Things like this make any volume of spam digestible. Thanks.
Mark Jones wrote:
> ------------ 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
--
_______________________________________________
Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
