WHY, HOW, AND WHEN did capitalism as a system first come into existence? At first glance, these questions may only seem relevant to an audience engrossed in academic (and, by definition, highly theoretical) debates. They are questions that certainly preoccupied the founding fathers of the academic disciplines that emerged in tandem with modernity itself: economics (e.g., Smith), sociology (e.g., Marx, Durkheim, and Weber), and history (e.g., Pirenne). A study of the origins of capitalism and the “Rise of the West” also tends to be polemical. Indeed, over the last two centuries, various university faculties have found themselves embroiled in debate...

THERE ARE essentially four major theoretical perspectives on the origins of capitalism in medieval Western Europe. This chapter critically examines the main arguments elaborated in those perspectives and attempts to rethink the history of socioeconomic and political processes. The four major theoretical perspectives dealt with in this chapter are, respectively: orthodox Marxism, a form of neo-Marxism that I call “Brennerism,” the modernization theory, and last, world-systems analysis. Each of these perspectives, widely used in every social science discipline in order to explain modernity, has its own specific problems in dealing with the emergence of merchant capitalism.

Orthodox Marxism has often...

HAVING LEARNED more about medieval Europe, the curious reader will undoubtedly ask: What about China? China has long been regarded as one of the most ancient and glorious civilizations. In the Middle Ages, China was probably the most developed ofallregions—socioeconomically, politically, and militarily. Around a.d. 1100, it had a population of approximately 100 million people and the largest cities likely had up to a million inhabitants (Elvin 1973:159; Kracke 1969:11). “Medieval China witnessed considerable economic advance” (Hall 1988:22) such that it outshone anything in Europe. The economy certainly had a high level of monetization; for example, usage...

The more traditional gloomy representations of South Asia as a subcontinent that suffered from economic self-containment with trade primarily composed of high-valued luxuries (e.g., Gopal 1965:157; Palat 1988:283, 447), has been increasingly challenged over the last thirty years (Prakash 1971:203; Subrahmanyam 1994:12–13).¹ The relative lack of South Asian sources on long-distance trade in the period a.d. 1000 to 1400 (Wijetunga 1968:497) should not imply that foreign trade was insignificant. Instead, Chinese and Arab sources confirm (Jain 1990:71–72; Gibb 1994:813) that the South Asian subcontinent’s “expansion of overseas trade was an important factor in, as well as a reflector of economic...

A major problem with many studies of 13th- and 14th-century socioeconomic history is the complete omission of Africa, with the notable exception of Egypt (e.g., Abu-Lughod 1989). One of the misguided notions inherent to Eurocentric historiography is the view that “with the exception of the effects of Arabic science in southern Spain and Sicily during the Middle Ages, influences from outside Europe only became decisive in the twentieth century” (Blockmans 1997:30), thus implicitly endorsing a belief in European auto-development (e.g., Delatouche 1989:26). Having compared Europe’s political economy with that of South Asia and China, it is my contention that Europe’s...

SO, WAS THE Western-European city-state in the Middle Ages a European Miracle? Some have said that Europe embarked upon a unique historical trajectory because of its investment in a “dynamic technological strategy” (Snooks 1996) or because its people were “inspired by a lively curiosity, insatiable greed, and a reckless spirit of adventure that contrasted sharply with the smug conservatism of Chinese, Moslem, and Hindu cultural leaders” (McNeill 1963:578). Some assert that in Western Europe “rationality was more valued” (Chirot 1994:68). Others have claimed that by the 15th century, “and perhaps long before then, the West had a greater proportion of...