Volume 28, Number 5 · April 2, 1981
God Save Our Old Nobility
By A.J.P. Taylor
The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War
by Arno J. Mayer
Pantheon Books, 368 pp., $16.95
F.W. Maitland spoke of history as 'a seamless web' and lesser historians bow to Maitland's authority. As a matter of practical convenience however history is usually divided into separate areas and periods. Europe-oriented historians chop their subject into three chunks—ancient, medieval, and modern. We can forget about antiquity, which was obliterated by the barbarians and the Dark Ages. Each of the succeeding ages has had its special characteristics. The Middle Ages had feudalism, a hierarchic order of society, with nobles at one end, serfs at the other, and land the principal source of wealth. Modern times have capitalism, a free-enterprise society with capitalists at one end, wage earners at the other, and industry the principal source of wealth. Feudal society was static, capitalist society fluid. Feudalism and Catholicism went together; capitalism bred a variety of religions and then turned to science instead.
Review, 2580 words
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