>Mike Hollinshead:
>
>Capitalist ambition seems to be a transmuted form of ascent, where
>spiritual ascent is replaced by symbolic ascent or ascent in other forms
>e.g. progress.
>Capitalism seems to flourish during periods when there is an emphasis
>within the culture on people as individuals, deriving from religious
>doctrine, as in the 11th through 13th centuries as well as the 16th through
>17th. See Jean Gimpel The Medieval Machine and Morris Berman Coming to Our
>Senses. Exceptional periods of inventiveness and innovation derive from
>this concern with self and the interiority (introspection) which goes with
>it and the psychological need to heal the gap between self and other with
>everything from alcohol to self absorbing practices like art and invention
>and social achievement. In particular there is an efflorescence of ascent
>practices (body practices such as rhythmic breathing which lead to trance
>states , designed to heal the gap between the heightened sense of self and
>other - nature or God - see Berman on this)
>
>In the first period, which had all the same characteristics of the second
>in terms of intense investment in machines (water powered in mining,
>textiles tanning and milling), factories (Cistercian abbeys of the period
>were highly integrated and sphisticated factories) supported by a more
>advanced agriculture (horse collar, metal shod deep plough and triple
>rotation and new crops like beans which fixed nitrogen in the soil) things
>were brought to a halt by a combination of Church fiat (the Pope shut up
>Aquinas and slaughtered the Cathar heretics of Languedoc, the principle
>source of interiority practice), exhaustion of the ecological niche
>expoitable with current technology (all the streams were dammed, the
>accessible forests cut down for charcoal and building construction) and an
>adverse shift in climate which caused crop disasters and triggered the
>plague.
I agree that the your first period, which began in the 12th Century and
continued on into the 13th, was a time of great progress - not only of
technological progress, as described by Gimpel, but also one of social
experimentation and religious toleration. It was the era of theological
scholars such as Peter Abelard and Aquinas, mystics such as Francis of
Assisi and Meister Eckhart, and the founding of mendicant orders such as the
Franciscans and Dominicans (both of which went rather bad later) and of lay
orders such as the Beghards and Beguines. We usually think of Protestantism
beginning with the 16th Century Reformation, and overlook that fact that the
first denomination which could be called "Protestant" was established by
Peter Waldo in approximately 1200, a denomination which is said to still
exist. The 12th and 13th Centuries were also a bloody time, as exemplified
by the Crusades and the slaughter of the Albigensians. It was, as you
suggest, an era in which the official church felt itself to be under siege,
causing the Pope, in 1277, to slam down the lid by condemning "219 execrable
errors" which had crept into European thinking mainly because of
translations into the Latin of Greek and Arabic texts.
I'm not sure that I agree you interpretation of what brought the era to a
close. Certainly, the actions taken by the official church were important,
and undoubtedly many an ecological niche was used up by the water and
charcoal based technology of the time. However, I would argue that some
important natural and psychological factors were also at work. It would
seem that the weather turned nasty in the 13th Century, resulting in
devastation by famine between 1315 and 1317. The bad weather continued well
beyond this time and ultimately led to the "medieval economic depression"
which continued to have an effect for the next 150 years. On top of this
came the Black Death (1347-50), which, together with wars and famine, may
have reduced the population of Europe by one-third or even, according to
some estimates, by one-half.
All of this suggests that for a century or more the world became a terrible
place, battered, it would seem, by satanic forces people could not
understand. This was not the kind of climate which would have promoted the
speculation, experimentation and learning that had been the hallmark of the
12th Century. On the contrary, it promoted withdrawal, piety, orthodoxy and
bizarre religious behaviors such as self-flagellation.
I would agree that the 12th and 13th Centuries had many of the
characteristics of the industrial revolution, but I would venture that the
difference between the factories of the 12th Century and those of the 18th
is a quantum leap rather than a progression. If Europe had not shut down in
the 14th Century, it is possible that the industrial revolution of the kind
experienced in the 18th to 20th Centuries might have come earlier, but this
is a matter of pure speculation. What you could do with the horse and the
waterwheel is minuscule compared to what could be done with steam power,
electricity and the methods of mass production. While cities grew and trade
flourished during late medieval times, the essential character of the
landscape was nevertheless rural. The second industrial revolution (as you
call it) totally transformed the landscape to an urban one.
>In the second industrial revolution in the West (there had been another
>similar episode in China, see Joseph Needham's history of technology in
>China) the interiority was provided by the Reformation (Luther and Calvin).
>The Pope couldn't put a stop to this episode of heresy, unlike the previous
>one, because the printing press spread it so wide and so fast (see Keith
>Thomas, An Incomplete History of the World). So far we seem to be
>repeating the medieval model - pressing against the limits of our
>ecological niche, climate change in the offing (cooling rather than
>warming, if Milankovich is anything to go by, and since his theory matches
>all previous cooling episodes I find it rather convincing) though no Pope
>to put a stop to the orgy of interiority and belief in ascent (sublimated
>as progress).
Nothing that ever happens is "typical" and I don't believe that history
repeats itself as some great cyclical process. However, there are
similarities between the world of today and the world of the 14th Century
(Barbara Tuchman has of course already said this). Rightly or wrongly, it
would seem that we are seeing ourselves as being at the end of a long
transformative wave. And rightly or wrongly, we seem to be arriving at the
conclusion that the identity of progress-maker that we have used for the
past two or three centuries no longer fits our situation. But we do not
even know what our situation really is, and we cannot be certain whether we
should assume a new identity or what that should be. Like the world of the
14th Century, our world, once bright and clear, has become dark and ridden
with devils. No Pope may need to shut us down. We may do that ourselves.
Thank you for the excerpt from your book. The industrial revolution came
much later to eastern Europe than in England. My father went to work in a
textile mill in Poland when he was eight years old (that would have been
about 1910). When I was a child, in the 1930s (in Canada), children were
still beaten quite regularly. The beaters professed not to be doing it out
of anger, but to "teach them a lesson".
>I will be treating the question of whether or not Gregg's model,
>interpreted as one based on sharing the fruits of industrialism fairly in
>the community and concern for others and owner employees replacing child
>labour is in fact a model for the future in a later section of the book,
>not yet written, or whether there are inherent tendencies in industrial
>capitalism which make it unreformable, particularly the ability of
>individuals and corporations to accumulate great wealth and power. (If
>there is interest I will post it, when completed). Even in the Medieval
>Industrial Revolution, the abbey capitalists used their great power to
>compel local residents to use their grist and fulling mills rather than
>hand grind and full their own corn and cloth. If an institution set up on
>Christian principles of charity and love of fellow man could resort to this
>practice, what chance in a secular age of achieving better behaviour ?
Please post. You may find comments from people on the list helpful.
>One last comment, re: the steam engine. If anyone invented it, in the
>sense of being first, it was Hero of Alexandria. In modern times Thomas
>Savery and Thomas Newcomen antedated Watt, who improved Newcomen's engine
>by adding a governor and separate condenser - his mentor of the time, etc.
Thanks. I do remember Newcomen, though not Hero of Alexandria. I recall
reading that it was necessary to invent the steam engine because horses
could not get rid of water fast enough as coal mines deepened.
Best regards,
Ed Weick
