2.1 Early Modern History
Week 1: Early Modern History and it’s limits
Functionalist Theory of Change: Weber
Before Modernization After Modernization
Religion is an inescapable and uniform Religion is a lifestyle choice and science
discipline and people actively belief in has supplanted believe in active spirits
spirits and miracles and miracles
Consumer goods are produced by craft Consumer goods are produced by
production in households powered and mass-production facilities powered and
lit by muscle, water, wood, dung, or lit by fossil fuels and/or electricity and
tallow and transportation is powered transport is powered by engines
by wind or animal power
Government is accepted as sanctified Government is designed by men to
by immemorial tradition. meet their perceived needs.
The West underwent a uniquely intense process of rationalisation that resulted
in the emergence of capitalist market economies, bureaucratic states and a
disenchanted culture that was ideally suited to produce science, technology and
a methodical way of living
Capitalism:
Karl Marx Max Weber
Both view ‘Capitalism as the motor of modern economic development and as a Western
invention.’ (Peer Vries)
Pure capitalism is defined as a system The ‘spirit’ of capitalism: The professional
wherein all of the means of production ethic common to entrepreneurs and wage
(physical capital) are privately owned and paid labour force produced a situation
run by the capitalist class for a profit, where the ‘highest good’ was the making of
while most other people are workers who money and ever more money, without any
work for a salary or wage (and who do not limit.
own the capital or the product).
Marx reasoned that if capitalist wanted to
maximize profits it meant that they would
want to pay ever lower amounts of wages.
Technological innovation was a means to
further reduce labour costs and increase
profitability
, Rise of the West: Goldstone
Emergence of the modern world being seen as something that builds in Europe and spreads
outwards: the “rise of the West” is seen as an inevitable process of progress, fuelled by
Europe’s internal competition, ingenuity, resources, or “modern” approach to science and
technology, that proves irrestible.
Europe’s progress being seen as one smooth, steady process: ‘winners-history’
a term used by Eurocentric scholars to refer to the divergence of Western societies from
other parts of the world, in which the West’s progress towards industrialization,
modernization, and world leadership is seen as “inevitable”, considered Europe’s resources,
intelligence, superior scientific knowledge and technical competence.
Advanced Organic Societies: Goldstone from E.A. Wrigley
- Societies (before fossil fuel) that were dependent on organic sources of energ
- Centralized and bureaucratic regimes
- Growth possible through the exploitation of efficiencies of manufacturing and trade,
but limited by the availability of land
AOS could grow mightily through exploitation of efficiencies of manufacturing and
trade, but would inevitably reach a limit to growth when they fully tapped their
arable land and forest.
High levels of technological and economic achievement without steady progress
toward modernity
Examples: Dutch Republic (Golden Age); China (10th century onward); Japan (Tokugawa
period); Ottomans and Mughals (gunpowder empires); almost all Europeans, Asian and Latin
American societies from 1600 onward
Early Modern period
- A transition phase before societies can become modernized, laying foundations for the
modern world to come. A period with some, but not all, features of “modernity”?
Perspectives:
Marxist: class struggle Functionalist (largely based on Weber)
- ‘the “early modern world” began - “the West underwent a uniquely
when the rule of kings and feudal intense process of rationalization that
barons was challenged by bourgeoisie resulted in the emergence of capitalist
developing the lineaments of modern market economies, bureaucratic states
capitalist economies and replacing and a disenchanted culture that was
feudal serfdom with a wage-earning ideally suited to produce science,
proletariat.’ an age of transition, technology and a methodical way of
neither clearly feudal nor clearly living”
modern, with rising bourgeoisie power - Rationalist view about early modern
developments: market economies,
- Class struggle Revolution bureaucratization, state formation,
