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Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century #2
The Wheels of Commerce: Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Volume 2
Very clean, no markings, no mildew, from non-smoker's home.
670 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
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About the author
Fernand Braudel
150 books545 followersFernand Paul Achille Braudel was a French historian and a leader of the Annales School. His scholarship focused on three main projects: The Mediterranean (1923–49, then 1949–66), Civilization and Capitalism (1955–79), and the unfinished Identity of France (1970–85). His reputation stems in part from his writings, but even more from his success in making the Annales School the most important engine of historical research in France and much of the world after 1950. As the dominant leader of the Annales School of historiography in the 1950s and 1960s, he exerted enormous influence on historical writing in France and other countries.
Braudel has been considered one of the greatest of the modern historians who have emphasized the role of large-scale socioeconomic factors in the making and writing of history. He can also be considered as one of the precursors of world-systems theory.
Braudel has been considered one of the greatest of the modern historians who have emphasized the role of large-scale socioeconomic factors in the making and writing of history. He can also be considered as one of the precursors of world-systems theory.
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May 30, 2025May 2025
Coming to this book again, I think I would write quite a different review to the one that I originally Did, because I fairly recently read volume one The structures of everyday life . Now I feel the shape of the book's argument developing in me - and it's not exactly slimming.
The main point I will mention is Braudel's stress on the difference between a market economy and capitalism, the two are not identical. China in this period is his example of a society (civilisation, I think in his terms) with a market economy but without capitalism.
In Braudel's view, in order to have capitalism there had to be; a market economy, a hierarchical social system with the possibility of moving from one social rank to another, a system of inheritance allowing for the accumulation of wealth across generations, and finally the possibility of long distance trade (which is why capitalism did not develop in Japan in this period).
It's a feature of the book that Braudel does not define precisely what hevmrans by civilisation or capitalism, though at times he seems to come perilously close.
An interesting corollary of Braudel's conditions for the emergence of capitalism is that it's a product of late medieval Europe's integration into a broader economic system. It has no roots in the classical Mediterranean world of Greece and Rome, it arises through interaction with the Islamic world which itself is integrated into the South-Asian economic system.
Down at the micro level though I was also impressed by the modernity for instance of our wine culture, which depends on bottling and a reliable way of sealing the bottles. For most of human history good wine was new wine.
Old review
I bought Braudel's trilogy Civilisation and Capitalism years ago when I was a student through a book club (a sure way to win friends among the postmen). The cost of it would have been a small fortune to me at the time, but all the same it was something that I only raided rather than read for writing essays. Which misses the point, because although you can dip in and out of the text the discussion develops slowly and rolls out like the tide. All three volumes are richly illustrated. The graphs are my particular delight seeing as they were drawn up by hand in pre-computer days .
The experience of reading this volume is like standing on an elevation and looking out over a landscape while Braudel points out to you the ebb and flow of capitalism across it. There are Capitalist style modes of works like the extreme division of labour of the migrant labourers who would flood the countryside south of Rome every few years to sow a crop and then harvest lands which where otherwise turned over to pasture. But that mode of production isn't consistent across time or space it was highly specific to the needs of how one very particular locality was managed.
One way of thinking about this is colonialism. Patterns of work and finance colonised regions or sections of society. The agricultural produce of Poland or Portugal become exploited hinterlands, creating wealth for middlemen but serving the hunger and thirst of Amsterdam or London (a geographical division of labour familiar to us today). Nor was the spread of specialisation of production creating a modern looking, integrated economy accompanied by a less restricted social structure. Quite the opposite. North of Venice and east of the Elbe landowners imposed serfdom, clamping down on individual liberties, obliging people to work to produce food stuffs, or to work in mines for export rather than for self-sufficiency (again still familiar, our greater liberty obtained at the cost of some other persons unfreedom -truly there is no such thing as a free lunch).
This idea of much of Europe being colonised by the Mediterranean world from the Middle Ages onwards is explored by Robert Bartlett's book The Making of Europe. Braudel, taking a longer view sees the transmission of bills of exchange, customs, forward selling and forms of commercial association from the Islamic world to Italy and then pulsing out into western and northern Europe. From that elevation you see the fine lines of a world economy functioning at a high level with merchants connected from Antwerp to the far east dealing in small amounts of high value products like spices, silks and porcelain while much of the domestic market economy was much more simple. Dealing in bulk products on the other hand mostly took place over shorter distances .
A good part of the study of history is unlearning the casual assumptions that we make about the world. It is easy to think that because in an atlas each country is clearly defined with a black border and blocked out in a single colour that each one is just as uniform and consistent within those borders as that chance colour and border imply. The richness of details in this book that builds up from the ground corrects that.
