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Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. I: The Structure of Everyday Life (Civilization & Capitalism, 15th-18th Century)

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Fernand Braudel is probably the most distinguished historian associated with the Annales School founded by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch. This Annales method attempted to revamp historical inquiry by enlarging the scope of analysis to include disparate places and through different times. Annalists were not content to research political institutions; they wanted to delve deeper into the past, to look at social and economic factors in order to reach a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of humanity. In order to be so inclusive, the Annalists looked at historical forces over great arcs of time, recognizing that many human factors change slowly and are not capable of discovery in snapshots of time. The title of this book, "The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization and Capitalism, 15th to the 18th Century" captures well these two central tenets of the Annales School. "The Structures of Everyday Life" is the first volume in a three volume series.

When Braudel refers to everyday life, he means it in the strictest sense of the word. The topics covered in this encyclopedic volume are seemingly banal because they constitute the backgrounds of our lives: corn, wheat, rice, clothing, buildings, money, and other commonplace items that we take for granted in our day to day existence. Other sections deal with discerning the population of the world in a time when census records were crude or nonexistent, the development of heavy industry and its effect on the world, diseases, and shipping. The emphasis here is on economics and how the growth (or lack of) economies increases or decreases the growth of a society and how that society or region waxed or waned in prominence.

Much of the time, the greatness of Braudel's book is in a detail, or a turn of a phrase. For example, the author concludes that the massive pyramid structures and immense jungle cities of the Mesoamerican cultures resulted not from huge markets or an intrinsic need to construct enormous edifices. Instead, he traces their societal structure to agriculture, specifically the reliance on maize as the staple crop. In the warm climates of Central America, corn does not take much work to plant or maintain. This left the indigenous populations with plenty of time on their hands to build monuments and participate in elaborate religious rituals.

"Structures of Everyday Life" appears to be a huge book, and it is, but there are so many illustrations, maps, and charts that it does not take nearly as long to get through it as one might think. I read somewhere that Braudel traveled and worked abroad in places where he could obtain copies of primary historical documents, whether they were paintings, letters, financial statements, or other relevant documents. He gathered these by the thousands over the years and used them as the basis for his wide-ranging researches. You simply must admire a historian who notices someone picking food out of a bowl with his fingers and then compares this to another painting some years later where the figures are using utensils. Most people just do not think to look at things like this.

Braudel's book is a valuable contribution to historical studies, but I don't think I will read the other two volumes in the series. The amount of information in this volume is so overwhelming that I don't think I could assimilate the vast amount of facts in the other two books. As far as "Structures of Everyday Life" go, even reading one or two chapters is enough to get the gist of what Braudel is trying to say. Reading the whole thing is like reading an encyclopedia; it is fascinating but difficult.

A full-scale examination, extremely well documented, of the inner forces which have driven the industrial revolution and the capital age, and place them in the global evolution. A must read book to people who think that everything have started in the 19th century. Two remarks: very rich (too?) you must be a attentive reader. A more global approach has to be written with the latest discovery in Asia.

The Structures of Everyday Life is a fascinating read which explores a side of history often left out of the books focusing on kings and battles. In 8 major chapters he reviews the history of commonplace items such as grains, fashion, technology, money and innovation. His central thesis is that the history of material life is composed of the history of these basic items, and that an economic view of the past cannot be established without pausing here.

Braudel is a wonderful writer. His clarity and sharp analysis is aided by the extremely clean translation assistance provided by Sian Reynolds. He makes a clear distinction between fact and interpretation, and is very successful at developing his thesis and not losing the reader in the minutae of the fascinating detail he exposes.

Although the book is long, the pacing in the chapters is nearly perfect. Each subject is explored at a length that left me wanting to read more instead of feeling over-saturated. I did not have the experience of reading an encyclopedia or reference book, but found there to be a definite flow and build in the disparate subjects.

The book is well-illustrated, and the notes are clear. The only additional thing that I could have wished for would have been a bibliography if I wished further information about a particular chapter.

In short, an entertaining and informative read recommended for a wide range of readers. I would not hesitate to give this book as a gift to the armchair historian. I will be reading the second volume shortly.

Although this book at times could get a bit too technical, it is a fascinating synthesis of information on the economic world as it was. THere is nowhere I know that you can learn so much about what life was like over the several hundred years just prior to the industrial revolution. Every page has some delicious tidbit that makes readers reflect on their lives. For the most part, subjects that are usually written about in a dull manner, such as demographic trends or aggregate food consumption statistics, are translated into readable prose. THus, the book succeeds both for laymen and specialists, a very hard balance to strike.

It greatly enriched my intellectual experience. I read it on an extended trip to China, where it gave me a huge battery of questions to ask about the fields I was observing, the organization of its cities, and even the fashion choices of the people. On my return home to Europe, it also informed so much of what I thought for weeks on end, as I reassessed my surroundings and even pondered where I fit into society. Not many economics books can do all that!

In this book, Braudel provides a vivid and revealing account of the way pre-industrial Europeans lived their daily lives. It isn't a happy account. By our modern, western standards our European ancestors lived miserable, degrading, horrid, filthy, dull, and dangerous lives.

This is the best book I know to dispel romantic notions about how wonderful and better pre-industrial life was compared with modern life.

Braudel's writing is direct, the subject-matter is rich and engaging, and the thesis is absolutely correct.

What a fabulous work of scholarship!

