BOOK REVIEW: The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460-1559

Book Review”



Title: The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460-1559
Author: Rice Eugene F. Jr., Anthony Grafton
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company New York,
London
Year of Publication: 1994
Edition: 2nd Edition
Pages: 209
Price: 195
ISBN: 0-393-96304-7 Paperback

The book The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460-1559 by Rice Eugene F. Jr., Anthony Grafton is published by W. W. Norton & Company New York, London Feb, 1994. This book covers the entire revised curriculum for the history of The Foundations of Early Modern Europe. This classic History of the European People is a work of a great thoroughness and insight which contains much to satisfy general readers as well as scholars. The authoritative study of the Europeans speaking people is the great source of information on Europe History unrolling one of the richest and most instructive view in History.
Eugene F. Rice, Jr., is William R. Sheppard Professor of History at Columbia University. His most recent book is Saint Jerome in the Renaissance. And Anthony Grafton is Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University. His recent books include Defenders of the text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science and New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and The Shock of Discovery.
The chief strength of this book is its coverage of economic, military and political history. Of course in this period (basically the Renaissance and Reformation) most of us focus on the artistic, religious, philosophical and scientific developments, so we can use this background information very well. This was my situation, and I found this little book (just 209 pages) perfectly illuminating. In fact, it's the most well-organized, concise, informative text on this period that I know of. Has there been a more eventful century than that between the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and Charles V's abdication 1556. These are the years, after all, which saw the high water mark of the Renaissance in art and literature; the continent-wide crisis of faith in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation; and in politics, the apex (peak) and downfall of the north Italian city-states - not to mention the voyages (journeys) of discovery and commercial adventure overseas and burgeoning of capitalist enterprise which set Europe on the path to world domination. Given its position at the fulcrum of the modern world, survey histories of this period are badly needed.
Unfortunately, despite intense scholarly interest in the early modern period, they are also in short supply. The present effort by Eugene Rice (Columbia) and Anthony Grafton (Princeton) provides a useful and needed remedy. Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460-1559, the first volume in the History of Modern Europe series from Norton, succeeds in summarizing the important issues. Unfortunately it also suffers from shortcomings of interpretation and omission.
It's not a great mystery why few general works are available on 15th-16th century history. It's an incredibly complicated and controversial period. Rice and Grafton tackle the subject with a thematic approach, and the book successfully conveys the essential facts. The great names
Appear in due course: Columbus and Cortes; Petrarch and Erasmus; Brunelleschi and Leonardo; Luther and Loyola. The reader gets succinct and capable accounts of the spread of the printed word, advances in technology and warfare, and the reinterpretation of the Classics by the great humanists.
The book is particularly successful on the political front. The authors succeed in reducing the potentially bewildering array of French dynasties, Habsburg marriages, Italian dukes and German princes to a clear schematic of Renaissance power dynamics. A coherent picture of the pivotal rivalries between Habsburgs, French and Turks, and the federalist struggle in Germany, emerges - if one painted with a necessarily broad brush. In its final third, the book also provides a good summary history of the Reformation. So much for the good; now for the not so good. Perhaps it's unfair to criticize a sin of omission when our authors have to deal with such a vast subject in only 209 pages. However, there is one item I'm compelled to note. The great Thomas More figures prominently in the discussion of humanism, and the book's last pages provide a nice summary of the English Reformation. Would it be too much to ask, then, that Mores’ execution for refusal to take the oath to Parliament find even a single word of mention,
But this is a quibble, as is that the dates in the book's subtitle seem to have been chosen at random. The book's most serious flaw occurs at the narrative's most critical point: the discussion of capitalism. It could be argued that the development of capitalism is the key to the early modern period, so it's critical to get this part right. Our authors fail miserably, and I fear that an ideological bias has a lot to do with that failure. We can all agree that this period saw (in general) a transition from the medieval guild-based economic model to a capitalist model. I will refrain from referring to these models as "modes of production", as our authors do, because that is a technical term drawn from Marxist economic theory.
But the author's usage is a good signpost for what's to come. The gist of the authors' account is that craftsmen, who had previously enjoyed independence as guildsmen, lost that independence to the capitalist. As capitalism advanced, the typical industry became "controlled by a merchant who had reduced the master craftsmen in his employ to varying degrees of economic dependence." I think this means that the capitalist hired workmen on different pay scales, but there is no clear explanation in the text so we can't be sure. The point is that previously, the guilds protected the craftsman. Now he was on his own, and therefore ripe for exploitation by the capitalist. This is lamented as a loss of independence and pride: for the guildsmen, "Their pride was their independence." The villainous capitalist robbed them of both. How, may I ask, was the guildsman more independent than the craftsman free to sell his labor and abilities to the highest bidder? Simply put, he wasn't. The guilds were protectionist. Their function was regulatory and restrictive - so it's strange to read that "The craft guild had been a flexible institution." (The same paragraph goes on to contradict itself by detailing the restrictions a guild placed on its members.) In a medieval world the guilds had their place. But by the late 15th century the groundswell of creative energy was too great to be contained by the old restrictions. Unfortunately the class-conflict theory of capitalism permits no such insights. The authors speculate that capitalism operated on a smaller scale in this time Period relative to (for example) state-organized defense projects because "only the state had. The coercive power necessary to recruit and control the great numbers of workers them required." in the authors' world, if a man is working, he must have been "coerced" into doing so. The prospect of getting paid could have nothing to do with it. Further, in their discussion of developments in banking, the authors remark that the international expansion of the silk trade "opened the industry to control by the merchant bankers".
Perhaps they fail to consider that merchant banking was itself the innovation which made the growth of this industry possible. But that would be to admit a non-pernicious influence. Our authors seem not to recognize the critical psychological fact of the Renaissance: the new appetite for risk of all kinds - artistic, exploratory, and yes, financial. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that their perspective is informed less by social-scientific rigor than by allegiance to scientific socialism.