Braudel builds up a picture of a world of extreme depreciation. The wooden cog teeth in mills wear down fast. If a ship lasts for as long as twenty years it is doing well. It is also a world that was barely governed. As a schoolboy I wrote confidently about the annual incomes of the Kings of Spain little realising that my knowledge of the subject was more precise than theirs! Successive rulers pushed the administration of southern Italy to produce budget forecasts which eventually they succeeded in doing - the only problem was that it took them about six years to complete the work because of the irregularities of the cash flows (one problem was that each tax ran on its own financial year). The pre-modern world was not uniform but a mess of local particularities.
The difficulty of this book is looking out over this richly detailed landscape it is easy too lose sight of the argument, particular as this is something developing over three long volumes. There are key points that define the argument, perhaps ideally this is the kind of book that should be read with a dozen bookmarks or a notepad .
The discussion engages with economists and historians. It does occur to me that Braudel would have had a better understanding of the 18th century economy than Adam Smith, but in a dog in the forest way the perspectives developed by the economists still have to be engaged with. I'm also left with a desire to read Henri Pirenne. One book leads to the next. In this case though on to the final volume in the series The Perspective of the World. Certainly one of the great books of our times.
Coming to this book again, I think I would write quite a different review to the one that I originally Did, because I fairly recently read volume one The structures of everyday life . Now I feel the shape of the book's argument developing in me - and it's not exactly slimming.
The main point I will mention is Braudel's stress on the difference between a market economy and capitalism, the two are not identical. China in this period is his example of a society (civilisation, I think in his terms) with a market economy but without capitalism.
In Braudel's view, in order to have capitalism there had to be; a market economy, a hierarchical social system with the possibility of moving from one social rank to another, a system of inheritance allowing for the accumulation of wealth across generations, and finally the possibility of long distance trade (which is why capitalism did not develop in Japan in this period).
It's a feature of the book that Braudel does not define precisely what hevmrans by civilisation or capitalism, though at times he seems to come perilously close.
An interesting corollary of Braudel's conditions for the emergence of capitalism is that it's a product of late medieval Europe's integration into a broader economic system. It has no roots in the classical Mediterranean world of Greece and Rome, it arises through interaction with the Islamic world which itself is integrated into the South-Asian economic system.
Down at the micro level though I was also impressed by the modernity for instance of our wine culture, which depends on bottling and a reliable way of sealing the bottles. For most of human history good wine was new wine.
Old review
I bought Braudel's trilogy Civilisation and Capitalism years ago when I was a student through a book club (a sure way to win friends among the postmen). The cost of it would have been a small fortune to me at the time, but all the same it was something that I only raided rather than read for writing essays. Which misses the point, because although you can dip in and out of the text the discussion develops slowly and rolls out like the tide. All three volumes are richly illustrated. The graphs are my particular delight seeing as they were drawn up by hand in pre-computer days .
The experience of reading this volume is like standing on an elevation and looking out over a landscape while Braudel points out to you the ebb and flow of capitalism across it. There are Capitalist style modes of works like the extreme division of labour of the migrant labourers who would flood the countryside south of Rome every few years to sow a crop and then harvest lands which where otherwise turned over to pasture. But that mode of production isn't consistent across time or space it was highly specific to the needs of how one very particular locality was managed.
One way of thinking about this is colonialism. Patterns of work and finance colonised regions or sections of society. The agricultural produce of Poland or Portugal become exploited hinterlands, creating wealth for middlemen but serving the hunger and thirst of Amsterdam or London (a geographical division of labour familiar to us today). Nor was the spread of specialisation of production creating a modern looking, integrated economy accompanied by a less restricted social structure. Quite the opposite. North of Venice and east of the Elbe landowners imposed serfdom, clamping down on individual liberties, obliging people to work to produce food stuffs, or to work in mines for export rather than for self-sufficiency (again still familiar, our greater liberty obtained at the cost of some other persons unfreedom -truly there is no such thing as a free lunch).
This idea of much of Europe being colonised by the Mediterranean world from the Middle Ages onwards is explored by Robert Bartlett's book The Making of Europe. Braudel, taking a longer view sees the transmission of bills of exchange, customs, forward selling and forms of commercial association from the Islamic world to Italy and then pulsing out into western and northern Europe. From that elevation you see the fine lines of a world economy functioning at a high level with merchants connected from Antwerp to the far east dealing in small amounts of high value products like spices, silks and porcelain while much of the domestic market economy was much more simple. Dealing in bulk products on the other hand mostly took place over shorter distances .
