Great Wave

by Fischer, David Hackett;

  On economic aspects of the crisis, a good overview is Jan de Vries, The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600–1750 (Cambridge, 1976); see also Carlo M. Cipolla, ed., The Fontana Economic History of Europe, vol. 2, The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Glasgow, 1974; Hassocks and New York, 1976–77). Specially helpful is an excellent survey by Ruggiero Romano, “Tra XVI e XVII secolo. Una crisi economica: 1619–1622,” Rivista Storica Italiana 74 (1962) 480–531, which is accessible to English readers as “Between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: The Economic Crisis of 1619–22,” in Parker and Smith, General Crisis, 165–225; see also Romano’s “Encore la crise de 1619–1622,” Annales E.S.C. 19 (1964) 31–37. Many useful essays on economic aspects of the crisis are brought together in Peter Earle, ed., Essays in European Economic History (Oxford, 1974). Some of the relevant economic data are published in Geoffrey Parker and C. H. Wilson, eds., Introduction to the Sources of European Economic History, 1500–1800 (London, 1977).

  Specialized economic studies include B. E. Supple, Commercial Crisis and Change in England, 1600–1642: A Study in the Instability of a Mercantile Economy (Cambridge, 1959); J. D. Gould, “The Trade Depression of the Early 1620s,” Economic History Review 7 (1954) 81–90; idem, “The Trade Crisis of the Early 1620s and English Economic Thought,” Journal of Economic History 15 (1955) 121–33; Rene Baehrel, Une croissance: La Basse Provence rurale . . . (Paris, 1961); Huguette Chaunu and Pierre Chaunu, Séville et l’ Atlantique (1504–1650) (8 vols., Paris, 1955–59); Nina Ellinger Bang, Tabeller over Skibsfart og Varentransport gennem Oresund (vols. 1 and 3, Copenhagen, 1906, 1923); F. C. Lane, “La marine marchande et le trafic maritime de Venise . . . ,” in Les Sources de l’ Histoire Maritime . . . (Paris, 1962); Jan de Vries, The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age, 1500–1700 (New Haven, 1974; S. C. van Kampen, De Rotterdamse particuliere Scheepsbouw in de tijd van de Republiek (Assen, 1953); Johannes Gerard van Dillen, Bronnen tot de Geschiedenis van het Bedriffsleven en het Gildewezen van Amsterdam (3 vols., The Hague, 1929–33); Domenico Sella, “The Two Faces of the Lombard Economy in the Seventeenth Century,” in Frederick Krantz and Paul M. Hohenberg, eds., Failed Transitions in Modern Industrial Society (Montreal, 1975), 11–15; R. Gaettens, Die Zeit der Kipper und Wipper der Inflationem (Munich, 1955); N. W. Posthumus, “The Tulip Mania in Holland in the Years 1636 and 1637,” Journal of Economic and Business History 1 (1929) 434–55; Richard T. Rapp, Industry and Economic Decline in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Cambridge, 1976); L. Nottin, Recherches sur les variations des prix dans le Gâtinais du XVIe au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1935); E. Pannier, Prix des grains sur le marché d’Abbeville depuis l’année 1590 (Abbeville, 1865); P. Chaunu, “Au XVIIe siècle, rythmes et coupures: À propos de la Mercuriale de Paris,” Annales E.S.C. 6 (1964) 1171; Jean Meuvret, “Conjuncture et crise au XVIIe siècle: L’example des prix milanais,” Annales d’Histoire Économique et Sociale 8 (1953) 215–219.

