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A question for readers: from feudalism to capitalism?

Brian Leiter

I know the standard Marxian story (as told by Marx!), but I'd be grateful for some guidance on literature by historians, Marxists or otherwise, especially about the transitions in very roughly the period of the 16th into the 18th-centuries:   the fall of feudalism and the remnants of the feudal order, and the gradual transitions towards the beginning of the industrial capitalist age.  (I'm less interested in the heyday of feudalism, say the 11th-14th centuries, so happy for references on the passing of that period as well.)   Essays or book recommendations welcome, as well as any comments you might have about the value of the work, the perspective it takes etc.  You should feel free to e-mail me at bleiter@uchicago.edu if you'd rather not post here.  Many thanks!

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16 responses to “A question for readers: from feudalism to capitalism?”

  1. John

    I’d recommend The Brenner Debate.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenner_debate

    Reply
  2. Roger Albin

    A lot of interesting books; to mention a few:

    Robert Allen – The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective
    Jan Luiten van Zanden – The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution
    Kenneth Pomeranz – The Great Divergence
    Findley and O'Rourke – Power and Plenty
    Peer Vries – State, Economy, and the Great Divergence (strong on criticism of other scholars, less constructive)
    Margaret Jacob – Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West (and her successor books)

    Reply
  3. Jackie Taylor

    E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class

    Thompson begins with the 18th C, has earlier context to show what makes the emergence of the working class possible (in England.

    Reply
  4. Jeff Rice

    Rodney Hilton (ed): The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (contains original edition of the book which was an issue of Past and Present https://www.versobooks.com/books/2179-the-transition-from-feudalism-to-capitalism

    Maurice Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism

    (in its own way). Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State

    The Brenner Debate and all its earliest pieces and subsequent ones

    Reply
  5. Christopher Morris

    Very important period, studied by historians, political economists, not so much philosophers. Some interesting works:

    – Joseph Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (1970) [very short, important historian]

    – Tilly, “Reflections on the History of European State-Making”, The Formation of National States in Western Europe, ed. Charles Tilly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). Against Strayer, Tilly says,

    "In the thirteenth century, then, five outcomes may still have been open: (1) the form of national state which actually emerged; (2) a political federation or empire controlled, if only loosely, from a single center; (3) a theocratic federation – a commonwealth – held together by the structure of the Catholic Church; (4) an intensive trading network without large-scale, central political organization; (5) the persistence of the “feudal” structure which prevailed in the thirteenth century."

    – Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990 (Blackwell, 1990). Important work.

    – Heinrich Spruyt, The sovereign state and its competitors (1994). Good book. There are some others like it. Quentin Skinner's essay "The State" is very important, though it may not be the sort of thing you are looking for.

    – Douglass North, John Wallis, Barry Weingast, Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (CUP, 2009). In my view a great work or, rather, a very impressive and important theory.

    One needs to distinguish several objectives: (1a) understanding the transition from late medieval feudalism (or "feudalism"), (1b) understanding the development of the modern state (first in England and France), (2a) understanding the "Industrial Revolution" (late 18th c or thereabouts), and (2b) understanding the Great Divergence or whatever we wish to call it. Tilly is obviously important for 1b and 2a — not sure about 2b. North-Wallis-Weingast seek to explain 2b, as well as 2a, as do a number of other important contemporary political economists (e.g., Acemoglu and Robinson). Smith was aiming to understand commercial prosperity before the late 18th c developments, but his student Marx seems to have appreciated 2b as well as 2a.

    Reply
  6. Dave

    A provocative book is Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici. It covers the history of witch hunts during this period (well, from about the time of the Black Death on) from a feminist Marxist perspective. Her main thesis is that the witch hunts were terror campaigns meant to drive women from occupations and land ownership and into the home. This was a form of primitive accumulation that set the stage for the gendered division of labor associated with industrial capitalism.

    Reply
  7. Charles Pigden

    E P Thompson's 'The Peculiarities of the English' isn't bad either. It's in his book The Poverty of Theory

    Reply
  8. Russell Blackford

    I'm not sure how well-regarded it is these days, but as one way into this try Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States AD 990-1992.

    Reply
  9. Tom Llewellyn

    A classic is The Transition From Feudalism to Capitalism, eds. Maurice Dobb, et al. Also Perry Anderson's history of this period may be helpful.

    Reply
  10. Tom Llewellyn

    The Brenner Debate is still in print and is highly recommended by my economic history friends.

    Reply
  11. historian

    A classic source that is still widely read and respected by historians would be Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation. New York: Rinehart & Co., 1944.

    Reply
  12. Benjamin Laurence

    As others have indicated, Robert Brenner's work on this is tremendous, although (naturally) contested. Both of his essays here are excellent: https://www.amazon.com/Brenner-Debate-Development-Pre-industrial-Publications/dp/0521349338 But this is probably my favorite paper of Brenner's, which engages critically with several strands of Marx and later Marxists https://newleftreview.org/issues/I104/articles/robert-brenner-the-origins-of-capitalist-development-a-critique-of-neo-smithian-marxism

    Reply
  13. Phil Gasper

    Two books I found illuminating on the topic in recent years:

    (1) Henry Heller, The Birth of Capitalism (Pluto, 2011). This is one of the best responses to Brenner's account of the transition.

    (2) Alexander Anievas & Kerem Nisancioglu, How The West Came to Rule (Pluto, 2015). "It argues that contrary to dominant wisdom, capitalism’s origins should not be understood as a development confined to the geographically and culturally sealed borders of Europe, but the outcome of a wider array of global processes in which non-European societies played a decisive role."

    Reply
  14. ECdJ

    Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origins of Capitalism (Monthly Review, 1994) strikes me as the most obvious thing to add to what's been said already

    Reply
  15. Brian Leiter

    Many thanks for this guidance and for introducing me to a number of works/authors I was not familiar with. Thanks also to those who e-mailed me!

    Reply
  16. Abhishek Chatterjee

    A few others (not mentioned above) that might be useful:

    1. Immanuel Wallerstein: The modern world system I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century

    The Modern World-System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600–1750

    The Modern World-System III: The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730s–1840s

    2. Fernand Braudel: Civilization and Capitalism (III Volumes)

    —–
    KEYWORDS:
    Primary Blog

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