A good part of the study of history is unlearning the casual assumptions that we make about the world. It is easy to think that because in an atlas each country is clearly defined with a black border and blocked out in a single colour that each one is just as uniform and consistent within those borders as that chance colour and border imply. The richness of details in this book that builds up from the ground corrects that.
Braudel builds up a picture of a world of extreme depreciation. The wooden cog teeth in mills wear down fast. If a ship lasts for as long as twenty years it is doing well. It is also a world that was barely governed. As a schoolboy I wrote confidently about the annual incomes of the Kings of Spain little realising that my knowledge of the subject was more precise than theirs! Successive rulers pushed the administration of southern Italy to produce budget forecasts which eventually they succeeded in doing - the only problem was that it took them about six years to complete the work because of the irregularities of the cash flows (one problem was that each tax ran on its own financial year). The pre-modern world was not uniform but a mess of local particularities.
The difficulty of this book is looking out over this richly detailed landscape it is easy too lose sight of the argument, particular as this is something developing over three long volumes. There are key points that define the argument, perhaps ideally this is the kind of book that should be read with a dozen bookmarks or a notepad .
The discussion engages with economists and historians. It does occur to me that Braudel would have had a better understanding of the 18th century economy than Adam Smith, but in a dog in the forest way the perspectives developed by the economists still have to be engaged with. I'm also left with a desire to read Henri Pirenne. One book leads to the next. In this case though on to the final volume in the series The Perspective of the World. Certainly one of the great books of our times.
August 18, 2007
After a somewhat tedious first volume, where Braudel sets the stage for life and commerce in the period under discussion, volume two of Civilization and Capitalism really gets the ball rolling. Or as much as anything ever gets rolling in a Braudel book.
This is fascinating stuff, but it is not easy going. The language is straight forward, but Braudel wanders around his subject, giving us mountains of specifics and following various side currents to their ends. The basic point of the volume is to outline, first the difference between the market and capitalism, and then to trace the creation of capitalism in the markets centers of Europe between the 15th and 18th centuries.
Unlike many historian of this period, Braudel is more concerned with the world of finance than the world of production, which I find fascinating and very useful for the thinking I am doing currently around the role of finance in the global economy of today. If you care to know how the financiers of Amsterdam dealt with getting a ship in the ocean and bound for America or India, this is the place to look.
While not being an economic determinist, economics is at the center of this book. Unlike many other economic historians, Braudel does take the time to deal with how culture (there a section on fashion in the first volume!) religion and other factors play into the shaping of an economic and social system. This makes for a deeply convincing argument when he demolishes Weber’s idea of the protestant work ethic, but is less informed or convincing (and sometimes borderline racist) when he is dealing with non-western cultures.
I appreciate that Braudel didn’t assume that by “civilization and capitalism” one can only mean Western Europe, but his sections on the rest of the world I found lacking. They did not have the erudition he exhibits when taking about Western Europe.
I found the book fascinating, and am looking forward now to starting the final volume, but I think Braudel could have done with some editing. This book is not going to lay out point by point the creation of capitalism for you. You’ll need to discover the steps through the examples Braudel gives. It’s a riveting if you’re an econ and history nerd) but complicated and meandering work, which could have used a co-author (or a better team of research assistants) to handle the non western areas he covers and a editor to tease out the string of the creation of capitalism that subtly floats through this work.
This is fascinating stuff, but it is not easy going. The language is straight forward, but Braudel wanders around his subject, giving us mountains of specifics and following various side currents to their ends. The basic point of the volume is to outline, first the difference between the market and capitalism, and then to trace the creation of capitalism in the markets centers of Europe between the 15th and 18th centuries.
Unlike many historian of this period, Braudel is more concerned with the world of finance than the world of production, which I find fascinating and very useful for the thinking I am doing currently around the role of finance in the global economy of today. If you care to know how the financiers of Amsterdam dealt with getting a ship in the ocean and bound for America or India, this is the place to look.
While not being an economic determinist, economics is at the center of this book. Unlike many other economic historians, Braudel does take the time to deal with how culture (there a section on fashion in the first volume!) religion and other factors play into the shaping of an economic and social system. This makes for a deeply convincing argument when he demolishes Weber’s idea of the protestant work ethic, but is less informed or convincing (and sometimes borderline racist) when he is dealing with non-western cultures.
I appreciate that Braudel didn’t assume that by “civilization and capitalism” one can only mean Western Europe, but his sections on the rest of the world I found lacking. They did not have the erudition he exhibits when taking about Western Europe.
I found the book fascinating, and am looking forward now to starting the final volume, but I think Braudel could have done with some editing. This book is not going to lay out point by point the creation of capitalism for you. You’ll need to discover the steps through the examples Braudel gives. It’s a riveting if you’re an econ and history nerd) but complicated and meandering work, which could have used a co-author (or a better team of research assistants) to handle the non western areas he covers and a editor to tease out the string of the creation of capitalism that subtly floats through this work.
