About the Book
The subject of The Wheels of Commerce is the development of mechanisms of exchange—shops, markets, trade networks, and banking—in the pre-industrial stages of capitalism.
Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. II
The Wheels of Commerce
Price: $47.95
Publication Date: Dec 1992
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: Omit British Common; Include Canada
Pages: 3
ISBN: 9780520081154
Trim Size: 6.5 x 9
Table of Contents
Foreword
1 THE INSTRUMENTS OF EXCHANGE
Europe: the wheels of trade at the lowest level
Ordinary markets like those of today, Towns and
markets, Markets increase in number and become
specialized, Intervention by the towns, The
example of London, Some statistics, From
England to Europe, Markets and markets: the
labour market, Markets as watersheds, Beneath
the level of the market, Shops, Specialization
and hierarchies, How shops came to
rule the world, Some explanations of the boom in
shopkeeping, Pedlars, Peddling: an archaic
trade?
Europe: the wheels of trade at the highest level
Fairs: ancient instruments forever being re-tuned,
Fair-time, carnival-time, Development of the
fairs, Fairs and communications, The decline
of the fairs, Warehouses, depots, stores, granaries,
The Exchanges, The Amsterdam stock market,
London: a repeat performance, Paris:
is a visit really necessary?, Exchanges and paper
money.
The world outside Europe
Markets and shops: world-wide phenomena,
The variable area of the elementary market zones,
A world of pedlars or of wholesalers?, Indian
bankers, Few Exchanges but many fairs,
Europe versus the rest of the world?.
Concluding hypotheses
2 MARKETS AND THE ECONOMY
Merchants and trade circuits
Return journeys, Circuits and bills of exchange,
No closure, no deal, On the problems of
the return journey, Collaboration between merchants,
Networks, conquests, trading empires,
Armenians and Jews, The Portuguese in
Spanish America: 1580-1640, Conflicting networks
and networks in decline, Controlling
minorities.
Trading profits, supply and demand
Trading profits, Supply and demand: which
came first?, Demand in isolation, Supply
in isolation.
Markets and their geography
Firms and their catchment areas, The catchment
area of town or city, The market in primary
commodities: sugar, Precious metals.
National economies and the balance of trade
The 'balance of trade', Interpreting the figures,
France and England before and after 17oo,
England and Portugal, East Europe, West
Europe, Overall balances, India and China.
Locating the market
The self-regulating market, The market through
the ages, Can the present teach us anything?
3 PRODUCTION: OR CAPITALISM AWAY FROM
HOME
Capital, capitalist, capitalism
The word 'capital', Capitalist and capitalists,
Capitalism: a very recent word, Capital:
the reality, Fixed capital, circulating capital,
Trying to calculate capital in the past, The
value of sector analysis.
Land and money
The pre-conditions of capitalism, The peasant
masses: numbers, inertia, productivity, Poverty
and survival, Long-term stability does not mean
absence of change, In West Europe, the seigniorial
regime was not dead, Montaldeo,
Overcoming the barriers, From the margins to
the heart of Europe, Capitalism and the 'second
serfdom', Capitalism and the American plantations,
The plantations in Jamaica, Back to
the heart of Europe, The outskirts of Paris: Brie
in the days of Louis XIV, Venice and the Terraferma,
The deviant case of the Roman Campagna
in the early nineteenth century, The poderi
of Tuscany, Advanced areas: the minority,
The case of France.
Capitalism and pre-industry
A fourfold classification, Is Bourgin's classification
valid outside Europe? No gulf between
agriculture and pre-industry, Industry: providential
refuge from poverty, An unsettled workforce,
From country to town and back again,
Were there key industries?, Merchants and
guilds, The Verlagssystem, The Verlagssystem
in Germany, Mines and industrial capitalism,
Mining in the New World, Salt,
iron and coal, Manufactories and factories,
The Van Robais enterprise in Abbeville, The
finances of capitalist enterprise, On the profits
from industry, Walter G. Hoffmann's law
(1955).
