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Rural Economies and Transitions to Capitalism: G ermany and E ngland Compared ( c .1200– c .1800)
Author(s) -
Ghosh Shami
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of agrarian change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.63
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1471-0366
pISSN - 1471-0358
DOI - 10.1111/joac.12096
Subject(s) - proletariat , capitalism , peasant , ideology , agrarian society , feudalism , period (music) , scholarship , economics , economy , market economy , sociology , political science , agriculture , geography , economic growth , law , philosophy , archaeology , politics , aesthetics
Based on a synthesis of the empirical scholarship on E ngland and G ermany, this paper demonstrates that in both regions, rural socio‐economic developments from c. 1200 to c. 1800 are similar: this period witnesses the rise to numerical predominance and growing economic significance of the ‘sub‐peasant classes’, which had a growing impact on the market as a result of their increasing market dependence, and from which – towards the end of the period – a rural proletariat emerged. Against the influential theory of R obert B renner, it is argued that the period c. 1200– c. 1400 cannot really be categorized as ‘feudal’ according to B renner's definition; and ‘agrarian capitalism’ does not adequately describe the socio‐economic system that obtained by the end of the sixteenth century. A genuine transition to capitalism is only evident from after c.1750, and can be found in G ermany as well as in E ngland; it is predicated both on ideological shifts and on the evolution of the rural proletariat, which is only found in large numbers by or after c. 1800.