History 104 Week 1
How did we get "Modern"? Little of what we are is traditional:
not community, religion, family,
morals, government; most all is a modern construction of a historically
new class in Europe.
Before empires villages: moral economy of the peasantry (p. 57, 58); shared
reciprocity, communalism
Gives way to class stratified empires (p. 60)
Empires
Modern
European national states after 1500
Class system: feudal Capitalist
class system adds bourgeoisie and (for some states) proletariat
Capitalism
arises out of feudalism
king, lords, the church, merchants The
emergent capitalist bourgeoisie: its own identity, practices, special
peasants, villages; slavery language
and literature, economics, politics
Surplus wealth for aristocracy Capitalism
generates capital in hands of bourgeoisie
Monolithic imperial structures Pluralism:
warring kings
Tribute; most are not monetized Taxation;
monetization
High culture distant from popular Little
distance between kings/aristocracy and mc./peasantry
Renaissance,
Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution secularize society
Religious civs; not rationalized faith
in reason;
Circular, seasonal time notion
that progress and history were linear
Dominant ethos ethical not commercial Dominant
ethos commercial: separates ethics from commerce
Imperial projects of empires: expansion Nationalist
projects of modern, militarized national states
wars
of conquest, colonization
Rise
of bourgeoisie with Enlightenment political philosophy demands
civic
and public culture; individual "liberty" and republican govt:
but controlled,
civic liberty, not personal license or "excessive individualism"
The
bourgeois search for order; new institutions of social control: prisons,
schools, asylums, barracks, factories.
New
systems of manners and morals: decent, civic life, public behavior, private
morals; repression of desire: sex, marriage, public behavior:
the
state takes over and legislates morality; "immorality," excess,
violence,
feasting, drinking, any indulgence now seen as disgusting by the
bourgeoisie.
Pre-capitalist modes of production Industry
and Empire: applied technology, capital formation,
and
consumption industrialization, time and work regimes and discipline;
Non-modern work forms modern management; abolishes
slavery in favor of wage labor
nobles don't control work
Trade among equals; regional trade routes Global
colonization: European states sought to dominate trade
nature of trade p. 37, 64 nature
of trade p. 56 "for the first time…." , p. 64
mass
trade in necessities integrates entire societies. How?
Wealth not expansionist. Why? Investment
capital is expansionist, Why?
Alexander's invasion (p. 36) versus that of British
East India Company
Global
capitalism creates world-system of rich and poor states
Capitalism
(Stav. P. 35, 45) expansive, global; search for external markets
once the internal ones saturated; external raw materials (Ch.3, 4)
Technological
progress: why? (p. 47)
Ricardo's
theory of comparative advantage p. 37-38
Growth
versus development p. 38-39
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