Transport and capitalist enterprise
Overland transport, River traffic, At sea,
Working out costs: capital and labour.
A rather negative balance sheet
4 CAPITALISM ON HOME GROUND
At the top of the world of trade
The trade hierarchy, Specialization: at ground
level only, Success in trade, Who put up
the money?, Credit and banking, Money:
in circulation or in hiding.
Capitalist choices and strategies
The capitalist mentality, Long-distance trade:
the real big business, Education and communication,
'Competition without competitors',
Monopolies on an international scale, A monopoly
venture that failed: the cochineal market in
1787, Currency and its snares, Exceptional
profits, exceptional delays.
Individual firms and merchant companies
Individual firms: the beginnings of a development,
Limited partnerships, Joint stock companies,
A limited development, Forerunners of the
great merchant companies, The rule of three,
The English companies, Companies and
short-term economic fluctuations, The companies
and free trade.
Back to a threefold division
5 SOCIETY: 'A SET OF SETS'
Social hierarchies
The pluralism of societies, Vertical elevation:
the privileged few, Social mobility, How
can one detect change?, The synchronization of
social change in Europe, Henri Pirenne's theory,
In France: gentry or noblesse de robe?,
From city to state: luxury and ostentation, Revolutions
and class struggles, Workers' revolts:
some examples, Order and disorder, Below
subsistence level, Climbing out of hell.
The all-pervasive state
The tasks of the state, Maintaining law and
order, When expenditure exceeded income: borrowing
money, The juros and asientos of Castile,
The English financial revolution: 1688-1756,
Budgets, economic change and national product,
The financiers, France: from the traitants to
the Ferme gent?rale, State economic policies: mercantilism,
The state vis-a-vis society and culture
an incomplete entity?, State, economy and
capitalism.
Civilizations do not always put up a fight
Cultural transmission: the Islamic model,
Christendom and merchandise, the quarrel over
usury, Puritanism equals capitalism?,
Retrospective geography: a good explanation,
Capitalism equals rationalism?, Florence in the
Quattrocento, a new art of living, Other times,
other world views.
Capitalism outside Europe
The miracles of long-distance trade, The ideas
of Norman Jacobs, Politics and society, especially
society.
BYWAY OF CONCLUSION
Notes
Index
1 THE INSTRUMENTS OF EXCHANGE
Europe: the wheels of trade at the lowest level
Ordinary markets like those of today, Towns and
markets, Markets increase in number and become
specialized, Intervention by the towns, The
example of London, Some statistics, From
England to Europe, Markets and markets: the
labour market, Markets as watersheds, Beneath
the level of the market, Shops, Specialization
and hierarchies, How shops came to
rule the world, Some explanations of the boom in
shopkeeping, Pedlars, Peddling: an archaic
trade?
Europe: the wheels of trade at the highest level
Fairs: ancient instruments forever being re-tuned,
Fair-time, carnival-time, Development of the
fairs, Fairs and communications, The decline
of the fairs, Warehouses, depots, stores, granaries,
The Exchanges, The Amsterdam stock market,
London: a repeat performance, Paris:
is a visit really necessary?, Exchanges and paper
money.
The world outside Europe
Markets and shops: world-wide phenomena,
The variable area of the elementary market zones,
A world of pedlars or of wholesalers?, Indian
bankers, Few Exchanges but many fairs,
Europe versus the rest of the world?.
Concluding hypotheses
2 MARKETS AND THE ECONOMY
Merchants and trade circuits
Return journeys, Circuits and bills of exchange,
No closure, no deal, On the problems of
the return journey, Collaboration between merchants,
Networks, conquests, trading empires,
Armenians and Jews, The Portuguese in
Spanish America: 1580-1640, Conflicting networks
and networks in decline, Controlling
minorities.
Trading profits, supply and demand
Trading profits, Supply and demand: which
came first?, Demand in isolation, Supply
in isolation.
Markets and their geography
Firms and their catchment areas, The catchment
area of town or city, The market in primary
commodities: sugar, Precious metals.
