A People's History of the World: From the Stone Age to the New Millennium (89 page)

127
G Duby, ‘Medieval Agriculture’, p193. For instances of urban traders going further and beginning to become considerable holders of agricultural land, see G Bois,
The Crisis
, p153.

Part four: The great transformation

1
Bernal Diaz’s description of the view as Cortes’s troops arrived at Itztapalapa on the shores of the Lake of Mexico, quoted in F Katz,
Ancient American Civilisations
(London, 1989), p179.

2
Cortes’s description of Tenochtitlan and its market at Tlatelolco, quoted in F Katz,
Ancient
, p180.

3
An account of the Inca capital Cuzco by one of the Spanish conquerors, quoted in J Hemmings,
The Conquest of Peru
(London, 1970), pp120-121.

4
Columbus’s arguments are presented in
The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus by his Son Ferdinand
, translated by Benjamin Keen (New Brunswick, 1992), pp15-28.

5
On Columbus’s religious mysticism, see K Sale,
The Conquest of Paradise
(New York, 1991), p189.

6
A description of the first indigenous peoples encountered in the Caribbean by Christopher Columbus’s sailors, from
The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus
, pp60, 69.

7
Quoted in K Sale,
Paradise
, p181.

8
Letter’s text in
The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus
, p82.

9
The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus
, p71.

10
Quoted in K Sale,
Paradise
, p110.

11
On Columbus and the ‘Caribs’, see K Sale,
Paradise
, p130. There have been widespread doubts among anthropologists about the exact prevalence of cannibalism. The firm evidence seems to be that cannibalism as a
general
way of getting food has never existed, except at times of mass starvation (when it has even occurred in ‘advanced’ 20 th century societies). ‘Ritual’ eating of certain parts of dead people has been a feature very occasionally found among a few early societies based upon horticulture.

12
The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus
, p109.

13
According to Las Casas, who lived on the island for several years as a colonist before becoming a priest, quoted in K Sale,
Paradise
, p155.

14
One estimate, by Sherburne Cook and Woodrow Borah, suggests it could have been eight million. See K Sale,
Paradise
, p161.

15
Quoted in K Sale,
Paradise
, p159.

16
K Sale,
Paradise
, p182.

17
See K Sale,
Paradise
, p180.

18
Quoted in F Katz,
Ancient
, p324.

19
R C Padden,
The Hummingbird and the Hawk: Conquest and Sovereignty in the Valley of Mexico 1503-1541
(New York, 1970), p74. See also the account of class divisions, imperial expansion and religion in F Katz,
Ancient
, pp134-243.

