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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. <[log in to unmask]>
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.
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