National economies and the balance of trade
The 'balance of trade', Interpreting the figures,
France and England before and after 17oo,
England and Portugal, East Europe, West
Europe, Overall balances, India and China.
Locating the market
The self-regulating market, The market through
the ages, Can the present teach us anything?
3 PRODUCTION: OR CAPITALISM AWAY FROM
HOME
Capital, capitalist, capitalism
The word 'capital', Capitalist and capitalists,
Capitalism: a very recent word, Capital:
the reality, Fixed capital, circulating capital,
Trying to calculate capital in the past, The
value of sector analysis.
Land and money
The pre-conditions of capitalism, The peasant
masses: numbers, inertia, productivity, Poverty
and survival, Long-term stability does not mean
absence of change, In West Europe, the seigniorial
regime was not dead, Montaldeo,
Overcoming the barriers, From the margins to
the heart of Europe, Capitalism and the 'second
serfdom', Capitalism and the American plantations,
The plantations in Jamaica, Back to
the heart of Europe, The outskirts of Paris: Brie
in the days of Louis XIV, Venice and the Terraferma,
The deviant case of the Roman Campagna
in the early nineteenth century, The poderi
of Tuscany, Advanced areas: the minority,
The case of France.
Capitalism and pre-industry
A fourfold classification, Is Bourgin's classification
valid outside Europe? No gulf between
agriculture and pre-industry, Industry: providential
refuge from poverty, An unsettled workforce,
From country to town and back again,
Were there key industries?, Merchants and
guilds, The Verlagssystem, The Verlagssystem
in Germany, Mines and industrial capitalism,
Mining in the New World, Salt,
iron and coal, Manufactories and factories,
The Van Robais enterprise in Abbeville, The
finances of capitalist enterprise, On the profits
from industry, Walter G. Hoffmann's law
(1955).
Transport and capitalist enterprise
Overland transport, River traffic, At sea,
Working out costs: capital and labour.
A rather negative balance sheet
4 CAPITALISM ON HOME GROUND
At the top of the world of trade
The trade hierarchy, Specialization: at ground
level only, Success in trade, Who put up
the money?, Credit and banking, Money:
in circulation or in hiding.
Capitalist choices and strategies
The capitalist mentality, Long-distance trade:
the real big business, Education and communication,
'Competition without competitors',
Monopolies on an international scale, A monopoly
venture that failed: the cochineal market in
1787, Currency and its snares, Exceptional
profits, exceptional delays.
Individual firms and merchant companies
Individual firms: the beginnings of a development,
Limited partnerships, Joint stock companies,
A limited development, Forerunners of the
great merchant companies, The rule of three,
The English companies, Companies and
short-term economic fluctuations, The companies
and free trade.
Back to a threefold division
5 SOCIETY: 'A SET OF SETS'
Social hierarchies
The pluralism of societies, Vertical elevation:
the privileged few, Social mobility, How
can one detect change?, The synchronization of
social change in Europe, Henri Pirenne's theory,
In France: gentry or noblesse de robe?,
From city to state: luxury and ostentation, Revolutions
and class struggles, Workers' revolts:
some examples, Order and disorder, Below
subsistence level, Climbing out of hell.
The all-pervasive state
The tasks of the state, Maintaining law and
order, When expenditure exceeded income: borrowing
money, The juros and asientos of Castile,
The English financial revolution: 1688-1756,
Budgets, economic change and national product,
The financiers, France: from the traitants to
the Ferme gent?rale, State economic policies: mercantilism,
The state vis-a-vis society and culture
an incomplete entity?, State, economy and
capitalism.
Civilizations do not always put up a fight
Cultural transmission: the Islamic model,
Christendom and merchandise, the quarrel over
usury, Puritanism equals capitalism?,
Retrospective geography: a good explanation,
Capitalism equals rationalism?, Florence in the
Quattrocento, a new art of living, Other times,
other world views.
Capitalism outside Europe
The miracles of long-distance trade, The ideas
of Norman Jacobs, Politics and society, especially
society.
BYWAY OF CONCLUSION
Notes
Index