From: "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: AG Frank etc. again
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 1998 17:49:39 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)


Jim B.,
     Not sure what you consider to be so "romantic" about 
this business with the Vikings.  Everything that I have 
said about their role in developing parliaments is widely 
accepted historical fact.  Go check it out in pretty much 
any source.
     Well, I have agreed with you that 1492 was crucial, 
but to argue (and I confess to not having read your book) 
that there was no acceleration of European economic growth 
or technological change prior to 1492 is pretty hard to 
maintain.  Of course it is very hard to assemble solid data 
on all that, but Braudel and quite a few others see an 
initial takeoff around 1000 following the end of the Viking 
raids.  There was a further acceleration after 1200 that 
coincided with the raiding by Western Europeans in the 
Levant via the Crusades and also the full development of 
the North Italy-Flanders trade links, many going across 
France which underpinned the Gothic expansion.  I note that 
during the 1200s we saw in North Italy and Flanders for the 
first time probably the first places in world history where 
a majority of population was in some sense "urban".  The 
first industrial strike in history occurred in a textile 
mill in Douai in Flanders in 1282.  In this century, the 
basis for accounting, the T-balance was invented in Pisa.  
This surge blew itself out in the next century with the 
Plague, but was going again by fairly early in the next 
century.  Nascent capitalism was already going by the 13th 
century in Western Europe, the "cuckoo's egg laid in the 
confined nest of the medieval towns" as Lewis Mumford put 
it.  In short, 1492 represented a crucial acceleration, but 
just as China was not stagnant prior to 1492 (or after),
neither was Europe.
Barkley Rosser
On Tue, 3 Feb 1998 23:38:40 -0500 james m blaut 
<70671.2032-AT-CompuServe.COM> wrote:

> B. Rosser:
> 
> 1. On the Vikings: It all sounds too utterly romantic and improbable.
> 
> 2."... after a certain point (and I 
> am willing to accept that the exact timing of that is 
> uncertain, although mid-1400s looks pretty likely), Western 
> Europe began to grow more rapidly and innovate more 
> technologically.  China did not stop."
> 
> The beginning of this acceleration in Europe was precisely 1492, as I argue
> in my book, and it resulted from the looting of the Americas.
> 
> 3. "...parts of Europe that were taking off in the mid-1400s."
> 
> Again: no take-off until 1492. 
> 
> En lucha 
> 
> Jim B   
> 
> 
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-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu




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