February 29, 2012
vol. II, pp. 237-239 are KEY to defining Braudel's project of defining what "capitalism" is and means, and what it means to search for the roots or typology of "capitalism" in the pre-industrial period (c. 1800). Indeed, astonishingly, though the word appears in the 1840s and in Proudhon, Marx never uses it; the word only gains currency after the Werner Sombert's use of it in 1902. Obviously, Braudel does not believe that a full-blown capitalism can be found in ancien régime societies; it only exists then on a narrow platform, surrounded by a vast sea of non-capitalist activity. Indeed, "capitalism was what it was (only) in relation to a non-capitalism of immense proportions", and not "in relation to new capitalist forms which were (only) to emerge in later times".
I don't deny that this book is difficult to read - not all of it is thrilling. But it is a book of such profound seriousness and depth that the interested reader will tackle it...
I don't deny that this book is difficult to read - not all of it is thrilling. But it is a book of such profound seriousness and depth that the interested reader will tackle it...
October 11, 2007
I find this volume the most interesting, but I think this series as a whole could be very helpful to keep around as a reference. Pretty much any detail of life during this long time period is described and put in the context of the changes in socio-economic inequalities that constituted the emergence in capitalism. Though in some ways Eurocentric, this is still more of a history of the whole world than just a history of Europe.
January 13, 2025
England: “In about 1500, England was a ‘backward country’, without a powerful navy, with a predominately rural population and only two sources of wealth: huge wool production and a strong cloth industry.” It clearly soon stopped being a backward country because in the 17th century, Henry Berkeley, Lord Lieutenant of Gloucestershire, went to London taking a whopping “150 servants with him.”
Portugal: “From 1580 to 1640, the crowns of Portugal and Castile were united under the same monarch.” “As the eighteenth century opened, Portugal (a huge Maritime power) had practically abandoned the Indian Ocean.” Its merchant aristocracy then reaped the benefit of the Portuguese in Brazil.
Business on Frozen Rivers: “Every winter in Moscow when the Moskva froze, shops, booths and stalls were set up on the ice. It was the time of the year when goods could be easily transported over the snow by sled, and when meat and slaughtered animals were deep-frozen by the open air.” In London in the seventeenth century, festivities were routinely held on the Thames when it was frozen.
Transport: In France and England then, the rivers had ferries or little boats hired as water-taxis for hire instead of bumpy carriages. “In about 1600, grain transported overland did not travel more than 10 miles, and 5 miles was more usual; cattle could be driven up to about 11 miles; sheep 40 to 70 miles; wool and woolen cloth would travel between 20 and 40 miles.” “For over a short distance a cart cost no more than a boat.” “Coal from Newcastle cost at least five times as much in London as it did at the pit head.” “Every kind of transport relied on the inns as halts.”
Trade: Trade was known for great risks - and great profits. Markets became more specialized: “Wymondham (England) dealt exclusively in wooden spoons, taps and handles.” There was a clear hierarchy to merchants (and snobbishness among the higher ranked): they were never “all on the same footing”. Let’s look at trading a kilo of pepper – it got you “one or two grammes of silver at the point of production in the Indies, would fetch 10 to 14 grammes in Alexandria, 14 to 18 in Venice, and 20 to 30 in the consumer countries of Europe.”
Textiles, Dies and Minerals: “Azure, a dyestuff of mineral origin based on cobalt (always mixed, especially when of poor quality, with sparkling sand) was used in the manufacture of china and porcelain to give blue glazes; it was also used to bleach canvas.” “Until the use of chlorine bleach, linen was soaked several times in buttermilk, then washed with soft soap and spread out in the fields to dry.” Europe got its iron from Sweden and Russia, copper from Norway and Sweden, gold & silver from America, tin from Siam (Thailand) in addition to tin from Cornwall.
Forests were a capital good. In France, Colbert planted trees which are still standing, which were to be used as ship masts by the French fleet, but steamships kept them from being cut down.
China as hoarder of silver: “A recent historian of China thinks that at least half the silver mined in America between 1527 and 1821 found its way to China, which was a destination of no return. Pierre Chanu suggests a figure of one-third.” Fernand finds both estimates quite plausible and explains why (p.199). “Europe let silver our all over the world. But it over valued gold; this was one way of holding on to it.”
Feudalism. “Feudalism prepared the way for capitalism.” “The baron has the power to impoverish or ruin his vassal, to imprison him without letting the governor or the village magistrate intervene; having power of life and death, he has anyone he wants murdered and pardons assassins …To prove a baron guilty of a crime is impossible.”
