Braudel is fascinating, although Chris Wickham's The Donkey and the Boat is a useful corrective, pointing out that trade depends on production - and that the focus on Italian mercantile growth is as much about the relative abundance of accessible sources as anything special in the larger Mediterranean context.
That book is on my list! I hope to get around to it over summer. In Braudel's defence, his focus on trade is not because he thinks production does not matter - that would be silly. It it that he thinks it was not very profitable for x,y,z reasons and therefore did not further capitalist dev to the extent trade and finance did - which may also be silly, but for different reasons ;)
Yeah I think I stumbled upon this wonderful little blog thanks to adam tooze. I love getting more recombination for my library through this resource! Thank you so much!
Braudel is fascinating, although Chris Wickham's The Donkey and the Boat is a useful corrective, pointing out that trade depends on production - and that the focus on Italian mercantile growth is as much about the relative abundance of accessible sources as anything special in the larger Mediterranean context.
That book is on my list! I hope to get around to it over summer. In Braudel's defence, his focus on trade is not because he thinks production does not matter - that would be silly. It it that he thinks it was not very profitable for x,y,z reasons and therefore did not further capitalist dev to the extent trade and finance did - which may also be silly, but for different reasons ;)
Yeah I think I stumbled upon this wonderful little blog thanks to adam tooze. I love getting more recombination for my library through this resource! Thank you so much!
Thank you!