Reviews for Readings in European History, 1789-Present: A Collection of Primary Sources, Vol. 1

The average rating for Readings in European History, 1789-Present: A Collection of Primary Sources, Vol. 1 based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-12-06 00:00:00 Jamie Parkes Interesting historical presentation, fettered in its analysis by a frustratingly doctrinaire neoclassical framework. North and Thomas undertake to explain the emergence of an efficiently organized “market economy” which is the condition of possibility for what they call “sustained growth” in Western Europe. The emergence of “the market” is here presented as a more or less linear progression, at times fettered by the meddling of otherwise exogenous political actors. But this kind of analysis misses the centrality of the “anti-markets” of political and capitalist power to the historical emergence and expansion of capitalism (note: they only use the word "capitalist" in their dismissal of a Marxian theories of economic development). An analysis which takes “the efficient market” as its basic unit will identify the “inefficiencies” of monopoly as a form of economic organization and of force as a means to the consolidation of state power as obstacles to, rather than essential for, the development of capitalism as a world-system.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-03-13 00:00:00 Lily Tippin North and Thomas' argue that changes in economic conditions, beginning in the 16th century, allowed Britain and Netherlands to break free of the Malthusian cycle. It was economics that changed ideas and institutions, not the other way around.