Public Executions: crowds milling about the scaffolds and gibbets were rarely on the side of the condemned. Sometimes they were so popular that one chronicler wrote, “All the carriages in Palermo went to this execution, and there were so many people there one could not see the paving stones.” In France in 1642, when two men were to be beheaded, “a window in one of the houses facing on the square could have been rented for about a doubloon.” At another “the frustrated crowd greeted with cheers his (the prisoner’s) first cry of pain.”
Usury: was frowned on but tolerated: “One went as furtively to visit the moneylender as one visited a whore.”
Fernand’s Important Question: “What if Chinese junks had sailed round the Cape of Good Hope in 1419, in the middle of the European recession we refer to as the Hundred Years’ War - and world domination had fallen to the lot of that huge and distant country, that other pole of the populated world?”
Cool Fact by Fernand from the intro to this book: Matisse “used to begin his drawings ten times over, throwing them into the wastebasket day after day, and only keeping the last in which he had achieved purity and simplicity of line.”
Fernand Braudel is one of the most original historians, as he deals with the life of European common man, and NOT with the movers and shakers that 98% of other historians focus on. As such, I find reading his books instrumental in teaching me immersive real history of the Middle Ages, so I get a true taste of what it was like to be alive back then. Bravo to him for the second book of his famed trilogy, which I enjoyed immensely, and you will too.
Portugal: “From 1580 to 1640, the crowns of Portugal and Castile were united under the same monarch.” “As the eighteenth century opened, Portugal (a huge Maritime power) had practically abandoned the Indian Ocean.” Its merchant aristocracy then reaped the benefit of the Portuguese in Brazil.
Business on Frozen Rivers: “Every winter in Moscow when the Moskva froze, shops, booths and stalls were set up on the ice. It was the time of the year when goods could be easily transported over the snow by sled, and when meat and slaughtered animals were deep-frozen by the open air.” In London in the seventeenth century, festivities were routinely held on the Thames when it was frozen.
Transport: In France and England then, the rivers had ferries or little boats hired as water-taxis for hire instead of bumpy carriages. “In about 1600, grain transported overland did not travel more than 10 miles, and 5 miles was more usual; cattle could be driven up to about 11 miles; sheep 40 to 70 miles; wool and woolen cloth would travel between 20 and 40 miles.” “For over a short distance a cart cost no more than a boat.” “Coal from Newcastle cost at least five times as much in London as it did at the pit head.” “Every kind of transport relied on the inns as halts.”
Trade: Trade was known for great risks - and great profits. Markets became more specialized: “Wymondham (England) dealt exclusively in wooden spoons, taps and handles.” There was a clear hierarchy to merchants (and snobbishness among the higher ranked): they were never “all on the same footing”. Let’s look at trading a kilo of pepper – it got you “one or two grammes of silver at the point of production in the Indies, would fetch 10 to 14 grammes in Alexandria, 14 to 18 in Venice, and 20 to 30 in the consumer countries of Europe.”
Textiles, Dies and Minerals: “Azure, a dyestuff of mineral origin based on cobalt (always mixed, especially when of poor quality, with sparkling sand) was used in the manufacture of china and porcelain to give blue glazes; it was also used to bleach canvas.” “Until the use of chlorine bleach, linen was soaked several times in buttermilk, then washed with soft soap and spread out in the fields to dry.” Europe got its iron from Sweden and Russia, copper from Norway and Sweden, gold & silver from America, tin from Siam (Thailand) in addition to tin from Cornwall.
Forests were a capital good. In France, Colbert planted trees which are still standing, which were to be used as ship masts by the French fleet, but steamships kept them from being cut down.
China as hoarder of silver: “A recent historian of China thinks that at least half the silver mined in America between 1527 and 1821 found its way to China, which was a destination of no return. Pierre Chanu suggests a figure of one-third.” Fernand finds both estimates quite plausible and explains why (p.199). “Europe let silver our all over the world. But it over valued gold; this was one way of holding on to it.”
Feudalism. “Feudalism prepared the way for capitalism.” “The baron has the power to impoverish or ruin his vassal, to imprison him without letting the governor or the village magistrate intervene; having power of life and death, he has anyone he wants murdered and pardons assassins …To prove a baron guilty of a crime is impossible.”
Public Executions: crowds milling about the scaffolds and gibbets were rarely on the side of the condemned. Sometimes they were so popular that one chronicler wrote, “All the carriages in Palermo went to this execution, and there were so many people there one could not see the paving stones.” In France in 1642, when two men were to be beheaded, “a window in one of the houses facing on the square could have been rented for about a doubloon.” At another “the frustrated crowd greeted with cheers his (the prisoner’s) first cry of pain.”
