A major reinterpretation of the transformation of English commerce in the century after 1550.
Merchants and Revolution examines the activities of London’s merchant community during the early Stuart period. Proposing a new understanding of long-term commercial change, Robert Brenner explains the factors behind the opening of long-distance commerce to the south and east, describing how the great City merchants wielded power to exploit emerging business opportunities, and he profiles the new colonial traders, who became the chief architects of the Commonwealth’s dynamic commercial policy.
| ||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
Brenner has made more discoveries of importance about the period than any of his contemporaries. (London Review of Books )
Constantly provocative, a giant of a book. (Times Literary Supplement )
If Brenner’s work suggests new beginnings, its primary focus is on some of the most venerable debates in British historiography. (Reviews in American History )
Constantly provocative, a giant of a book. (Times Literary Supplement )
If Brenner’s work suggests new beginnings, its primary focus is on some of the most venerable debates in British historiography. (Reviews in American History )
About the Author
Robert Brenner is Director of the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History at UCLA. He is the author of The Boom and the Bubble, Merchants and Revolution, The Economics of Global Turbulence and co-editor of Rebel Rank and File.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The doyen of Marxist historiography strikes again,
By
This review is from: Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London's Overseas Traders, 1550-1653 (Paperback)
This book is both exhaustive and, at times, exhausting. Brenner's thesis, encapulated in the lengthy postscript to the book, is that socio-political forces remain at the forefront of explanations of the English Civil War, despite the overthrowing of the older consensus that the Revolution represented the comprehensive destruction of feudal remnants by an increasingly confident, largely urban bourgegoisie. In this Brenner is at odds with revisionist historians like Conrad Russell and Mark Kishlansky, both of whom stress the exogenous character of factors like religion and war. Brenner painfully amasses evidence for the decisive role of what he calls the London colonial, inter-loping merchants, whose radical religious and commercial agendas were finally fully adopted in the establishment of the Commonwealth in opposition to the older London merchants elites ensconced first in the Merchant Adventurers and then in the East Indies Company. These latter had their power and prestige directly from the monarchy and thus represented a form of socio-political power that was anti-capitalist even if still bourgeois and based on mercantile trade. The battle between the Royalists and the Parliamentary forces represented divergent understandings of the place of the sovereign in a country whose principal subjects were increasingly coming under the sway of capitalist values, and whose ideas of absolute ownership of property, religion, political consensus and the proper use of foreign policy were repeatedly traduced by a monarchy who insisted on out-moded concepts of sovereignty.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Furthermore...,
By dj_swinger (Arlington, VA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London's Overseas Traders, 1550-1653 (Paperback)
I would add to C. Skala's excellent review more on the "exhaustive and exhausting" front. If you are looking for an overview of English mercantile and economic expansion you would be hard pressed to find a better source than this book. I would recommend it to anyone looking to get a grasp on English merchants and trade in the period for Brenner's exhaustive coverage of every major English commercial market. The organization of the work leaves much to be desired, however, in that its mostly chronological structure leaves your bouncing back and forth visiting the same merchants and markets again and again at slightly later points in time. Altogether it is a difficult but important book and, in my opinion, the best work on the subject.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
