Capitalism and the Commons

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Arvidsson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Technological Innovation ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Ordinary Life ◽  
Digital Capitalism ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Transition To Capitalism ◽  
New Commons

This article investigates the potential role of the commons in the future transformation of digital capitalism by comparing it to the role of the commons in the transition to capitalism. In medieval and early modern Europe the commons supported gradual social and technological innovation as well as a new civil society organized around the combination of commons-based petty production and new ideals of freedom and equality. Today the new commons generated by the global real subsumption of ordinary life processes are supporting similar forms of commons-based petty production. After positioning the new petty producers within the framework of the crisis of digital capitalism, the article concludes by extrapolating a number of hypothetical scenarios for their role in its future transformation.

John Locke: The Philosopher as Christian Virtuoso

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Natural Philosopher ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Empirical Stance

The purpose of this book is to present the philosophical thought of John Locke as the work of a Christian virtuoso. In his role as ‘virtuoso’, an experimental natural philosopher of the sort that flourished in England during the seventeenth century, Locke was a proponent of the so-called ‘new philosophy’, a variety of atomism that emerged in early modern Europe. But he was also a practicing Christian, and he professed confidence that the two vocations were not only compatible but mutually sustaining. Locke aspired, without compromising his empirical stance, to unite the two vocations in a single philosophical endeavor with the aim of producing a system of Christian philosophy. Although the birth of the modern secular outlook did not happen smoothly or without many conflicts of belief, Locke, in his role of Christian virtuoso, endeavored to resolve apparent contradictions. Nuovo draws attention to the often-overlooked complexities and diversity of Locke’s thought, and argues that Locke must now be counted among the creators of early modern systems of philosophy.

Imagining Technology and Environmental Law

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Potential Role ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
Sociotechnical Imaginaries ◽  
Law And Technology ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Chemicals Regulation ◽  
The Commons

Understandings of environmental law and technology are often co-produced as part of distinctive sociotechnical imaginaries. This essay explores this phenomenon by showing how Hardin’s famous essay, the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’, is capable of being interpreted in two different ways, which provide divergent visions of the potential role of environmental law and technology in addressing environmental problems. The first, and more popular, interpretation characterizes law and technology as instruments for bringing about shifts in morality in light of limited resources. A different reading of Hardin’s essay portrays law and technology in more constitutive terms. Identifying these different characterizations provides a starting point for a richer and more nuanced debate about the interaction between environmental law and technology. This is illustrated by an example from chemicals regulation.

scholarly journals Not for Sale, but for Own Need”: Trade of the Volhynian Gentry in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Second Half of the 16th — First Half of the 17th Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 89-100
Author(s):  
Ihor Huliuk
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Traded Goods ◽  
Classical Economic ◽  
Economic Nature ◽  
Eastern And Western Europe ◽  
General Criticism

The article analyzes socioeconomic processes in the early modern Europe, in particular trade in its separate regions. It considers the classical economic model focused on the industry and agriculture, which Eastern and Western Europe followed in their multifaceted development. It studies legislation, namely the Second Lithuanian Statute and the Sejm Constitutions for assessing the involvement of gentry representatives in commerce. It indicates that the activity of the Volhynian gentry in the internal trade of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was due to both external changes in the market, primarily the demand for products from Eastern Europe, and the tendency observed on the continent when running a household became a business that made incomes grow. It analyzes general criticism in the intellectual circles of the trade activity of the gentry as such, which could lead to a certain deterioration of traditions. Man-knight and man-merchant intersections in the society of that time were acceptable if a nobleman traded goods from his own estates and could prove it with an oath.The article also investigates key areas of trade of the Volhynian gentry in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on the basis of documentary material of court books of the 16th–17th-century Volhynia and previously published sources of economic nature. It studies main range of goods sold and bought by the representatives of the elite, observes the participation of the Volhynian gentry in trade operations with the core centers of the Polish-Lithuanian economy, and their involvement in local fairs and tradings. It shows the role of intermediaries, first of all representatives of the Jewish community and peasants from the gentry fоlwarks, in the trade enterprise of the gentry.

The High Point (I): The ‘Court Jews’ (1650–1713)

1997 ◽  
pp. 101-118
Author(s):  
Jonathan Israel
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Close Collaboration ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
High Point ◽  
Effective Leaders ◽  
Modern Europe

This chapter assesses the age of the ‘Court Jew’ (1650–1713), which marked the zenith of Jewish influence in early modern Europe. The remarkable role of the Jews in European affairs at that time rested on the solid foundations laid during the Thirty Years War. By 1650, a scattered but socially closely intertwined élite of provisioners and financiers had emerged who were simultaneously agents of states and the effective leaders of Europe's Jewish communities. Sometimes, they showed a strong sense of commitment to one particular government, but this was, in fact, both unusual and untypical. Generally, Jewish court factors, or Hoffaktoren as they were known in Germany, lived outside the states which they served. Not infrequently, they acted for several governments at once. Most typical of all, the close collaboration and interdependence between them, interlocking with the correspondence between kehillot in different countries, made their activity more thoroughly international and specifically Jewish than the banking and contracting of later times. Assuredly, the system centred on Germany, Austria, and Holland, but it ramified far beyond these limits, exerting an appreciable influence also on affairs in Spain, Portugal, the Spanish Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, Italy, England, and Ireland.

