Volume 6, Number 3 · March 3, 1966
The Century of Crisis
By Lawrence Stone
Crisis in Europe, 1560-1660
edited by Trevor Aston
Basic Books, 368 pp., $6.50
The Revolution of the Saints
by Michael Walzer
Harvard, 334 pp., $8.95
The World We Have Lost
by Peter Laslett
Methuen, 280 pp., 25 s.
Not so very long ago it was possible to believe in a fairly steady linear progression of European history from the eighth to the twentieth century with respect to both economic output and bureaucratic organization. Today we are uneasily aware that for long periods of time, as long as a century or more, Europe has in fact stagnated or regressed. The first, longest, and most tragic intermission tasted from about 1320 to 1480, and covered the whole of Europe with the exception of Italy. During this dismal period, governmental authority crumbled as local warlordism grew, tax yields declined, and the state became a prey of aristocratic faction. Worse still, a Malthusian crisis followed by recurrent attacks of devastating bubonic plague, prolonged Anglo-French War, and erratic monetary manipulation, combined drastically to reduce both the population and the production and trade of Europe. Population shrank even faster than production so that real income per capita rose and the poor were probably economically better off than ever before, or than they were to be again until the mid-nineteenth century. But the psychological price of living in a contracting world, with a horribly low expectation of life, was very high indeed. As Huizinga showed many years ago, the fifteenth century was an age of melancholy and morbid introspection.
Review, 3809 words
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