Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London's Overseas Traders, 1550-1653

by Robert Brenner

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.

Genres: History, Economics, British Literature, Politics, Nonfiction, European History, London

750 pages, Paperback

First published March 11, 1993

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Robert P. Brenner is a Professor of History and Director of the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History at UCLA, editor of the socialist journal Against the Current, and editorial committee member of New Left Review.

He is also Visiting Professor in the Department of Economics at the New School University and author of many books and papers on the early development of capitalism and the current economic crisis. His research interests are Early Modern European History; economic, social and religious history; agrarian history; social theory/Marxism; and Tudor–Stuart England.

Reviews

[involution · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strongly recommend that those not already familiar with Brenner or the historiography of the English Revolution read the "Postscript" and Perry Anderson's LRB review before reading the body text — they give a much clearer sense of the argument and its (surprisingly high) stakes.

[Tiarnán · Rating 5 out of 5]

To quote one academic reviewer: "This is a very good book, and a very long book".

[Gwern · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gave up halfway: too many names, too many details, too long. Brenner deals with the minutiae, which may be admirable but I am not *that* interested in the currant trade or lobbying the king for monopolies.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

What are the relationships between the English merchant community and the revolutionary movements of the Civil War? Turns out that we must speak of merchant communities: two, borne out of privileges conferred by the crown, monopolising trade with, firstly, the German wool market, and secondly, the trade in luxuries with other external markets - East India Company, Muscovy Company, Spanish Trade, etc; a third merchant community (which might tentatively, yet properly, be identified as capitalist) arose from the carrying trade between England and her colonies in the Americas. This latter group of merchants often saw their origins as shopkeepers (who, to protect the interests of the merchant companies, were disallowed from trade within Europe), and sponsored by those among the class of Lords who shared an interest in the development of foreign colonies, antagonism with a Catholic Spain, an intensifying commitment to ~religious~ Puritanism, and the limiting of the prerogative of the Crown. Perhaps, indeed, it is hard to distinguish these interests from each other, converging as they did during the 17th century in antagonism towards the Crown, the establishment (?) of Parliamentary rights to the effect of monetary control over the use of force (development of its own army), the elimination of Catholicising tendencies within the Anglican Church, the refusal of chartered companies, and the expansion of both colonial and piratic activities in the Americas and against Spain. We follow this community (by tracking the relations developed among them in both their activities as merchants, colonists, and revolutionaries) through the developments of the Civil War, where we see their fortunes (!?) wax and wane with the changing circumstances of the war. This story adds much, in a unique way, to analysis formerly argued in essays on the agrarian roots of capitalism, and, alternatively, to the historiography of the so-called bourgeois revolution. Merchant interests diverge according to their relationship to ~production/the crown/feudalism~, and this is given an intensely political/class flavour/dynamic in the lead up to the Civil War, and throughout it.

[Jatin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A singular piece of economic history which is necessarily exhaustive and dense. The relation between specific trades and the merchants jockeying for their monopolies, parliamentary debates, and the religious affiliations of those involved is drawn out by Brenner in a way yet to be reproduced. It's only fitting for the historian who initiated the 'transition to capitalism' agricultural debate to produce the best entry therein.