  On political and social aspects of the general crisis, there is a very large literature. For general studies of internal disorder and revolution throughout Europe, see Roger Bigelow Merriman, Six Contemporaneous Revolutions (Oxford, 1938), the expansion of a lecture with the same title (Glasgow, 1937); also Jack P. Greene and Robert Forster, Preconditions of Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Baltimore, 1970); C. S. L. Davies, “Peasant Revolts in France and England: A Comparison,” Agricultural History Review 21 (1973) 122–34; Roland Mousnier, Fureurs paysannes: Les paysans dans les révoltes du XVIIe Siècle (France, Russie, Chine) (Paris, 1967, English tr., 1971); M. O. Gately, A. L. Moote, and J. E. Wills Jr., “Seventeenth-Century Peasant ‘Furies’: Some Problems of Comparative History,” Past & Present 51 (1971) 63–80; a survey of this period from another perspective is Perez Zagorin, Rebels and Rulers, 1500–1660 (2 vols., Cambridge, 1982).

  The effect of war is a subject of historical controversy. Werner Sombart, Krieg und Kapitalismus (1913, Munich; New York, 1975) argued that war promoted economic development in this period; arguments to the contrary are in John U. Nef, “War and Economic Progress, 1540–1640,” Economic History Review 12 (1942) 13–38; and idem, War and Human Progress (Cambridge, Mass., 1950); see also Frederic C. Lane, “Economic Consequences of Organized Violence,” Journal of Economic History 18 (1958) 401–17. Another historiographical problem in this period concerns the effect of the crisis on warfare. For this question see Geoffrey Parker, “The ‘Military Revolution, 1560–1660’: A Myth?” Journal of Modern History 48 (1976) 195–214.

  On the Thirty Years’ War, the standard works are Günther Franz, Der Dreissigjährige Kreig und das deutsche Volk (4th ed., Stuttgart, 1978); Cecily Veronica Wedgwood, The Thirty Years’ War (London, 1938); Siegfried H. Steinberg, The Thirty Years’ War and the Conflict for European Hegemeny, 1660–1660 (New York, 1966); Josef V. Polisensky, The Thirty Years’ War (Berkeley, 1971); Henry Kamen, “The Economic and Social Consequences of the Thirty Years’ War,” Past & Present 39 (1968) 44–48; T. K. Rabb, “The Effects of the Thirty Years’ War on the German Economy.” Journal of Modern History 34 (1962) 40–51; F. L. Carsten, “Was There an Economic Decline in Germany before the Thirty Years’ War?” English Historical Review 71 (1956) 240–47; John C. Theibault, German Villages in Crisis: Rural Life in Hesse-Kassel and the Thirty Years’ War, 1580–1720 (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1995).

  For internal disorder in France, see René Pillorget, Les mouvements insurrectionnels de Provence entre 1596 et 1715 (Paris, 1975); Boris Porschnev, Les soulèvements populaires en France de 1623 à 1648 (1948, French translation, Paris, 1963); Sal Alexander Westrich, The Ormée of Bordeaux: A Revolution during the Fronde (Baltimore, 1972); Phillip A. Knachel, England and the Fronde (Ithaca, 1967); Alanson Lloyd Moote, The Revolt of the Judges: the Parlement of Paris and the Fronde, 1643–1652 (Princeton, 1972); Robert Mandrou, “Les soulèvements populaires et la société française du XVIIe siècle,” Annales E.S.C. 14 (1959) 756–65; idem, Classes et luttes de classes en France au début de XVIIe siècle (Messina, 1965). Many essays are brought together in P. J. Coveney, ed., France in Crisis, 1620–1675 (London, New York, 1977).

  On the English civil wars the standard work is still S. R. Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War (rev. ed., 10 vols., London, 1883–84); idem, The Great Civil War (rev. ed., 4 vols., London, 1893); idem, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649–1656 (rev. ed., London, 1903); continued by Charles Harding Firth, The Last Years of the Protectorate, 1656–1658 (2 vols., London, 1909); and completed in Godfrey Davies, The Restoration of Charles II, 1658–1660 (Oxford, 1969). More recent scholarship is surveyed in Christopher Hill, Puritanism and Revolution (London, 1958); Lawrence Stone, The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529–1642 (London, 1972); John Morrill, The Revolt of the Provinces (London, 1976, 1980).

