wood

The connection btw the emergence of capiyalism and the rise of the nation state

Capitalism: at its origin, as a system of nation states

Wallerstein: European nation state -> laid the foundations for capitalism, bc the organization of
Europe into multiple polities instad of one over-arching empire -> permitted the development of
trade based division of labour… -- BUT the argument presented in the book is different

- The sovereign territorial state in pre-capitalist europe

Pre-capitalist states -> expolitation was carried out by “extra-economic” means (ex. Ancient
empires collected tribute from their subjects, ex. The early modern european absolutşst
states collected taxes…)

In feudalism, borders net değil, feudal trading network was not an integratined global system
but a series of conveyance and arbitrage operations btw one locale and another feudalism as
a social system was an aggregation of personal and local networks

->> the rising of

cenralized monarchies - TERRITORIAL states -> BUT the fluid boundaries of feudalism
düzeltilmedi until personal rule was replaced by an impersonal state (the seperation of
political and economic, priavte property and public power) ->> that seperation would be
only completed in capitalism.

 Capitalism developed in the distinctive context of the early modern European state,
which was not itself created capitalism.
  Ama feudalist state capitaliste dönüşür diye bir kural yok! (mesela absolutşst de olabilir
ex. France)


(p.170’i tam anlamadım, tekrar bak)

-The state in capitalist england

-İngiltere diğer Avrupa ülkeleri kaadra parcellized değil. England’s particular process of feudal
centralization produced a legal and political order more unified than mwat the European norm. (ex.
Fr had 360 local law codes while England has a more nationally unified system)

-Also, a distinctive degree of “economic unification”

Both political and economic unity canbe traced to the same source: the centralzation of the satte in
engalnd was not based on feudal unity of economic and political power. ->
 ******

 The rise of the capitalism – the evolution of a truly sovereign and unified national state
-Capitalism and international relations

->

 England: a single large and integrated national market, increasingly uniting the country
into one economic unit, with a specialized division of labour among interdependent
regions and a growing, and mutually reinforcing, interaction btw agricultural and
industrial sectors.
 Economic growth based on increasing productiviity and competition within a single
market = on capitalism
 Capitalism, while it certanly developed within an international system of trade, was a
domestic product. But it was not in the natüre of capitalism to remain at home for long. -
>> its need for endless accumulation produced new impertaives of “expansion” ->
“imperialist drive” ->> the new requirements of capitalism created new imperialist
needs (British capitalism bu ihtiyacı karşıladı)
 Capitalism also expended out from Britain in another and more complicated sense. ->
From the 18th-19th cc, Britain’s major european riavls were under pressure to develop
their economies. (the state itself became a major player, ex. Germany with its state-led
industrialization

 state in imperial
ventures is obvious


-Capitalism and the nation state ***** (tekrar et!!)

p.177*




Oct4 -3

Shwartz

 The modern state and the modern global market emerged together and are inextricably
intertwined.
 ‘The history of the state seems … to be inseparable from the history of taxation
 ***’ But the global economy provided much more cash than largely subsistence-oriented
local economies, so absolutist states forced those economies into the emerging global
market.
 the origins of the modern globalized political economy lie in the origins of the European
state and state system and its related global markets around the fifteenth century
 European states’ ‘comparative advantage’ initially lay only in the use of organized
violence.
 The modern national state is a well-defined organization with a legitimate and
continuous monopoly of violence over a defined territory  Creating and maintaining a
monopoly of violence requires resources. In the short run, states can steal from outside
their territory. In the long run perpetuating a monopoly of violence requires a stable
internal supply of resources.
 agriculture constituted about 80 percent of economic activity -> The poor transport
systems (even if surplus could be extracted it was hard to concentrate in the hands of the
state.) -> Because of the difficulties involved in extracting resources from agriculture,
most European states pursued a policy known as mercantilism.

Agricultural limits on state formation

 From the fifteenth to the end of the nineteenth century, agriculture lay at the heart of
the global economy. ->> The common challenge of extracting resources from agriculture
to fund armies and administration shaped all efforts to construct states.
 20 miles limit (p.13-14): Consequently, virtually all economic, social, and political life took
place in microeconomies centered on market towns surrounded by an agricultural
hinterland of about 20 miles.
 Although microeconomies all lay nestled together, they traded only a little with their
neighboring microeconomies and virtually nothing with more distant ones. >>>>Until the
era of canals and railroads, and indeed well into that era, no such thing as a ‘national
economy’ existed.
 Nevertheless, large social organizations and states spanning multiple microeconomics
could emerge, because the overland transport of grain was not the only way to move
energy.
 The three exceptions to this limit defined both the possibilities for building larger social
organizations and the three groups that ultimately contended for control of the
 European state in the fifteenth century. First, water and wind power could be directly
harnessed through mills. Second, grain and other commodities could be transported by
water, using the free energy wind provided, although capturing this energy required a
large fixed investment in ships. Finally, money and other precious items (that is, goods
with a very high value-to-weight ratio) could be moved long distances, freeing travelers
or shippers from hauling their food/energy with them by allowing them to purchase
grain where it was produced. Information is, of course, the classic high-value but low-
volume, low-weight commodity.

The nobility and the acceptance of limits

 Nobles controlled the first exception – wind and water mills. They solved the problem of
resource extraction by moving themselves, not grain; they went to where the grain was,
and they used direct coercion to extract surplus grain.
 Nobles extracted a surplus from peasants through a mixture of custom and coercion.
 Monetizing their local economies????
 Virtually everything they needed was at hand through direct exchange or as rents in kind.
Nobles and peasants lived in a delicate balance of terror, with the peasantry’s propensity
and ability to revolt limiting how much nobles could extract.


 **Kings and would-be kings sought to monetize their microeconomies in order to shift
part of the peasants’ surplus away from nobles and towards themselves. But nobles and
monarchs also had a common interest in keeping the peasantry under control and
fending off other predatory states.

Absolutist monarchs, internal markets, and external enemies

 Europe’s kings’ internal and external obstacles -> they cannot centralize power bc of
nobility’s power  sovereignty(legal authority) was dispersed in feudal society
  Kings and would-be kings sought to monetize their microeconomies in order to shift part
of the peasants’ surplus away from nobles and towards themselves. But nobles and
monarchs also had a common interest in keeping the peasantry under control and
fending off other predatory states.


 Externally, kings faced a second threat to their authority: other would-be kings. >> …

Merchants and the wider maritime world