Volume 30, Number 9 · June 2, 1983
Return of the Natives
By Geoffrey Barraclough
Europe and the People Without History
by Eric R. Wolf
University of California Press, 503 pp., $8.95 (paper)
'Macro-history,' so long discredited, is back in favor, but not the sort we used to associate with the name of Arnold Toynbee. Today it takes the form of long, sophisticated books, frequently with a distinctly Marxist flavor, tracing the story of the transformation of Europe from a marginal frontier of the Old World into a hub of wealth and power, and its impact on the non-Western world. 'The Rise of the West,' W.H. McNeill called it many years ago;[1] but the new mode was really inaugurated by Immanuel Wallerstein with his 'world-system' analysis.[2] It has been followed, to name only two outstanding examples, by Leften Stavrianos's large-scale history of the third world[3] and the recently published second volume of Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism.[4]
Review, 2634 words
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