Open societies before market economies: Historical analysis

Abstract It is often assumed that the market economy and the open society reinforce each other and have risen together. Even those who are more skeptical about their long-run compatibility will usually agree that the rise of the two was part of a process of modernization, starting in early modern England and unfolding in the modern West. This article builds on the latest historical research to reject this assumption. It shows that several market economies existed much earlier in history. These were all preceded by social movements generating a more open society. In each of these cases, the functioning of the market economy slowly eroded social and, next, political openness, and later shriveled itself again. This endogenous, cycle-like process, in which the interaction of the market economy and the open society developed from positive to negative, may also be seen in modern cases, including the present USA.

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Assimilation Aborted: Henry Clerk and the Limits of Anglo-Scottish Integration in the Age of Union

Journal of Scottish Historical Studies ◽

10.3366/jshs.2018.0245 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 38 (2) ◽

pp. 199-218 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Keith M. Brown ◽

Allan Kennedy

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Family Members ◽

Historical Analysis ◽

Early Modern England ◽

Historical Reconstruction ◽

Migration Experience ◽

Modern Britain ◽

Excellent Candidate ◽

Early Modern Britain ◽

New Location

This article deploys micro-historical analysis to understand an example of abortive diaspora among Scots who failed to make it as immigrants in early modern England. Henry Clerk was the son of a middle-ranking Midlothian baronet who made a doomed effort to build a new life for himself in London between 1698 and 1702. A series of dozens of surviving letters between Clerk and his family members in Scotland allow us to trace his migration experience in unusual detail. This evidence makes his case an excellent candidate for micro-historical reconstruction, and in undertaking such an exercise this article seeks to ask what the nature and circumstances of his failure can tell us about the wider process of migrant assimilation in early modern Britain, as well as the challenges confronted by individuals seeking to make a new life in a new location.

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Exclusion Crises: Poverty, Migration and Parochial Responsibility in English Rural Communities, c. 1560–1660

Rural History ◽

10.1017/s095679330000011x ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 7 (2) ◽

pp. 125-149 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Steve Hindle

Keyword(s):

Rural Communities ◽

Early Modern ◽

Common Ground ◽

Historical Analysis ◽

Early Modern England ◽

Social Scientists ◽

Historical Process ◽

Value Judgements ◽

Elusive Concept

‘Community’ is ubiquitous in the historiography of early modern England. Although the term is almost universally employed and appealed to, however, its meaning remains controversial, and its use by historians much criticised. Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that the very concept of ‘community’ is not the creation of modern social scientists: its origins lie in traditional notions of communitas, that quality of oneness claimed by mediaeval associations of various kinds. Consequently, modern historians and sociologists tend to agree only on two issues: first, that ‘community’ implies geographical propinquity, common ties, and focused interaction between and amongst its members; and second, that these characteristics have generally undergone a historical process of decline or disintegration. Rather vaguely-defined as this common ground is, it is sufficiently clear to render modern users of the term vulnerable in turn to two criticisms in particular. It is argued, first, that the mythic status of community begs both historical and sociological questions, relying merely on untested assumptions; and, second, that the strongly emotive overtones and inherent value judgements of such a nostalgic term introduce confusing elements of normative prescription to social-historical analysis. From this perspective, community is not only an elusive concept but also a flawed ideal, and calls for its abandonment have increased.

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Thomas Fuller

10.1093/oso/9780198793700.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

W. B. Patterson

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Early Modern ◽

Church History ◽

Early Modern England ◽

Critical Assessment ◽

Historical Research ◽

History Of Christianity ◽

Biographical Dictionary ◽

History Of ◽

The Church

Long considered a distinctive English writer, Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) has not been recognized as the important historian he was. Fuller’s The Church-History of Britain (1655) was the first history of Christianity from its planting in ancient Britain to the mid-seventeenth century. Fuller’s History of the Worthies of England (1662) was, moreover, the first biographical dictionary in England. It seeks to represent noteworthy individuals in the context of their native counties. This book, Thomas Fuller: Discovering England’s Religious Past, highlights the fact that Fuller was a major contributor to the flowering of historical writing in early modern England. It provides a biography of Thomas Fuller, an account of the tumultuous times in which he lived, and a critical assessment of the origins, growth, and achievements of a new kind of history, a genre to which he made significant and lasting contributions. Memory is a central theme. Widely known for his own memory, Fuller sought to revive the memory of the English people concerning their religious and political past. By means of historical research involving records, books, personal interviews, and travels, he sought to discover his country’s religious past and to bring it to the attention of his fellow English men and women, who might thereby be enabled to rebuild their shattered Church and nation.

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STREAM (Spatiotemporal Research Infrastructure for Early Modern Brabant and Flanders): Sources, Data and Methods

International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing ◽

10.3366/ijhac.2018.0217 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 102-119

Author(s):

Isabelle Devos ◽

Torsten Wiedemann ◽

Ruben Demey ◽

Sven Vrielinck ◽

Thijs Lambrecht ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Local Level ◽

Modern Society ◽

Historical Research ◽

Geographical Information ◽

Historical Sources ◽

Long Run ◽

Agriculture Industry ◽

Local And Regional Processes ◽

Regional Processes

This article presents the technical characteristics of the Belgian STREAM-project (2015–2019). The goal of STREAM is to facilitate and innovate historical research into local and regional processes through the development of a spatiotemporal infrastructure for early modern Brabant and Flanders, two of the most urbanized and developed areas of pre-industrial Europe. To this end, STREAM systematically collects a range of key data from a diversity of historical sources to provide a geographically comprehensive and long-run quantitative and spatial account of early modern society at the local level (parishes, villages, towns) regarding territory, transport, demography, agriculture, industry and trade, related to the development of a tailored historical geographical information system (GIS) based on the well-known Ferraris map (1770–1778). This article discusses the possibilities and pitfalls of the data collection and the construction of a spatial infrastructure for the pre-statistical era.

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