General Economic History

Auteur

Max Weber (18641920) has had a major influence on the development of the social sciences and humanities, and is today widely regarded as a leading analyst of modernity. His father was a National Liberal politician in Berlin, the family of his mother were in the textile business. This latter connection enabled him to resign his Professorship at Heidelberg in 1903 and live as an independent scholar until 1919, when he was appointed to a chair in Munich. A figure of national significance even before he was appointed to a chair in political economy and finance in Freiburg in 1894, his extensive contributions to newspapers and journals, speeches on politics and scholarship, and editorial work is only now being fully appreciated. Even his most famous book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (also available in Routledge Classics), was originally two linked essays published in the journal he edited with Werner Sombart and Edgar Jaffé in 19041905. His public lecture "Politics as a Vocation," given in Munich in early 1919, remains a landmark statement of party politics and the demands of modern political life.

Résumé

Sociologist, historian and political economist, Max Weber is one of the most important thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His astonishing range and penetrating insights resulted in many influential books spanning religion, society, politics, and economics, permanently affecting the direction of the social sciences.

General Economic History, published in 1923 (three years after Weber's death) and compiled from meticulous notes taken by his students, ranks as one of his most important books. It is a landmark work in economic history. From early forms of exchange in pre-capitalist households and villages, through industry and the beginnings of commerce, to the evolution of trade and money, Weber tells the epic story of the development of Western capitalism. At its heart, he argues, capitalism is driven by two immensely powerful forces: the basic, material needs that human beings seek to fulfil; and the fundamental but intangible spirit that sets capitalism in motion.

This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Introduction and, for the first time in English, a translation of Weber's original "Conceptual Preface" to the German edition, both by Keith Tribe. Also included are some corrections to the main text.

Contenu

Introduction to the Routledge Classics Edition Keith Tribe Conceptual Preface Part 1: Household, Clan, Village and Manor 1. Agricultural Organization and the problem of Agrarian Communism 2. Property Systems and Social Groups 3. The Origin of Seigniorial Proprietorship 4. The Manor 5. The Position of the Peasants in Various Western Countries Before the Entrance of Capitalism 6. Capitalistic Development of the Manor Part 2: Industry and Mining Down to the Beginning of the Capitalistic Development 7. Principal Forms of the Economic Organization of Industry 8. Stages in the Development of Industry and Mining 9. The Craft Guilds 10. The Origin of the European Guilds 11. Disintegration of the Guilds and Development of the Domestic System 12. Shop Production. The Factory and its Fore-Runners 13. Mining Prior to the Development of Modern Capitalism Part 3: Commerce and Exchange in the Pre-Capitalistic Age 14. Points of Departure in the Development of Commerce 15. Technical Requisites for the Transportation of Goods 16. Forms of Organization of Transportation and of Commerce 17. Forms of Commercial Enterprise 18. Mercantile Guilds 19. Money and Monetary History 20. Banking and Dealings in Money in the Pre-Capitalistic Age 21. Interests in the Pre-Capitalistic Period Part 4: The Origin of Modern Capitalism 22. The Meaning and Presuppositions of Modern Capitalism 23. The External Facts in the Evolution of Capitalism 24. The First Great Speculative Crises 25. Free Wholesale Trade 26. Colonial Policy from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century 27. The Development of Industrial Technique 28. Citizenship 29. The Rational State 30. The Evolution of the Capitalistic Spirit. Index