the
development of poverty weighted growth rates. But one senses from his
discussions of material life that Braudel would have found these
comfortable constructs with which to work. He also suggests that he would
have liked to use cliometrics in the analysis of his period but that there
were not adequate data. However, Braudel would have probably wanted to
build up social and national accounts rather than deal with behavioral
models.
3. The Wheels of Commerce
It is curious that Volume I devotes chapters to Money and Towns and Cities,
which seem much more the subjects of Volume II, _The Wheels of Commerce_.
However, Braudel looks at money as an indicator of the degree of
monetization of societies and the complexity of their economies. And as we
have noted, the increase in towns and cities during the 1400-1800 period
meant an increasing number of poor making their material life in urban
areas. On the other hand, this curious treatment may only reflect the
evolution of _Civilization and Capitalism_, in which _Capitalism and
Material Life_ was fairly self contained and appeared thirteen years
earlier than the remaining volumes.
_Wheels of Commerce_ moves from markets to capitalism and society. Although
Braudel does not use the language, he is concerned with the development of
institutions, ideology and social norms. He offers a justification for
employing the term capitalism, noting that it was not a term used by Marx,
only his followers. Capitalism for Braudel involves not only the use of
capital but also its position at the apex of material life. As discussed,
it is this aspect of Braudel that has had a large influence on those
associating the expansion of capitalism and world systems as necessarily
intertwined.
The first chapter of _Wheels of Commerce_ is called the Instruments of
Exchange, by which Braudel means the types of markets in which exchange
took place; it is followed by a chapter on Markets and the Economy. The two
may only be separate because together they are the length of an average
book. Braudel deals with local commodity markets serving surrounding
villages and market towns serving their hinterland, as well as wholesale
and financial markets. Markets for financial instruments including bourses
and exchanges, as well as credit institutions like banks, are also
discussed. Bourses, after the Hotel des Bourses in Bruges where early
meetings of merchants took place, also dealt in wholesale commodity trade,
especially for articles like pepper, cotton, tea and the like. For Europe
the 1400-1800 period sees the development of exchanges in Amsterdam and
London that while subject to bubbles, also provided a basis for financial
intermediation for even small investors.
In treating the development of markets Braudel gives emphasis to the
geography of markets, and his treatment is often imaginative, though not
terribly systematic. He analyzes the frequency and density of fairs and
markets in England and France. He gives more cursory treatments of other
parts of the world, though both India and China receive their fair due. G.
William Skinner's treatment of Chinese market towns and cities is discussed
in terms of the hexagons of Walter Chrystaller and August Losch. Here
Braudel argues that the size of the hexagon embracing different size market
towns varies inversely with the density of population (II, pp.118-19). He
then applies this to puzzles in French history about the varying boundaries
of pays, which he argues may well have been due to changing population
densities over time--a rather nice cross-section, time-series application.
Braudel asks questions about markets that are fundamental but often not
treated systematically. When do wholesale markets emerge? What leads to the
establishment of year-round shops versus occasional markets and fairs? Why
did the number of shops proliferate during the 1400-1800 period? When are
peddlers really agents of wholesalers and when are they petty traders?
Braudel concludes that the expansion of markets was stronger in England
than in France, though he does not probe further into why this may have
been so. And he argues in terms of his view of hierarchy, that the
development of capitalism was interdependent with the expansion of
exchange. He also notes that France and particularly China had
administrations that constrained the expansion in markets and hence the
amount of capitalistic development.
How do markets relate to each other? One way they are integrated is through
the activities of the same firm, most typically in this period, an extended
family firm. Braudel examines these connections mainly in Europe. The
extended family firm was a common practice of merchants from India, China
and the Middle East, some of which are discussed by Braudel. While he
recognizes the importance of business families in extending the boundaries
of any world economy, this also poses a puzzle in some of the diasporas
that Philip Curtin has described so well.
For example, in Asia, which in 1400 contained more than half of world
population, income and wealth, there was an established pattern of trade
prior to European incursions involving intersections of an East Asian world
economy that was linked to an Indian world economy stretching from Malacca
in the Malaysian Peninsula to Calicut and Cambay in Western India. This in
turn joined with what Braudel terms an Islamic world economy extending from
the East Coast of Africa through the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Turkey and
Persia. However, when Vasco da Gama arrived in Calicut in 1498, it was not
the core city of an Indian world economy, nor is it obvious that there was
such a core city. Vijayanagar was a major South Indian empire at this time
but its ability to expand northward was constrained by the presence of the
five hostile Bahami kingdoms. The Mughal empire only emerges after 1526.
Calicut is itself ruled by the Zamorin, a Hindu ruler whose state was
physically quite small, and who did not have territorial ambitions. As
Braudel notes, the proportion of Arabs, Indian Muslims, Hindus, and Chinese
among the actual merchant groups and shippers varied over the centuries.
