Commerce Before Capitalism in Europe, 1300-1600

Commerce Before Capitalism in Europe, 1300-1600

Author: Martha C. Howell

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-04-12

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 0521760461

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Later generations have sometimes found such actions perplexing, often dismissing them as evidence that business people of the late medieval and early modern worlds did not fully understand market rules.


Early Modern Europe, 1450-1789

Early Modern Europe, 1450-1789

Author: Merry E. Wiesner

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-02-21

Total Pages: 565

ISBN-13: 1107031060

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Thoroughly updated best-selling textbook with new learning features. This acclaimed textbook has unmatched breadth of coverage and a global perspective.


The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture

The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture

Author: Ivan Gaskell

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-04-07

Total Pages: 679

ISBN-13: 0197500129

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Most historians rely principally on written sources. Yet there are other traces of the past available to historians: the material things that people have chosen, made, and used. This book examines how material culture can enhance historians' understanding of the past, both worldwide and across time. The successful use of material culture in history depends on treating material things of many kinds not as illustrations, but as primary evidence. Each kind of material thing-and there are many-requires the application of interpretive skills appropriate to it. These skills overlap with those acquired by scholars in disciplines that may abut history but are often relatively unfamiliar to historians, including anthropology, archaeology, and art history. Creative historians can adapt and apply the same skills they honed while studying more traditional text-based documents even as they borrow methods from these fields. They can think through familiar historical problems in new ways. They can also deploy material culture to discover the pasts of constituencies who have left few or no traces in written records. The authors of this volume contribute case studies arranged thematically in six sections that respectively address the relationship of history and material culture to cognition, technology, the symbolic, social distinction, and memory. They range across time and space, from Paleolithic to Punk.


Family Firms and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe

Family Firms and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe

Author: Thomas Max Safley

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-11-21

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 042964793X

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This fascinating study follows the fortunes of the Höchstetter family, merchant-manufacturers and financiers of Augsburg, Germany, in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries, and sheds light on the economic and social history of failure and resilience in early modern Europe. Carefully tracing the chronology of the family’s rise, fall and transformation, it moves from the micro- to the macro-level, making comparisons with other mercantile families of the time to draw conclusions and suggest insights into such issues as social mobility, capitalist organization, business techniques, market practices and economic institutions. The result is a microhistory that offers macro-conclusions about the lived experience of early capitalism and capitalistic practices. This book will be valuable reading for advanced students and researchers of economic, financial and business history, legal history and early modern European history.


The Cambridge World History

The Cambridge World History

Author: Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-04-09

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 0521192463

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The most comprehensive account yet of the human past from prehistory to the present.


The Cambridge World History: Volume 6, The Construction of a Global World, 1400-1800 CE, Part 2, Patterns of Change

The Cambridge World History: Volume 6, The Construction of a Global World, 1400-1800 CE, Part 2, Patterns of Change

Author: Jerry H. Bentley

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-04-09

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 1316297829

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The era from 1400 to 1800 saw intense biological, commercial, and cultural exchanges, and the creation of global connections on an unprecedented scale. Divided into two books, Volume 6 of the Cambridge World History series considers these critical transformations. The first book examines the material and political foundations of the era, including global considerations of the environment, disease, technology, and cities, along with regional studies of empires in the eastern and western hemispheres, crossroads areas such as the Indian Ocean, Central Asia, and the Caribbean, and sites of competition and conflict, including Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean. The second book focuses on patterns of change, examining the expansion of Christianity and Islam, migrations, warfare, and other topics on a global scale, and offering insightful detailed analyses of the Columbian exchange, slavery, silver, trade, entrepreneurs, Asian religions, legal encounters, plantation economies, early industrialism, and the writing of history.


The Later Middle Ages

The Later Middle Ages

Author: Isabella Lazzarini

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-04-29

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 0192529331

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Of all the sub-periods in which European medieval history has been divided over time, the later middle ages is possibly the one on which the burden of past and current grand narratives weighs the most. Its chronological and geopolitical boundaries are shaped by a heavy narrative of decline or transition, and consequently this period is often interpreted through the lenses of previous or following developments, becoming in turn the tail-end of the 'feudal', 'communal', 'imperial versus papal' era or the announcement of modernity. The Later Middle Ages addresses the urgent need to revise and rewrite the story of this period, forging new critical and technical vocabularies not derived from the study of other periods. By adopting a conscious approach towards temporal and spatial variety, and by breaking the traditional and unitary narrative of decline and transition into one of many changes and continuities, it charts the principal developments of late medieval Europe while opening up to different political cultures and societies, throwing new light on older concepts, and revealing analogies and differences with other geopolitical contexts. Including maps, illustrations, a detailed chronology and a rich range of reading suggestions, The Later Middle Ages aims at providing a first introduction to a very complex, dynamic, and fascinating period for Europe and beyond.


Unleashing Usury

Unleashing Usury

Author: Richard Westra

Publisher: SCB Distributors

Published: 2016-04-03

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 0997287004

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Usury laid medieval society to waste. Western civilization was saved by the rise of capitalism, which tamed the activities of money lending, and endowed them with socially redeeming value, tethering finance to expanding production of material goods and increased social wealth. Now, as the 21st century begins, bloating tides of money with no possibility of ever being converted into real capital wash over the world. Finance again has turned to its dark side, using money to make money with no socially redeeming purpose. Such is the endgame of economies managed by capitalists without capitalism. As Marx foresaw, capitalist society, like all others, is destined to be outpaced by history as the conditions of its existence decompose and become a drag on the human future. Either we will succeed in bringing about new politico-economic structures—or civilization will collapse into barbarism, just as usury broke it down in the past.


Freedom and Capitalism in Early Modern Europe

Freedom and Capitalism in Early Modern Europe

Author: Philipp Robinson Rössner

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-10-12

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 3030533093

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This book hinges upon ideas and discourses variously known under labels such as “Mercantilism” and “Cameralism”. Often viewed as antithesis of capitalism, inclusive institutions and good economy in the “West”, this book re-assembles them and builds them into a coherent origin story of modern capitalism. It explores the field of intellectual and conceptual history, especially the history of Renaissance and Mercantilism in a longer history of capitalism. Rather than hindrances, the author argues that Mercantilist and Cameralist political economies presented essential stepping stones of modern capitalism, in Britain and beyond. This book will be of interest to academics and students in general economic history, the history of capitalism, economic development and the history of economic thought.


Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve and the Commercial Practices of Late Fourteenth-Century London

Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve and the Commercial Practices of Late Fourteenth-Century London

Author: Craig E. Bertolet

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1317168097

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As residents of fourteenth-century London, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, and Thomas Hoccleve each day encountered aspects of commerce such as buying, selling, and worrying about being cheated. Many of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales address how pervasive the market had become in personal relationships. Gower's writings include praises of the concept of trade and worries that widespread fraud has harmed it. Hoccleve's poetry examines the difficulty of living in London on a slender salary while at the same time being subject to all the temptations a rich market can provide. Each writer finds that principal tensions in London focused on commerce - how it worked, who controlled it, how it was organized, and who was excluded from it. Reading literary texts through the lens of archival documents and the sociological theories of Pierre Bourdieu, this book demonstrates how the practices of buying and selling in medieval London shaped the writings of Chaucer, Gower, and Hoccleve. Craig Bertolet constructs a framework that reads specific Canterbury tales and pilgrims associated with trade alongside Gower's Mirour de L'Omme and Confessio Amantis, and Hoccleve's Male Regle and Regiment of Princes. Together, these texts demonstrate how the inherent instability commerce produces also produces narratives about that commerce.