  On revolutions within the English revolution, see G. E. Aylmer, ed., The Levellers in the English Revolution (Ithaca, 1975); Arthur Leslie Morton, The World of the Ranters: Religious Radicalism in the English Revolution (London, 1970); C. S. L. Davies, “Les révoltes populaires en Angleterre (1500–1700),” Annales E.S.C. 24 (1969) 24–60; contemporary works of relevance here include R. Mentet de Salmonet, Histoire des troubles de la Grande Bretagne (Paris, 1649; English tr., London, 1735); Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London, 1651).

  On English social structure, contemporary writings include Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum (1583), ed. Mary Dewar (Cambridge, 1982); William Harrison, The Description of England (1587), ed. George Edelen (Ithaca, 1968); Thomas Wilson, The State of England, 1600, ed. F. J. Fisher (1936).

  On Spain, see Michel R. Weisser, The Peasants of the Montes: the Roots of Rural Rebellion in Spain (Chicago, 1976); J. H. Elliott, The Revolt of the Catalans (Cambridge, 1963); Sancho de Moncada, Restauracion Politica de España (1619, ed. J. Vilar (Madrid 1974); on the Portuguese revolution, H. V. Livermore, A New History of Portugal (Cambridge, 1969).

  Italian disorders are examined in H. G. Koenigsberger, “
The Revolt of Palermo in 1647,” Cambridge Historical Journal 8 (1944–46) 133–47; idem, Estates and Revolutions: Essays in Early Modern European History (Ithaca, 1971); Rosario Villari, La revolta antispagnola a Napoli, le origini (1585–1647) (Bari, 1967).

  For eastern Europe, see Jerzy Topolski, “Economic Decline in Poland from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries,” in Peter Earle, ed., Essays in European Economic History (Oxford, 1974); M. Malowist, Croissance et regression en Europe, XIVe–XVIIe siècles (Paris, 1972); M. Malowist, “Poland, Russia, and Western Trade in the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries,” Past & Present 13 (1958) 26–41. On unrest in Hungary, see L. Makkai, “The Hungarian Puritans and the English Revolution,” Acta Historica 5 (1958) 1–27.

  For the time of troubles in Russia, see V. O. Kliuchevskii, A Course in Russian History: The Seventeenth Century, the third volume of a historical classic (1907; Chicago, 1968), which is organized around a crisis model.

  On Scandinavia, see four works by Michael Roberts, The Swedish Imperial Experience, 1560–1718 (Cambridge, 1979, 1984); The Early Vasas: A History of Sweden, 1523–1611 (Cambridge, 1968); Sweden as a Great Power: Government, Society and Foreign Policy, 1611–1697 (New York, 1968); and “Queen Christina and the General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century,” Past & Present 22 (1962) 36–59.

  For the seventeenth-century crisis outside Europe, see A. A. M. Adshead, “The Seventeenth-Century General Crisis in China,” France-Asie 24 (1970) 251–65; E. J. Van Kley, “News from China: Seventeenth-Century European Notices of the Manchu Conquest,” Journal of Modern History 45 (1973) 561–82; Ping-Ti Ho, Studies on the Population of China, 1368–1953 (Cambridge, 1959), James Bunyon Parsons, The Peasant Rebellions of the Late Ming Dynasty (Tucson, 1970); Jonathan D. Spence, The Death of Woman Wang (New York, 1978); Helen Dunstan, “The Late Ming Epidemies: A Preliminary Survey,” Ch’ing-shih Wen-t’i 3 (1975) 1–59; Ray Huang, 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline (New Haven, 1981).