Diasporas like Malacca and Calicut were home or branch office to Arabs,
Armenians, Chinese, Hindus, Bohras, Khojas and similar Muslim groups, Jews,
Malays and others. The activities of these traders seem to fit Braudel's
model of high profit seekers linking smaller markets. However, the claim
that these Asian world economies of the fifteenth and earlier centuries
involved core cities seems strained. Even after the Mughal, Ming, Ottoman
and Persian empires were established, it is problematic.
The remaining chapters of _Wheels of Commerce_ deal with the development of
capitalism and the role of the state in markets and in establishing
monopolies including a lengthy treatment of the activities of the merchant
trading monopolies in Africa, Asia and the Americas. Braudel's treatment of
society is a wide-ranging social and political analysis including
discussions of hierarchies, revolts and the state and social order. Braudel
does not use the terminology, "social norms," but in a section
"Civilizations do not always put up a fight" (II, p. 555) he certainly
explores their importance. He says, "When Europe came to life again in the
eleventh century, the market economy and monetary sophistication were
'scandalous' novelties. Civilization, standing for ancient tradition, was
by definition hostile to innovation. So it said no to the market, no to
profit making, no to capital. At best it was suspicious and reticent. Then
as the years passed, the demands and pressures of everyday life became more
urgent. European civilization was caught in a permanent conflict that was
pulling it apart. So with a bad grace, it allowed change to force the
gates. And the experience was not peculiar to the West."
4. The Perspective of the World
In his very ambitious last volume, Braudel deals with long cycles, the
emergence of various world economies, historical problems in measuring GDP
per person, the colonial economies and the industrial revolution. It is
certainly successful in one of its aims, to treat the economic history of
the 1400-1800 period as a story of the world, not simply Western Europe.
There are rich discussions of Africa, the Americas, and Asia balancing well
the perspective of the colonizer and the colonized. In his essay on Max
Weber, Engerman (p. 5) places Weber and Braudel, along with David Landes,
Joel Mokyr, Douglass North, Nathan Rosenberg and others as scholars dealing
with the "perceived uniqueness of the Western European economy." Let me
close this essay by arguing that while Braudel has a lot to say about
developments in Western Europe, he did not see a simple explanation of the
causes of growth in the West, nor did he think this was the most
interesting question to explore.
The uniqueness of Western European experience has certainly been taken as
the phenomenon to be explained by many economic historians. Writers like
Weber not only looked at European evidence in the Protestant Reformation
but also offered explanations of why the religions of other societies, such
as India, were less conducive to growth. Braudel is not at home with Weber,
nor does he seem to give great importance to institutions like private
property, contract, and the like. In fact, he does not seem to accept even
the premise that there is something unique to be explained about the
development of capitalism in Europe.
It might be argued that this is because of Braudel's idiosyncratic view of
capitalism. Let me again quote Braudel;
"Throughout this book, I have argued that capitalism has been
potentially visible since the dawn of history, and that it has developed
and perpetuated itself down the ages. (III, p. 620) ... It would however be
a mistake to imagine capitalism as something that developed in a series of
stages or leaps--from mercantile capitalism to industrial capitalism to
finance capitalism, with some kind of regular progression from one phase to
the next, with 'true' capitalism appearing only at the late stage when it
took over production, and the only permissible term for the early period
being mercantile capitalism or even 'pre-capitalism'. In fact as we have
seen, the great 'merchants' of the past never specialized: they went in
indiscriminately, simultaneously or successively, for trade, banking,
finance, speculation on the Stock Exchange, 'industrial' production,
whether under the putting-out system or more rarely in manufactories. The
whole panoply of forms of capitalism--commercial, industrial, banking--was
already employed in thirteenth century Florence, in seventeenth-century
Amsterdam, in London before the eighteenth century"(III, p. 621).
Here Braudel strongly sees in his period and earlier the same business
forms that exist today and to which others attribute the uniqueness of
Western European experience.
However, the following quotation perhaps illustrates where Braudel imparts
his own special view of capitalism. He says,
"The worst error of all is to suppose that capitalism is simply an
'economic system,' whereas in fact it lives off the social order, standing
almost on a footing with the state, whether as adversary or accomplice: it
is and always has been a massive force, filling the horizon. Capitalism
also benefits from all the support that culture provides for the solidity
of the social edifice, for culture--though unequally distributed and shot
through with contradictory currents--does in the end contribute the best of
itself to propping up the existing order. And lastly capitalism can count
on the dominant classes who, when they defend it, are defending themselves.
Of the various social hierarchies--the hierarchies of wealth, of
state power or of culture, that oppose yet support each other--which is the
most important? The answer as we have already seen, is that it may depend
on the time, the place and who is speaking" (III, p. 623).
Braudel has a number of elements of Schumpeter in his view of world
economic history, in particular long cycles and creative destruction. One
of his important insights shared by many others who stress uneven or
unbalanced growth is that world economies have changing borders and that
there are often areas not included in any world economy. Indian software
programmers are writing for Oracle in Bangalore while other areas of India
(and many other world areas) are as yet unaffected by the information
technology revolution. Most large countries have special development
programs for backward areas, of which many have had flourishing histories,
such as natural resource-rich Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh in India, the
seat of the Mauryan Empire and the birthplace of the Buddha.
