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Civilization at the Crossroads

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

John U. Nef
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Extract

The Extraordinary prosperity of the Western peoples in Europe and America at the beginning of the twentieth century, on the eve of the first World War, was reached after a long series of efforts which began at about the time Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452. In contrast to the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were a period of prosperity in most districts of continental Europe. The Middle Ages drew to a close in the midst of great movements of discovery, colonization, and economic progress.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , July 1941 , pp. 283 - 299
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1941

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References

1. For the calculations on which this statement is based, see my article, “Silver Production in Central Europe, 1450–1618,” to be published in the August number of the Journal of Political Economy.

2. In Pirenne's picturesque language (Pirenne, Henri, Histoire de Belgique, vol. iii, 3rd ed., Brussels, 1923, p. 236)Google Scholar.

3. For the description on which this and the previous paragraph are based, see my “Industrial Europe at the Time of the Reformation,” in Journal of Political Economy, vol. xlix, nos. 1 and 2 (1941), pp. 1–40, 183–224Google Scholar.

4. Der Unlergang des Abendlandes, 2 vols., Munich, 1922Google Scholar. English translation by Atkinson, C. F., The Decline of the West, 2 vols., London, 1926, 1928Google Scholar.

5. Bodin, Jean, Les six livres de la République, Paris, 1583Google Scholar. bk. v, ch. i (esp. p.694). Of course Bodin recognized that geographical conditions were only one of a number of factors that determined the inclinations and manners of a people. He recognized that the natural inclinations of a people, as derived from geographical conditions, might be greatly changed, if not completely transformed, by other circumstances.

6. Cf. Nef, , “The Progress of Technology and the Growth of Large–Scale Industry in Great Britain, 1540–1640,” Economic History Review, vol. v (1934), pp. 3–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “A Comparison of Industrial Growth in France and England, 1540–1640,” journal of Political Economy, vol. xl (1936), pp. 289–317, 505–33, 643–66Google Scholar; “Prices and Industrial Capitalism in France and England, 1540–1640,” Economic History Review, vol. vii (1937), pp.155–85Google Scholar.

7. Cf. Nef, , “English and French Industrial History after 1540 in Relation to the Constitution,” The Constitution Reconsidered (ed.Read, Conyers), New York, 1938, pp. 93–94.Google Scholar

8. Expansion of England, London, 2nd ed., 1904, p. 10Google Scholar; cf. Read, Conyers, The Case for the British Empire, Philadelphia, 1941Google Scholar.

9. The Rise of the British Coal Industry, 2 vols., London, 1932Google Scholar.

10. Cf. Bowden, W., Karpovitch, M. and Usher, A. P., An Economic History of Europe since 1750, New York, 1937, pp. 667–69Google Scholar.

11. The Coal Question, London, 1865 (see the third edition revised by Flux, A. W.London, 1906)Google Scholar.

12. I include in Western Europe the countries included by Beloch, H. (“Die Bevolkerung Europas zur Zeit der Renaissance,” Zeitschrift für Socialwissenschaft, vol.III (1900), p. 786)Google Scholar. He excludes Russia and the Balkans. The population of Europe was not much larger in 1740 than in 1600, when Beloch estimated it at 72 millions.

13. Smith, J. Russell, North America, New York, 1925, p. 806Google Scholar.

14. Thorndike, E. L., Your City, New York, 1939Google Scholar. I owe my knowledge of this book to my friend and colleague, Professor Robert E. Park.

15. Incidentally was the Florence of Dante (1265–1321) the same as the Florence of Cellini (1500–1571), who lived more than two hundred years later than Dante? While gas and electricity were not installed in the interval between the two men's lives, some important changes occurred, among them the discovery of America.

16. Thorndike, , op. cit., p. 27Google Scholar.

17. Clark, Colin, The Conditions of Economic Progress, London, 1940, p. 83Google Scholar.

18. Smith, J. Russell, op. cit., p. 811Google Scholar.