Usury: was frowned on but tolerated: “One went as furtively to visit the moneylender as one visited a whore.”
Fernand’s Important Question: “What if Chinese junks had sailed round the Cape of Good Hope in 1419, in the middle of the European recession we refer to as the Hundred Years’ War - and world domination had fallen to the lot of that huge and distant country, that other pole of the populated world?”
Cool Fact by Fernand from the intro to this book: Matisse “used to begin his drawings ten times over, throwing them into the wastebasket day after day, and only keeping the last in which he had achieved purity and simplicity of line.”
Fernand Braudel is one of the most original historians, as he deals with the life of European common man, and NOT with the movers and shakers that 98% of other historians focus on. As such, I find reading his books instrumental in teaching me immersive real history of the Middle Ages, so I get a true taste of what it was like to be alive back then. Bravo to him for the second book of his famed trilogy, which I enjoyed immensely, and you will too.
April 24, 2020
besposličari i skitnice taj talog društva, izmet gradova, pošast republika, ukras vešala. (494)
February 6, 2017
Exceedingly worth one's time. We build up from basic coats-for-gold economic exchanges to trade routes, fairs, corporate structures, sea voyages, bills of exchange, on into class mobility, the changing role of the quality of "nobility" over time, conditions under which capitalism can arise, and a clear key distinction between market economies and capitalism.
Excited and apprehensive about the third book, which I started today: so far the first two books have been mostly extended nonchronological descriptions. Now Braudel moves into chronological narrative! Is the whole game up? I will hope not; I will root for this man
Excited and apprehensive about the third book, which I started today: so far the first two books have been mostly extended nonchronological descriptions. Now Braudel moves into chronological narrative! Is the whole game up? I will hope not; I will root for this man
November 27, 2018
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أما موضوع المجلد الثاني فهو التجارة بكل صورها في القرون الأربعة بين غروب العصر الوسيط وشروق عصر الصناعة، فيقيم مواجهة من حيث ما يمثله اقتصاد السوق والنشاط التي تمارسه الرأسمالية من موقعها العالي، وكان من الضروري تمييز هاتين المنطقتين اللتين تعتبران علويتين بالقياس إلى منطقة الحياة المادية دونهما منطقة الاقتصاد اقتصاد السوق والمنطقة العلوية التي تمارس فيها الرأسمالية نشاطها.
أما موضوع المجلد الثاني فهو التجارة بكل صورها في القرون الأربعة بين غروب العصر الوسيط وشروق عصر الصناعة، فيقيم مواجهة من حيث ما يمثله اقتصاد السوق والنشاط التي تمارسه الرأسمالية من موقعها العالي، وكان من الضروري تمييز هاتين المنطقتين اللتين تعتبران علويتين بالقياس إلى منطقة الحياة المادية دونهما منطقة الاقتصاد اقتصاد السوق والمنطقة العلوية التي تمارس فيها الرأسمالية نشاطها.
October 14, 2007
I'm not sure wether to put this book in to "read" shelf or "currently-reading" shelf because I have read it several times although I haven't actually finished it. It is a long and fasinating book. Full of details that make the book difficult to conceptualize but you (or at lease "I") find those story that Braudel narrated it in a prose-like pace. And of course, this is one of the best books on the history of capitalism.
December 31, 2024
Brilliant but drrrrry and drier as you proceed through the volume. If you are not reasonably well versed in this era of history, you will find it heavy sledding but still rewarding (I was a history major and still I had to spell it with lighter fare). A lot to think about! Eurocentric in a way that is no longer aspired to.
A word about the physical act of reading this book. At over 600 pages, the paperback literally falls apart at the binding from constant re-opening, long before the reading is finished. (The same happened to the previous volume, now held together with rubber bands.) The pages are wide in a way that made tracking line to line surprisingly difficult (maybe this is just my advancing age). Get the hardback, and invest in some potboiler to read in between bouts of Braudel.
A word about the physical act of reading this book. At over 600 pages, the paperback literally falls apart at the binding from constant re-opening, long before the reading is finished. (The same happened to the previous volume, now held together with rubber bands.) The pages are wide in a way that made tracking line to line surprisingly difficult (maybe this is just my advancing age). Get the hardback, and invest in some potboiler to read in between bouts of Braudel.
May 7, 2021
Yet another book I read for reference for a writing project. Quite scholarly but actually rather engaging, it really gets into the weeds, so to speak, of commerce in the late Middle Ages to the dawn of Modern times.
