ARTICLES
How did the Feudal Economy Work? the Economic Logic of Medieval Societies
Chris Wickham
Pages 3–40
https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtaa018
This article aims to create a model for the underlying economic logic of the feudal economy, which can then be contrasted with the much better-known models for the capitalist economy. It does so by developing a discussion of a very frequent pattern in pre-industrial, feudal, societies: active local economies with highly developed exchange, which never, even remotely, developed in the direction of capitalism. It is argued here that this is because they obeyed a different economic logic, rather than just a simpler version of the logic of the capitalist world, which was somehow ‘blocked’ from developing any further. The article then sets out the basic elements of what that logic could be.
Managing Food Crises: Urban Relief Stocks in Pre-Industrial Holland
Jessica Dijkman
Pages 41–74
https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtaa014
One of the ways in which towns and cities in pre-industrial Europe responded to food crises was by establishing public grain stocks, intended for relief. This article shows how purchases and distribution of grain in Holland were affected by the long-term developments of commercialization and state formation. Two conclusions stand out. Firstly, both the acquisition of supplies and the distribution of relief relied heavily on the market. However, while market mechanisms were originally used to provide targeted relief through subsidies, at the end of the period under examination this was supplanted by a — largely unjustified — trust in the effects of the presence and release of stocks on food prices in general. Secondly, in keeping with a long-standing tradition of decentralized governance, urban governments and urban poor relief organizations were the main providers of the safety net that protected the food entitlements of vulnerable groups throughout the period under examination, even after the establishment of a centralized unitary state in the early nineteenth century.
Fair Trade and the Political Economy of Brandy Smuggling in Early Eighteenth-Century Britain
David Chan Smith
Pages 75–111
https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtaa008
Thomas Ellis, merchant of London, never expected he would be prosecuted for participating in one of the largest commercial frauds of his time. So when the Customs seized his brandy in 1731 he fought back. His case would influence parliamentary decision-making and reveal the extensive involvement of merchants in illicit trade. Ellis’s argument that he was merely a ‘fair trader’ also illuminates the moral debate over smuggling during the period as governments sought to legitimize and enforce their trading rules and tariffs. Pressured by competition from professional smugglers and the revenue demands of the state, merchants responded by developing their own rules by which they could fairly compete. Ellis’s story, and the ‘Flemish scheme’ it exposed, thereby shed light on the moral economy of early modern capitalism, the history of smuggling, and the dynamic of market ordering by increasingly assertive states.
The Ottoman Postmaster: Contractors, Communication and Early Modern State Formation
Choon Hwee Koh
Pages 113–152
https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtaa012
Prevailing historiography views the use of contractors by states as indicative of a loss or decentralization of power. This article takes the case of the Ottoman postmaster to demonstrate how contracting could in fact strengthen early modern empires and to argue that the binary spatial metaphors of ‘centralization’ and ‘decentralization’ cannot adequately explain how power worked in the early modern world (about 1500–1800). Indeed, recent scholarship has highlighted the scale and significance of military contractors in early modern European warfare. However, contractors were not confined to expanding military capacity; they were also employed to expand administrative capacity in diverse arenas. Evidence from Ottoman fiscal documents and judicial registers shows how contracted postmasters played a crucial role in strengthening the imperial bureaucracy’s supervision of a sprawling postal system. In contrast to war-making, which involved the short-term mobilization of vast resources, maintaining a large-scale infrastructure required long-term co-ordination across multiple dispersed nodes, and this entailed a different spatial configuration of power that disrupts the dichotomous paradigm of centralization and decentralization. Ultimately, a holistic appraisal of early modern state-building needs to consider not just cases of war-making or provincial administration, but also pan-imperial infrastructures like information and communication systems.
The Politics of Musical Standardization in Nineteenth-Century France and Britain
Edward Gillin and Fanny Gribenski
Pages 153–187
https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtaa007
This article examines mid-nineteenth-century Anglo-French relations through the prism of musical standardization. Bringing together perspectives from musicology, history of science, and political history, it demonstrates the holistic value of musical practices for the study of processes of political integration. In 1859, Napoléon III's government determined a national pitch to which musicians should tune their instruments. The following year, Britain's Society of Arts attempted to emulate this standard. Amid tense Anglo-French relations, British audiences interpreted the French pitch as a measure of the country's autocracy, and these political anxieties materialized through a redefinition of the standard. The challenges of introducing a musical pitch within a liberal political framework encountered in 1859 were subsequently echoed in debates over the reform of weights and measures following the 1860 free trade treaty between Britain and France. Both the economic and artistic integration of these countries involved the problem of how to regulate society within a laissez-faire state. Musical standardization has received little historiographical attention, but the regulation of this art offers insights into mid-nineteenth-century Anglo-French political culture. Entangled within complex network of industrial, institutional, and social structures, musical pitch demonstrates how problems of economic and social integration were inseparable from international and socio-political contexts.
Contesting ‘Permit-and-Licence Raj’: Economic Conservatism and the Idea of Democracy in 1950s India
Aditya Balasubramanian
Pages 189–227
https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtaa013
Economic conservatism in India traces its roots in the fragmentation of political consensus following the success of the anti-colonial nationalist movement. Framed in the context of the Cold War, long before the 1991 liberalization reforms, this economic conservatism blended anti-communism, free-market advocacy, and the defence of property. This was expressed as the central agenda of the broadly secular Swatantra Party, an effort to consolidate two-party democracy that emerged by the late 1960s as the most serious challenger to the dominant Congress Party. Swatantra brought together diverse progenitors aligned with American development ideas for the Third World. This article reconstructs Indian economic conservatism’s transnational history through an interconnected study of three founding figures of the party and the network of urban associations and periodicals brewing alternative ideas beneath the layers of dominant opinion in which they were embedded. It recasts non-aligned India as a site of ideological contestation affected by the Cold War. Swatantra’s lasting critique of Indian political economy was indicative of a more widely held dissent on India’s development strategy, which has helped to drive the fragmentation of Indian politics. Demands for the party’s revival reveal a desire for a secular alternative to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Enchantment in an Age of Reform: Fortune-Telling Fever in Post-Mao China, 1980s–1990s
Emily Baum
Pages 229–261
https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtaa019
Soon after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, China experienced a ‘fortune-telling fever’. After having been suppressed by the Chinese Communist Party for the previous three decades, fortune tellers re-emerged in the 1980s to publish extensively on the topic and ply their trade in public. Yet despite the general relaxation of state policies toward folk beliefs, fortune telling was still considered a ‘superstition’ and therefore remained against the law. To bypass ongoing proscriptions against divinatory practices and publications, fortune tellers began to frame their undertakings in a language that closely mirrored two priorities of the post-Mao state: the advancement of scientific research and the reclamation of traditional culture. As this article argues, the example of China’s fortune-telling fever adds a new perspective to studies that have viewed the resurgence of Chinese spirituality as a form of communal resistance against an atheist regime. Rather than combating the government’s accusation that their practices were superstitious, fortune tellers instead positioned themselves as allies of the state by appealing to its rhetoric of science and cultural nationalism. Downplaying the mystical qualities of their craft, they framed divination as an academic and economic endeavour, one that was both compatible with secular modernity and in keeping with the Chinese Communist Party’s demands for entrepreneurial activity.
ERRATA
The Swedish Sonderweg in Question: Democratization and Inequality in Comparative Perspective, c.1750–1920
Page e1
https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtz033
Erratum To: The Pathtopistoia: Urbanhygiene Before the Blackdeath
Page e2, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtz060