However, Braudel departs sharply from Schumpeter in how he views the
capitalist entrepreneur. For Braudel the monopolistic character of
capitalism is the key element of privilege and the link between the state
and society. He says,
"The rise of capitalism in the nineteenth century has been
described, even by Marx, even by Lenin, as eminently, indeed healthily
competitive. Were such observers influenced by illusions, inherited
assumptions, ancient errors of judgement? In the eighteenth century,
compared to the unearned privileges of a 'leisured' aristocracy, the
privileges of merchants may perhaps have looked like a fair reward for
labour; in the nineteenth century, after the age of the big companies and
their state monopolies (the Indies companies for instance) the mere freedom
of trading may have seemed the equivalent of competition. And industrial
production (which was however only one sector of capitalism) was still
quite frequently handled by small firms which did indeed compete on the
market and continue to do so today. Hence the classic image of the
entrepreneur serving the public interest, which persisted throughout the
nineteenth century, while the virtues of laissez-faire and free trade were
everywhere celebrated. The extraordinary thing is that such images should
still be with us today in the language spoken by politicians and
journalists, in works of popularization and in the teaching of economics,
when doubt long ago entered the minds of the specialists..."(III, pp.
628-9).
These closing quotations from Braudel restate his view that everyday
material life and operation of markets proceed at one level while
capitalism carries on at a higher level above the others. Further Braudel
sees capitalism as closely related to the political elites of the world
economy in which they are operating. While Braudel's view of the world
economy is shared by many Marxist historians it is also consistent with the
writers like John Kenneth Galbraith and Mancur Olsen, with whom I sense
more affinity.
5. Conclusion
One cannot write an economic history of the world of the last five hundred
years and not at least list Fernand Braudel in your bibliography. But how
well does Braudel stand up today? My answer would be very well indeed at
several levels. Landes (1998, xvii) introduces his recent book with an
account of the inability of contemporary medicine in 1836 to save Nathan
Rothschild, the richest person in the world at the time, from death by
blood poisoning. Braudel put medical advances and public health practices
up front in _Capitalism and Material Life_ as critical to the improvements
in economic well being of the world in the early modern period, clearly a
theme shared with Landes and many others. He likewise saw the importance of
historical demography to our understanding of development of the global
economy.
Related to these demographic themes is Braudel's concern with how health
and material well being were distributed. He saw the great inequalities
generated in world economies, and thought it important to describe them. He
documents inequalities in both the distribution of private and public goods
and services and sees systems of privilege as part of past and present
economies. And while he would have liked a more equitable world, this is
not a major theme in _Capitalism and Civilization_. A major theme that has
contemporary resonance is the uneven development of different geographic
regions of the world, and the lack of convergence of world economies, and
more particularly the persistence of regions that have never been part of a
world economy, or were part of a world economy in the past, but not at
present.
Braudel's distinction between markets and capitalism is probably least
likely to make it into mainstream economic history, yet in many ways it
also has a very contemporary ring as we move towards becoming one world
economy. It is not hard to imagine Braudel finding analogies in this period
for phenomena like "not in my backyard" or the internet. In today's world
of mega-mergers that need support by one or more nation states, of
Airbus-Boeing battles and of Microsoft anti-trust actions, the Braudel
perspective of the world fits surprisingly well. The importance of being
first when there are declining costs, learning by doing, or other scale
factors that provide barriers to entry into markets are not foreign to the
world that Braudel describes. Often, as in the case of the trading
companies, monopoly was based upon government support as in the cable
industry today, and much of the capitalism that Braudel describes is
related to retaining government support or preventing government
interference.
References:
Braudel, Fernand. 1966 (English translation, 1972-73). _The Mediterranean
and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II_. New York: Harper and
Row.
Braudel, Fernand. 1977. _Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and
Capitalism_. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Cameron, Rondo. 1991. _Economic History of the World_. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Curtin, Philip. 1984. _Cross-Cultural Trade in World History_. London:
Cambridge University Press.
Galbraith, John Kenneth. 1967. _The New Industrial State_. Boston:
Houghton-Mifflin.
Landes, David S. 1998. _The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So
Rich and Some So Poor_. New York: W.W. Norton.
Olson, Mancur. 2000. _Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and
Capitalist Dictatorships_. New York: Basic Books.
Schumpeter, Joseph. 1942. _Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy_ . New York:
Harper and Brothers.
Copyright (c) 2000 by EH.NET. All rights reserved. For permissions, please
contact the EH.NET Administrator ([EMAIL PROTECTED]; Telephone:
513-529-2850; Fax: 513-529-3308)
-------------- FOOTER TO EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
All EH.Net reviews are archived at http://www.eh.net/BookReview
_______________________________________________
Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