June 14, 2025
Yeah I see why he’s the goat this book is excellent
June 19, 2022
This has to be the clearest exposition of the origins of capitalist societies. Truly a masterpiece.
October 3, 2009
This has to be one of the most, if not the most, exhaustive overview of the workings of commerce and, ultimately, capitalism during the subject period. It would appear that Mr. Braudel has read, or at least considered, thousands of source documents, and has also read every other researcher's study of the period. The constant references to other works become a little tiresome, and often deflect the reader's attention from the main thread of his arguments. Still, the scholarship is almost unbelievable, and there are thousands of very interesting descriptions of business during the period.
One significant drawback is that either Mr. Braudel's writing style is not very clear, or the translation doesn't do justice to his work. Many times I had to reread passages to understand what he was saying, and in a fair number of cases, never did get it. Also, it would have helped if he had explained some of his business terminology (e.g., bills of exchange, and how they were actually settled). Maybe it's just my business background, but I frequently found myself wondering, "How did that actually work?" Since I read the book primarily to learn the answer to those questions, that was quite frustrating.
This was book two of a three book series. I had made numerous attempts at book one, "The Structures of Everyday Life," but found it to be stupefyingly detailed, and finally just skipped to book two. It was better, but I don't recommend these books to anyone who doesn't have a real interest in the subject matter.
One significant drawback is that either Mr. Braudel's writing style is not very clear, or the translation doesn't do justice to his work. Many times I had to reread passages to understand what he was saying, and in a fair number of cases, never did get it. Also, it would have helped if he had explained some of his business terminology (e.g., bills of exchange, and how they were actually settled). Maybe it's just my business background, but I frequently found myself wondering, "How did that actually work?" Since I read the book primarily to learn the answer to those questions, that was quite frustrating.
This was book two of a three book series. I had made numerous attempts at book one, "The Structures of Everyday Life," but found it to be stupefyingly detailed, and finally just skipped to book two. It was better, but I don't recommend these books to anyone who doesn't have a real interest in the subject matter.
June 29, 2019
I enjoyed this more than the first volume of Braudel's work, but still didn't hugely enjoy it. Having started on John Haldon's "The State and the Tributary Mode of Production" as I reached the end of Braudel's work I began to realise why. What I think is missing is a real sense of growth and change. The period Braudel tackles, from the 15th to the 18th century is often treated almost as a single monolith. I am exaggerating of course, and certainly towards the end of the book as he begins to address the question of how capitalism came into being, and in particular why it appeared in western Europe when it did, Braudel starts to deal with this point. But for much of the work examples of for example market development from the 16th century are set aside examples from the 18th. This may well be correct, but it still jars.
It is probably unfair to criticise Braudel for the bias towards French examples bearing in mind that this is a book originally written for a French audience. In this second volume the focus on western Europe feels less inappropriate than it did in the first volume. There Braudel was outlining the basic state of civilisation across the world during the period to be covered, and the European bias felt outdated. Here, as he moves more clearly towards the development of capitalism the bias is still there but fits the subject better. Whatever our feelings, capitalism as we know it today did only develop fully in western Europe so it is inevitable that our focus should be there.
Aside from that, this is an interesting general survey well translated, and well illustrated. But it is a 'state of the world' rather than a picture of change and development and feels to some extent like it therefore misses the point of this period of history.
It is probably unfair to criticise Braudel for the bias towards French examples bearing in mind that this is a book originally written for a French audience. In this second volume the focus on western Europe feels less inappropriate than it did in the first volume. There Braudel was outlining the basic state of civilisation across the world during the period to be covered, and the European bias felt outdated. Here, as he moves more clearly towards the development of capitalism the bias is still there but fits the subject better. Whatever our feelings, capitalism as we know it today did only develop fully in western Europe so it is inevitable that our focus should be there.
Aside from that, this is an interesting general survey well translated, and well illustrated. But it is a 'state of the world' rather than a picture of change and development and feels to some extent like it therefore misses the point of this period of history.
April 14, 2021
Epic in scope and ambition -- there are no other books I've read that give a panorama of human life the way Braudel does. People speak of Chekhov as a sketchbook artist in his short-stories; Braudel is the sketch-book artist of sweeping economic history. Which you would think is almost a contradiction in terms, yet Braudel somehow manages it. He masterfully weaves between hundreds of anecdotes about specific merchants and time-periods across Europe (and the rest of the world), while taking time to zoom out and put forth his conceptual account of the development of capitalism (things like his distinction between "capitalism" and the "market economy"). At times he perhaps gets a little too lost in the vignettes and doesn't do as much conceptual building as I would like, but that is a nitpick. It's very hard to summarize "takeaways" or things I learned from a book like this: the value is the historical romance of the world Braudel depicts, and the way the mass of details he presents you with accumulates to a picture of what life must have been like, how economic organization developed. I guess my takeaway is mostly greater appreciation of the ubiquity of market forces in shaping people's lives and how important trade, speculation, loans, and finance were to the development of the modern world. Man is, at least in large part, an economic animal. But I know that such level of abstraction doesn't offer much. This book got me thinking about, and wanting to read more about, many economic history questions: the development of the firm, the history of monopoly power, history of trade routes, the evolution of money, and how finance and capitalist structures became culturally accepted. I'm excited to read the third volume at some point.