This scholarly historian is best remembered for his overpowering works on the market economy and civiliation in genera. Perhaps his best writing was contained in his meditation on his beloved France. Braudel is at his best explicating to the educated masses. Notice the operative word "educated". These books are by no means highbrow but they do demand the full attention of the reader.

Capitalism is the only modern economic system that is not directed from an autocratic bureaucracy. Fascism, socialism, communism, tribalism and to a large extent, social welfare states continue to suppress their full potential and for that reason the economic collosus that is America continues its dominance. Ironically, despite European and intellectual jabs at the U.S. for its roughness and backward culture, it is not primarily in material goods that we excel but in intellectual accomplishments - research, development, scientific, the arts. One need only witness the annual parade of Americans each year receiving Nobels.

Braudel explains that capitalism - and this is important - rose from the individual to the group, not top down. He traces an incredible path of changing habits, personal practices, slowly emerging markets and how the whole became greater than the sum of its parts. What is unique about this economic revolution is that it was NOT directed according to the dictates of academic theory or the musings of an economic prophet. It rose because it fit with the emerging modern civilization that was beginning in Europe (and would soon conquer the world).

The writing is masterly (wonderful translation); one is pulled along as if by a large wave. The effect is overwhelming when one considers the vestigal beginnings and the pinnacle of success that is the Western world...this is a must for serious thinkers.

This is the first volume of trilogy, ¡®Civilization and Capitalism.¡¯ As widely known, Fernand Braudel is the leading figure in the second generation of Annal school. The trilogy is counted as the classic with his earlier work, ¡®The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II¡¯. You could have rough idea of it, from the phrase in the preface to the second edition of ¡®The Mediterranean¡¯: ¡®It was with much hesitation that I undertook a new edition of ¡®The Mediterranean¡¯. Some of my friends advised me to change nothing, not a word, not a comma, arguing that a work that had become a classic should not be altered.¡¯ Not many texts come into mind with such a glorious honor. The trilogy enjoys the same distinctive position.
The trilogy is about how capitalism has worked since its inception in the 15th C. now a day, the market economy carries on the resource allocation: almost all resources in material or human form are traded as goods or services in the market. But when delving into pre-industrialized society, the clear picture of economy gets murky. Only a part of resources were circulated through the market. Still barter trade and subsistence production had its say. Braudel says he had no fitting words for this economy beneath the market. so he reluctantly choose not that clever words like, infra-economy or material civilization. The first volume is about the economy beneath the market. This economy might be all about human activity embodied in material form such as foods, clothe, housing, money. So the material civilization is our day-to-day life. So the title of the first volume is ¡®the structures of everyday life: the possible and the impossible¡¯. The materiality of day-to-day life or material civilization conditions the possible and the impossible of the age. Those conditions are like these: population, the labor productivity which is determined by technology, available land to be utilized to produce goods. This infra-economy or our day-to-day is also where all human activity take place. So it must be the place the order of society is realized. The order is the continued form of the day-to-day social activity: routine. Not only material conditions but also routines determine the possible and the impossible of the age. The former could be called as economy and the latter as society in the words of our days, but not precisely. The economy has three layers, Braudel argues. To understand Braudel¡¯s argument, we should know his conception of time. For such a conception, see vol.3, 'The Perspective of the world'.

This, the first volume of Braudel's massive work on the construction of capitalism in the 15th to 18th century, sets the stage for all that is to come. It is an exhaustive survey of the social and economics conditions in Europe and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the world at the beginning of the 15th century.

The amount of primary research that went into this is mind boggling. Everything you ever wanted to know about how much livestock the average farmer in Batvia had to what were the trends in fashion in the courts of Europe is covered here in great detail.

Braudel is all over the place in these books, chasing every detail and argument to their end, and it can be difficult to grasp the important threads running through the work. In the first volume this isn't as much of an issue as it will become in volumes two and three. Braudel is still all over the place, but since he is really only setting the stage, it isn't as important to try and pick up his overall theory. Volume two is where he really lays out his argument for the separation of capitalism and the market and why certain places in Europe became economic power houses and others didn't.

Braudel is at his best when he's discussing Europe, and is out of his depth when he deals with the rest of the world. There is a trove of good information in this first volume however, and I would recommend it to those interested in economic history who have the patience to wade through mounds of details for Braudel's brilliant insights.

Braudel's books are more interesting and enjoyable by far than the dull political, military, and social histories. These tell it like it was for real people living at the time, and they are full of amazing insights.

Epic in both vision and execution, Braudel's "Stuctures of Civiliisation" turns your accustomed way of thinking about history up side down. In writing his history of the world from the 14th to 18th centuries, Braudel eschews the personalities and events that fill the pages of most history. Instead, he focuses on the day-to-day lifes of normal (non-elite) in an attempt to compare and contrast the various civilisations, sub-civilisations and cultures of the world.

Although the chapter titles sound mundane (daily bread, food and drink, money, etc.) this book is not boring. Fully illustrated with maps, charts and paintings, Braudel creates a classic of history. Crucially, he also integrates teaching from fields like geography and economics. The over all effect of the work is breathtaking: it's no wonder that a quick googling of the author's name turns up university based institutes of inter-disciplinary study named after him on three (count them three!) continents.

On the negative side, well, the book is about twenty years old, so much of the research he uses has been updated. I don't think you can deny that the man is a little euro and franco centric (not that I have a problem with that, I don't.)

Over all, this is a path breaking work, and should be on the book shelve for all fans of world history.