  On the general crisis in the Middle East, see Bruce McGowan, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe: Taxation, Trade and the Struggle for Land, 1600–1800 (Cambridge, 1981); Murat Cizakca, “Price History and the Bursa Silk Industry: A Study in Ottoman Industrial Decline, 1550–1650,” Journal of Economic History 40 (1980) 533–50; Omer L. Barkan, “The Social Consequences of Economic Crisis in Later Sixteenth-Century Turkey,” in Social Aspects of Economic Development (Istanbul, 1964); idem, “The Price Revolution of the Sixteenth-Century: A Turning Point in the Economic History of the Middle East,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 6 (1975) 3–28.

  On the general crisis in America, see P. Chaunu, “Brésil et Atlantique au XVIIe siècle,” Annales E.S.C. 16 (1961) 1176–1207; Arthur Aiton, “Early American Price-Fixing Legislation,” Michigan Law Review 25 (1926); Chester L. Gutrie, “Colonial Economy, Trade, Industry, and Labor in Seventeenth-Century Mexico City,” Revista de Historia de America 5 (1939).

  The Equilibrium of the Enlightenment

  Price and wage movements through this period are discussed in Wilhelm Abel, Agrarkrisen und Agrarkonjunktur who understands this era (mistakenly) as a time of prolonged depression but adds much to our understanding in other ways. This interpretation partly reflected movements in central Europe, which were less positive than in the Atlantic nations. Other studies show more positive patterns; see E. H. Phelps-Brown and Sheila Hopkins, “Seven Centuries of the Prices of Consumables, Compared with Builders’ Wage-Rates,” Economica 23 (1956) 296–314; d’Avenel, Histoire économique de . . . tous les prix en général, vol. 2.

  A comprehensive survey of price movements appears in Fernand Braudel and Frank C. Spooner, “Prices in Europe from 1450 to 1750,” in E. E. Rich and C. H. Wilson, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 4, The Economy of Expanding Europe in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1967). But this work, for all its many merits, gives too much credence to Kondratieff models and alpha-beta phases, and too little to secular trends and relative prices.

  For demographic trends the leading works include E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541–1871: A Reconstruction (Cambridge, 1981) and Michael W. Flinn, The European Demographic System, 1500–1820 (Baltimore, 1981).

  A good survey of economic history in this period is Jan de Vries, The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600–1750, cited above.

  For various national Economics, see John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607–1789 (Chapel Hill, 1985); Ernest Labrousse et al., Histoire économique et sociale de la France, vol. 2, Les derniers temps de l’ age seigneurial aux préludes de l’ age industriel (1660–1789) (Paris, 1970); Jaime Vicens Vives, An Economic History of Spain (Princeton, 1969); Brian Pullen, ed., Crisis and Change in the Venetian Economy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London, 1968); Jan de Vries, The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age (New Haven, 1974); A. H. John, “Some Aspects of English Economic Growth in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century,” Economica 28 (1961) 176–190; Patrick Chorley, Oil, Silk, and Enlightenment: Economic Problems in Eighteenth Century Naples (Naples, 1965).

  Climate changes in this period are examined in John A. Eddy, “The “Maunder Minimum’: Sunspots and Climate in the Reign of Louis XIV,” Science 92 (1976) 1189–1202, rpt. in Parker and Smith, The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, 226–68; this is a serious and important essay. On harvest fluctuations, see W. G. Hoskins, “Harvest Fluctuations and English Economic Life, 1620–1759,” Agriculture History Review 16 (1968) 15–31.

  On agricultural history, see R. V. Jackson, “Growth and Deceleration in English Agriculture, 1660–1780,” Economic History Review 38 (1985) 333–51.