November 11, 2022
This is the second volume of a three-volume set. While the first volume focused on the material conditions of people's lives, the second volume focuses on trade from the village market all the way to long-distance international trade. Mr. Braudel discusses how the growth of towns and cities spurred commerce and capitalism, particularly in Western Europe. As trade grew, specialization could develop and more complex financial structures (e.g., insurance, debt, money markets, joint stock companies, etc.) could develop. As international trade grew, the emergence of capitalism came along too. Although, Mr. Braudel claims this as a global history, volume two, even more than volume one, focuses on Western Europe. Mr. Braudel does discuss other areas of the world, but mainly to contrast why developments in the West did not take hold in other parts of the world. His conclusion that the security of property rights in the West allowed for greater development is interesting, but I have the sense that he starts with the West as the yardstick of development and that shades his conclusions. Also, like other works I have read by Mr. Braudel, he assumes a deep knowledge of European history and this makes the work hard to read for those of us who do not have as good a knowledge of Portuguese history as Mr. Braudel. I often had to consult Wikipedia to get a quick overview of references Mr. Braudel makes. Mr. Braudel combines many disciplines into this history, including economics, sociology, linguistics, even natural history. He was clearly better read than anyone and better at synthesizing multiple intellectual disciplines into a coherent big picture.
August 28, 2023
Very well written, richly illustrated and an extensive bibliography.
The term 'wheat' has been mistranslated as 'corn'.
I found the development of financial instruments (bills of exchange, currencies, life insurance, deposits) as well as the role of banking in opening trade routes and financing expeditions (commercial or military) to be under-represented.
Bought at thrift-shop, where one generally does not have the luxury of buying the whole 3-volume set. Also, my copy is a hardcover rather than a paperback.
The term 'wheat' has been mistranslated as 'corn'.
I found the development of financial instruments (bills of exchange, currencies, life insurance, deposits) as well as the role of banking in opening trade routes and financing expeditions (commercial or military) to be under-represented.
Bought at thrift-shop, where one generally does not have the luxury of buying the whole 3-volume set. Also, my copy is a hardcover rather than a paperback.
August 26, 2019
Втората част от трилогията, разглеждаща по-горните нива на материалния живот, и най-вече това на капитализма. Както отбелязва съвсем точно Бродел в този том, за генезиса и развитието на капитализма влияят ''съвкупности от съвкупности'', тоест редица сложни и взаимосвързани фактори. Също така се съгласява със Зомбарт (и в противовес на Вебер), че капитализмът възниква в итал. свободни градове през Късното средновековие, по-точно - в куатрочентова Флоренция.
March 15, 2020
main takeaway is that capitalism has been with us for as long as humans have lived -- just how deep it lives within a society, and just how much value it creates also depends on the co-existence of other 'accelerant' factors. I wander what Braudel would make of the current internet boom (2005-2020). I'm not sure we have such talented intellectuals today -- or those who are not tainted by political dogma.
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July 2, 2025More historiographical than the first volume, really digging into the history of capitalism. This means its probably a little less useful to the non-historian than the first volume was, and it also feels a little more dated. That said, it is still chock full of Braudel's incredible insights. Also, this series has fantastic illustrations.
Want to read
August 12, 2024By examining in detail the material life of pre-industrial peoples around the world, Fernand Braudel significantly changed the way historians view their subject. Originally published in the early 1980s, Civilization traces the social and economic history of the world from the Middle Ages to th
May 21, 2017
Amazing. Love Braudel.
October 1, 2017
Tremendously important history of money and commerce. Dense and complicated but worth the investment
January 23, 2018
Masterpiece!
June 24, 2019
Magisterial to the point of being overwhelming.
August 13, 2019
Excellent.
Want to read
December 25, 201920191225 購入KOBO版
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20100806 自中正大學圖書館借閱舊版
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20100806 自中正大學圖書館借閱舊版
December 29, 2021
I wish Braudel would summarize his points much more concisely here. While this was an interesting read, I feel like I am drowning in trivia.
June 28, 2023
Even more everything than volume one!
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