Re: Ali Kadri's commentary I would recommend S. K. Sanderson's
Social Transformations, A General Theory of Historical
Development (1995). This book collects data which shows that
"urbanization has been a striking feature of agrarian social growth
over a period of nearly 4,000 years...There is another major
urbanization spurt between 430BC and AD 100, during which the
number of cities of 30,000 or more inhabitants increased from 51 to
at least 75, and also during which the total population of these
cities expanded from 2,877,000 to 5,181,000, an 80% increase." It
also states that "expanding world commercialization was the most
important form of social growth that occurred during approximately
four and a half millenia of the agrarian epoch...it was to a large
degree an autonomous process in its own right, driven by the
desires of merchants for greater wealth and economic power..."
"The level of world commercialization had finally built up in the
centuries after AD 1000 to a critical density sufficient to trigger a
massive capitalist takeoff..." "Capitalism was a force that could not
be denied. Its rise was inevitable at some point or other."