  On price movements and markets, in addition to works cited above by Posthumus and Phelps-Brown and Hopkins, see C. W. J. Granger and C. M. Elliott, “A Fresh Look at Wheat Prices and Markets in the Eighteenth Century,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 20 (1969) 257–65; Walter Achilles, “Getreidepreise und Getreide Handelsbeziehungen europäischer Räume im 16 und 17 Jahrhundert,” Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie 7 (1959) 32–55; Ursula M. Cowgill and H. B. Johnson Jr., “Grain Prices and Vital Statistics in a Portuguese Rural Parish, 1671–1720,” Journal of Bio-Social Science 3 (1971) 321–29; M. Couturier, “La fixation des prix des grains et du pain à Chateauneuf-en-Thymerais: 1692–1741,” Histoire Locale Beauce et Perche 3 (1961) 19–24; R. Meuvret, “Histoire de prix des céréales en France dans la seconde moitié du XVIIme siècle; Sources et publications,” Annales d’Histoire Sociale 5 (1944) 27–44; idem., “Les mouvements des prix de 1661 à 1715 et leurs répercussions,” Journal de la Societé de Statistique de Paris 85 (1944), rpt. in Romano, ed., I prèzzi in Europa, 315–29; Robert S. Smith, “Indigo Production and Trade in Colonial Guatemala,” Hispanic American Historical Review 39 (1959); Raymond L. Lee, “Grain Legislation in Colonial Mexico,” Hispanic American Historical Review (1947); E. Mireaux, Une province français au temps du Grand Roi: La Brie (Paris, 1958); F. G. Dreyfus, “Remarques sur le mouvement des prix et la conjuncture en Allemagne de la second moitié du XVIIe siècle,” Premiere Conference Internationale d’Histoire Économique, Contributions-Communications, Stockholm, 1960 (Paris, 1960); Marcello Boldrini, “Il prèzzo del pane in Matelica nel secolo XVII [1642–1694],” Giornale degli Economisti 61 (1921) 298–302; I have not seen J. A. Faber, “Graanhandel, graanprijzen en tarievenpolitiek in Nederland gedurende de tweede helft der zeventiende eeuw,” Tijdschricht voor Gescheidenis (1962).

  Wage movements and living standards may be followed in works of Abel, Phelps-Brown cited above, Micheline Baulant, “Les salaires du Bâtiment, 1490–1726,” Annales; E. Scholliers, De Levenstandaard in de XVe en XVIe eeuw te Antwerpen (Antwerp, 1960); Aldo de Maddalena, “Preise, Löhne und Goldwesen im Verlauf der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung Mailands,” in Ingomar Bog, ed., Wirtschaftliche und soziale Strukturen im saekularen Wandel (Hanover, 1974); Jan de Vries, “Peasant Dema
nd Patterns in Friesland, 1550–1750,” in William N. Parker and E. L. Jones, eds., European Peasants and Their Markets: Essays in Agrarian Economic History (Princeton, 1975); E. J. Hamilton, “Prices and Wages at Paris under John Law’s System,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 51 (1936–37) 42–70; idem, “Prices and Wages in Southern France under John Law’s System,” Journal of Economic History 3 (1937) 441–61; Domenico Sella, Salari e lavoro nell’ edilizia lombardia durante il secolo XVII (Pavia, 1968).

  For rent, interest, and returns to capital, see H. J. Habakkuk, “The Long-Term Rate of Interest and the Price of Land in the Seventeenth Century,” Economic History Review 5 (1952–53) 26–45; idem, “Economic Fortunes of English Landowners in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in E. M. Carus-Wilson, ed., Essays in Economic History (New York, 1966) 1:187–201; G. E. Mingay, “The Agricultural Depression, 1730–1750,” Economic History Review 14 (1962) 323–38; D. Zolla, “Les variations du revenu et du prix des terres en France au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” Annales de l’ École Libre des Sciences Politiques (1893–94).

  On monetary movements, see Louis Dermigny, “Circuits de l’argent et mileux d’affaires au XVIIIe siècle,” Review Historique 112 (1954) 239–78; idem, “Une carte monetaire de la France au XVIIIe siècle,” Annales E.S.C. 10 (1955) 480–93; John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600–1775: A Handbook (Chapel Hill, 1978); J. K. Horsefield, British Monetary Experiments, 1650–1710 (1960, London; New York, 1983), with an important review by T. S. Ashton in Economic History Review 2d ser. 13 (1960) 119–22.