Volume 26, Number 4 · March 22, 1979
Taking Off
By Quentin Skinner
World Accumulation, 1492-1789
by Andre Gunder Frank
Monthly Review Press, 303 pp., $16.50
The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century
edited by Geoffrey Parker, edited by Lesley M. Smith
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 283 pp., $20.00
Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule
by Reinhard Bendix
University of California Press, 692 pp., $20.00
In the first volume of Capital, Marx declares that 'the modern history of capital dates from the creation in the sixteenth century of a world-embracing commerce and a world-embracing market.' This suggestion has recently been followed up by Immanuel Wallerstein, who achieved a considerable vogue in 1974 with his book The Modern World-System, an analysis of 'the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century.' The same argument has now been carried a stage further by Professor Andre Gunder Frank in World Accumulation, a survey of the whole period from the voyage of Columbus in 1492 to the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. The history of these three centuries, according to Frank, is a history of Europe's successful 'superexploitation' of the rest of the world, in the course of which the Western European 'metropolis' expropriated the world's wealth, established a global economy, and forced the 'periphery' into a state of dependence from which it has only recently begun to unshackle itself.
Review, 2619 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |