|
This is the second volume in Braudel's magnificent new three-volume
social and economic history of the world from the Middle Ages to the Industrial
Revolution. This is history on a grand scale yet always on the human level. Written
with immediacy and realism, the book is full of personal stories and examples
culled from a lifetime of research by a master who wears his erudition lightly. The
preceding volume, The Structures of Everyday Life, described the material
context of the pre-industrial world, outlining the limitations of what was possible
and identifying the means of social and economic development. In The Wheels
of Commerce, now published for the first time in English, Braudel turns his
attention to the markets and exchanges that, from the start, have been the real
motors of change. Peddlers, merchants, fairs, market stalls, the first stock exchanges,
provide the human and economic subject matter. As always, Braudel sees them in
their totality and in perpetual motion. Means of travel and communication, style
of life and social mores -- all are brought to life with that marvelous specificity
and imaginative power which are Braudel's hallmark. Out
of this world of bargaining and bustle, of risk and disaster, of enormous wealth
and dizzying success, emerges the beginning of the economic world we see around
us, of multi-national companies and world-wide finance. The book is profusely
illustrated with contemporary prints and drawings from around the world. Fernand
Braudel was born in 1902, received a degree in history in 1923, and subsequently
taught in Algeria, Paris and Sao Paulo. He spent five years as a prisoner of war
in Germany, during which time he wrote his grand thesis, The Mediterranean
World in the Age of Philip II, which was published in 1949. In 1946 he became
a member of the editorial board of Annales, the famous journal founded by Marc
Bloch and Lucien Febvre, whom he succeeded at the Collège de France in
1949. He has been a member of the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes and since
1962 has been chief administrator of the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme. Professor
Braudel holds honorary doctorates from universities all over the world. |
