Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century (Translated from the French 'Civilisation Matérielle, Économie et Capitalisme, XVe-XVIIIe')

London: Collins,1981 0002163039. Vol.1: 'The Structures of Everyday Life; The Limits of the Possible' First English Edition. Hardback. Good apart from top of spine binding coming away. No DW. No annotations or inscriptions. 623 pages including index. The first volume in this beautifully illustrated and highly acclaimed economic and social history of the world from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution covers the richness and complexity of everyday life - food, drink, dress, housing, money, the development of towns - with the technique of a pointilliste. A broad-scale history of the preindustrial modern world, presented in the minute detail demanded by the school called cliometrics, focusing on how people made economies work. Like all his major works, it mixed traditional economic material with a thick description of the social impact of economic events on various facets of everyday life such as food, fashion, and social customs. Braudel argued that capitalists have typically been monopolists and not, as is usually assumed, entrepreneurs operating in competitive markets. He argued that capitalists did not specialize and did not use free markets. He thus diverged from both liberal (Adam Smith) and Marxian interpretations. In Braudel's view, under capitalism the state has served as a guarantor of monopolists rather than as the protector of competition usually portrayed. He asserted that capitalists have had power and cunning on their side as they have arrayed themselves against the majority of the population. Braudel's reputation stems in part from his writings, but even more from his success in making the Annales School the most important engine of historical research in France and much of the world after 1950. As the dominant leader of the Annales School of historiography in the 1950s and 1960s, he exerted enormous influence on historical writing in France and other countries. Braudel has been considered one of the greatest of the modern historians who have emphasized the role of large-scale socioeconomic factors in the making and writing of history. (Source = Wikipedia) This is a heavy book which will require extra postage. .