7 - The theft of ‘capitalism’: Braudel and global comparison

Summary

Antiquity, feudalism, and even civilization have been claimed as unique to Europe, thus excluding the rest of the world from the path to modernity and to capitalism itself, since all those phases are seen as logically leading into one another in successive stages. There is little disagreement about Europe's dominant position in the nineteenth century after the Industrial Revolution had given them a comparative economic advantage. But the argument turns around the earlier period. What was it that predisposed Europe to achieve this advantage? Did that continent invent ‘capitalism’ as many have supposed? Or is this claim by historians yet another example of the theft of ideas?

In this chapter I want to look at attempts by distinguished scholars at global comparison regarding ‘capitalism’, which end up by affirming Europe's privileged position not simply with regard to the Industrial Revolution, about which there may be some agreement, but with regard to other, wider, and earlier features of the west that are thought to have stimulated that change. I will concentrate upon Braudel's contribution and comment indirectly on the way in which all these writers have deviated from ‘objectivity’, despite their best intentions. They have privileged the west to an overwhelming degree, thus depriving the east of its rightful place in world history.