scholarly journals The Determinants of International Migration in Early Modern Europe: Evidence from the Maritime Sector, c. 1700–1800

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-167
Author(s):  
Alexander Klein ◽  
Jelle van Lottum
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
International Migration ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Chain Migration ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Geographical Characteristics

ABSTRACTThis article offers the first multivariate regression study of international migration in early modern Europe. Using unique eighteenth-century data about maritime workers, we created a data set of migration flows among European countries to examine the role of factors related to geography, population, language, the market, and chain migration in explaining the migration of these workers across countries. We show that among all factors considered in our multivariate analysis, the geographical characteristics of the destination countries, size of port towns, and past migrations are among the most robust and quantitatively the most important factors influencing cross-country migration flows.

scholarly journals Regulation and Intellectual Change at the Paris Goldsmiths’ Guild, 1660-1740

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 500-527
Author(s):  
Michael Bycroft
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
Craft Guilds ◽  
Literary Techniques

Abstract Economic historians have shown that the regulations of craft guilds were a source of innovation rather than inertia in the economy of early modern Europe. Historians of science have shown that craftsmen contributed to the scientific revolution in the same time and place. But very little is known about the role of guild regulation in intellectual (as opposed to social, political and economic) change. This paper shows that regulation went hand-in-hand with intellectual change at the Paris guild of goldsmiths in the decades around 1700. In this period the wardens of the guild developed sophisticated techniques for organizing and disseminating their large archive of legal documents. They also published two books on the natural history of precious stones that broke with the learned tradition of writing on this topic. The reform of the archive and the reform of natural history were undertaken by the same goldsmiths, for similar reasons, using analogous literary techniques.

The Economics of Guilds

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 169-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheilagh Ogilvie
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Technological Innovation ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Organizational Mechanism ◽  
Monopoly Rents ◽  
Institutional Mechanism

Occupational guilds in medieval and early modern Europe offered an effective institutional mechanism whereby two powerful groups, guild members and political elites, could collaborate in capturing a larger slice of the economic pie and redistributing it to themselves at the expense of the rest of the economy. Guilds provided an organizational mechanism for groups of businessmen to negotiate with political elites for exclusive legal privileges that allowed them to reap monopoly rents. Guild members then used their guilds to redirect a share of these rents to political elites in return for support and enforcement. In short, guilds enabled their members and political elites to negotiate a way of extracting rents in the manufacturing and commercial sectors, rents that neither party could have extracted on its own. First, I provide an overview of where and when European guilds arose, what occupations they encompassed, how large they were, and how they varied across time and space. I then examine how guild activities affected market competition, commercial security, contract enforcement, product quality, human capital, and technological innovation. The historical findings on guilds provide strong support for the view that institutions arise and survive for centuries not because they are efficient but because they serve the distributional interests of powerful groups.

scholarly journals The rise of prosociality in fiction preceded democratic revolutions in Early Modern Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (46) ◽  
pp. 28684-28691
Author(s):  
Mauricio de Jesus Dias Martins ◽  
Nicolas Baumard
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Capita Gross Domestic Product ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Modern Period

The English and French Revolutions represent a turning point in history, marking the beginning of the modern rise of democracy. Recent advances in cultural evolution have put forward the idea that the early modern revolutions may be the product of a long-term psychological shift, from hierarchical and dominance-based interactions to democratic and trust-based relationships. In this study, we tested this hypothesis by analyzing theater plays during the early modern period in England and France. We found an increase in cooperation-related words over time relative to dominance-related words in both countries. Furthermore, we found that the accelerated rise of cooperation-related words preceded both the English Civil War (1642) and the French Revolution (1789). Finally, we found that rising per capita gross domestic product (GDPpc) generally led to an increase in cooperation-related words. These results highlight the likely role of long-term psychological and economic changes in explaining the rise of early modern democracies.

The Price of Friendship

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 117-136
Author(s):  
Maria Salomon Arel
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Building Relationships ◽  
The Social ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Networks Of Support

Abstract This article discusses the gift-giving behaviour of English merchants involved in the Russia trade in the Muscovite era. Drawing on a small, but growing body of historical literature relating to the role of gifts in the cultivation of mutually beneficial relations between people across the social spectrum in early modern Europe, it explores the various ways in which the English deployed the practice of giving to their advantage, both in England and in Russia. In particular, as ‘strangers’ in Russia who operated beyond the parameters of traditional kin- and community-based networks of support, English merchants (and other foreigners, such as their Dutch competitors) needed to both ‘befriend’ Russian clients on the ground in every-day trade and nurture relationships in high places to ensure smooth, profitable, and secure business. As the sources reveal, they engaged in a variety of gift-giving behaviours in building relationships with Russians advantageous to their enterprise.

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