Customer Reviews

The Perspective of the World: Civilization and Capitalism, 15Th-18th Century, Vol. 3

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Where the first two volumes of this trilogy covered living standards and the evolution of market mechanisms and capital accumulation, this one completes the picture with detailed historical examinations of the policies of the most successful cities and nations in the development of capitalism.

In fascinating detail, Braudel starts with the trade system of Venice, which allowed that tiny and resourceless city-state to dominate the world trade economy for centuries, and which culminated in the golden age of Amsterdam. THese cities, he argues persuasively, pushed commercial and financial capitalism to new heights, that is, with a combination of banking and control of trade routes, they created monopolies that benefitted themselves largely at the expense of their trading partners. They did so with a combination of readily mobilisable financial capital, clever warehousing (particularly in Amsterdam, which was like a perpetual market fair) that allowed them to control supplies and hence sell items at the right time for the higest price, domination of shipbuilding technologies as well as naval prowess (i.e. state piracy), and the control of the origin of their supplies, as in the Dutch East Indies for the spice trade. Braudel argues that it was a conscious policy. He also deliniates how Spain and then Portugal were beaten.

He then moves on to the birth of industrial capitalism in England in the late 18th C, which the loss of the American colonies - and hence ended its military obligations there while trade increased - facilitated. The great difference here, which he argues is a creative extension of the other long-existing forms of capitalism rather than its true beginning as many claim - was that investment was made in new technologies. It is similar to what the U.S. and Japan have done as major economic powers with different industrial systems: the U.S. had the largest national market, while Japan created cartels that could control prices (going after market share rather than immediate profit).

Braudel also examines basic questions of how an economy is successfully ?revolutionised.? What makes inventions take off in one society and not another? Is it one factor, or many acting together in concert? In particular, he compares the cases of the newly de-colonised United States and Latin American, in which the former was able to place itself at the center of the world economy and compete while the latter were weak and hence consigned to a subordinate role by the superpower of the day, Great Britain. He also examines the case of France, which was never able to enter the first rank of commercial and industrial nations prior to the 20C because, he argues, Paris (an administrative and not a trade capital) dominated the country and never learned to respect entrepreneurs.

These arguments are truly fascinating and presented with the perfect amount of detail: not too much as is often the case with Simon Schama, and not so little that only specialists can understand it. While it is sometimes difficult to follow his thread of logic, there is so much to learn from this book that I will consult it for the rest of my professional life. As a measure of its interest, I kept a marker in the footnotes, where I loved to look for references on virtually every page.

Nonetheless, as a 2000-page book that I loved, I am glad that it is done! It took me nearly two years to get through it all and I wished at times that it was more succinct. I found myself fliiping through it to see where illustrations would shorten the text. The conclusion, which attempts to offer persoective on the present, is also badly dated.

All in all, this is the most interesting and best economic history that I have ever read.

This is the third volume of Braudel's 'Civilization and Capitalism' The third volume is about the capitalism as world economy. This is the reason why Braudel says that capitalism is premised on market economy. But market economy is not capitalism. To grasp this point, we should pay attention to Braudel's conception of time.
Braudel sees three levels of time. Events time is the immediately observable. But the event doesn't explain itself. They have to be placed within the context of what Braudel called conjunctures, or the set of forces that prepare the ground for events. Conjectural time is medium term; the span of an economic cycle, of a certain configuration of social forces, or of a certain paradigm of scientific knowledge. At the deepest level is longue duree. It involves structures of thought (mentality) that are very slow to change: economic organization, social practices, political institutions, language, and values. These structures are all cohesive and interdependent, yet each moves at a different pace. Conjunctural changes that become consolidate and stabilized could signal a change in the longue duree. Events are conditioned and shaped by the structures of the longue duree, but events may also cumulatively challenge, undermine, and transform these structures. The explanation of history involves the interaction of all three levels of time.
Three levels of time correspond to three layers of economy. capitalism has the longue duree as its modality of time. But Braudel use the term, capitalism a bit different from Marx's definition. Braudel defines capitalism as world-economy. There have been several world-economies throughout history. Capitalism is only one of them. World-economy structures (or organizes) the space as a hierarchy of division of labor. At the top of the hierarchy lies a center. Several world-cities surround it. So world-economy is about patterning space around a central city. This is the point Braudel meets the world system theory. In fact, Wallerstein, the proponent of world system theory borrowed Braudel's idea. American world system theories centered on Wallerstein and the SUNY's Braudel Center.

Braudel was one of the greatest economic historians of all time. His scope alone was incredible. But what in the end hurt him and significantly diminished his findings was his unfamiliarity with Empire and Communications (Voyageur Classics) the landmark work that Harold Innis published a quarter century before Braudel published this book in the original French.

Braudel cited only Innis' early work on the Canadian fur trade (The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History) in his bibliography. Braudel missed Innis' later work on how the cost of information drives the creation of markets, and it shows. For example, Braudel demonstrates that there were many opportunities to create liberal capitalism but most failed and he has a hard time putting his finger on they key success factors. Innis identified these. Braudel would have made a lot from this.

Both looked at the economics of space and time, but what for Braudel ended in a series of uncertain conclusions ended for Innis in a profound theory of how the falling costs of information bestowed Ricardian comparative advantages (The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (Dover Value Editions)) that altered trade and communications patterns on a global scale.

Put the two together and you have a clear picture of paradigm shifts over the centuries and an excellent framework for understanding outcomes in today's globalized economy.

I am a huge reader of history, and this is one of my favorites of all time. While full of interesting facts and stories, it is set apart from most books by the depth of the analysis it provides. It walks the line between history and social science, hinting at a theory of civilization and capitalism based on case studies from around the world. Though professional it is not dry (though I am infamous for enjoying a good dry book). My only criticism of it is the parts where it ventures into the cyclic theory of history. This is a European (or French) historiographic technique of trying to edition long recurring cycles. Frankly I find the concept forced (even more frankly, it's bunk!) and it always annoys me when I come across it...but it is part of the historical tradition Braudel was involved in, so it must simply be tolerated as a blemish on an otherwise stunning achievement.

Braudel's 3rd volume does represent a monumental achievement of synthesis of secondary material, but this is also its weakness. It's difficult to fathom that none of the reviewers would question Braudel's missing analysis of exactly how early modern Europe gained its necessary surplus capital to activate the commercial consumer behavior Braudel deems so key to the economy's development. Further, in his vague explanation of New World slavery, Braudel dismisses the whole institution as a "historical bad habit." Perhaps, his lowest moment is his defense of European slave traders because they introduced Christianity and metal tools to Africa.

This book would be a great text for students of economy and economic history. I, however, am interested in more general history (i.e. political/social/cultural/military), and so this book was a big diappointment. It focuses on trends in wheat prices across Europe in whatever date range to the detriment of things that (in my opinion) really matter - literary works, politics, and such. Seems like it would be a good read for economic history though, so if that's what you're into, you should give it a try.

Among the reviewers, I am in a minority that does not think this book is such a high achievement. It is a mixture of facts and speculation, with theoretical terminology superimposed upon them. There is no clear criterion why some facts are included and others are excluded, and I have no idea what the lesson of this book is supposed to be. In fact, this is a self-indulgent exercise in historical erudition. I don't care what anybody else says, this is a philosophy rather than history book. The author gives a lot of facts, but he also frequently mistakes logical constucts for facts. The author tries to integrate almost everything under the Sun into this tome, and that is why he ends up with a bloated work that oppresses the reader with needless information.