20
Now the Almeda palace in central Mexico City.

21
V Gordon Childe, ‘The Bronze Age’, in
Past and Present
(1956).

22
J Diamond,
Guns, Germs and Steel
.

23
Quoted in F Katz,
Ancient
, p334.

24
Quoted in W H Prescott,
The Conquest of Peru
(New York, 1961), p251.

25
According to W H Prescott,
Conquest
, p251. See also F Katz,
Ancient
, p334.

26
Description and figures given by W H Prescott,
Conquest
, p253.

27
According to the account of Pedro Pizarro, quoted in F Katz,
Ancient
, p335.

28
Quoted in J Hemmings,
Peru
, p178.

29
Decree quoted in J Hemmings,
Peru
, p129.

30
J Hemmings,
Peru
, p365.

31
J Hemmings,
Peru
, p113.

32
J Hemmings,
Peru
, p376.

33
Quoted in J Hemmings,
Peru
, p347.

34
Fernando de Almellones, quoted in J Hemmings,
Peru
, p348.

35
Details in J Hemmings,
Peru
, p407.

36
Marx and Engels described it variously as a ‘balance between the nobility and the burghers’ (F Engels,
The Origins of the Family
(London, 1998), p211); as ‘an equilibrium between the landowning aristocracy and the bourgeoisie’ (F Engels,
The Housing Question
in K Marx and F Engels,
Collected Works
, vol 23 (London, 1988), p363); as ‘serving nascent middle class society as a mighty weapon in its struggle against feudalism’ (K Marx,
The Civil War in France
(London, 1996), p75); as ‘a product of bourgeois development’ (K Marx,
Capital
, vol 1 (Moscow, 1986), p672). By contrast, Perry Anderson describes it as ‘a redeployed and recharged apparatus of feudal domination…the political carapace of a threatened nobility’ (P Anderson,
Lineages of the Absolutist State
(London, 1974), p18). But if it was ‘redeployed’ or ‘recharged’ feudalism, it was through the monarchy relying on the market and leaning on the urban upper class—that is, by basing itself on elements of capitalism as well as elements of feudalism.

37
The term is Marx’s, in K Marx,
Capital
, vol 1, p686.

38
Statutes named and quoted in K Marx,
Capital
, vol 1, pp686-687.

39
For details, see H Heller,
The Conquest of Poverty: the Calvinist Revolt in 16 th Century France
(London, 1986), p27.

40
A G Dickens, ‘The Shape of Anti-Clericalism and the English Reformation’, in E I Kouri and T Scott,
Politics and Society in Reformation Europe
(London, 1987), p381.

41
See, for instance, R S Duplessis,
Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe
(Cambridge, 1997), p93.

42
At points in his numerous writings, Weber attempts to produce such an explanation in terms of the interaction of multiple factors, but he never provided a coherent account. His writings are more like footnotes to history than an account of the real historical process.

43
This is an argument even accepted by Perry Anderson in his P Anderson,
Lineages
.

44
Witold Kula gives a brilliant exposition of the dynamic and contradictions of the economy which emerged in Poland and, by implication, in many other parts of Europe in this period, in W Kula,
Economics of the Feudal System
(London, 1987). Despite its title, this book is about what I call ‘market feudalism’, not the classic feudalism of the earlier Middle Ages. It shows how the drive of the lords to buy the new goods created in the advanced industries of Britain, Holland and elsewhere could lead to stagnation, and even undermine agriculture. I suspect these conclusions apply also, at least in part, to other societies with both ‘use value’ and ‘exchange value’ sectors—such as Sung China, Abbasid Mesopotamia and Mogul India.

45
Quoted in G Mülder, ‘Martin Luther and the Political World of his Time’, in E I Kouri and T Scott,
Politics and Society in Restoration Europe
, p37.

46
H Heller,
Poverty
, p131.

47
That is, ‘prince’.

48
See especially, T A Brady,
The Politics of the Reformation in Germany
(New Jersey, 1997); P Blickle,
Communal Reformation
(London, 1992); J Abray,
The People’s Reformation
(Oxford, 1985).

49
P Blickle,
Communal
, p63.

50
P Blickle,
Communal
, p73.

51
P Blickle,
Communal
, p84.

52
G R Elton,
Reformation Europe
(Glasgow, 1963), pp53-54.

53
T A Brady,
The Politics
, p80.

54
G R Elton,
Reformation Europe
, p64.

55
Quoted in A G Dickens,
The Age of Humanism and Reformation
(London, 1977), p152.

56
P Blickle,
Communal
, p88.

57
P Blickle,
Communal
, p12.

58
P Blickle,
Communal
, p13. For a full account, together with translations of documents, see T Scott and B Scribner (eds),
The German Peasants’ War
(London, 1991).

59
For a full account of the typical response of a town oligarch, Jacob Sturm of Strasbourg, see T A Brady,
The Politics
, pp82-86.

60
P Blickle,
Communal
, p13.

61
T A Brady,
The Politics
, p83. Frederick Engels’ 1850 account,
The Peasant War in Germany
contains a detailed description of the movement in different regions, in K Marx and F Engels,
Collected Works
, vol 10 (London, 1978), pp399-477. For a Marxist history which pays less attention to the details of battles, see E Belfort Bax,
The Peasants’ War in Germany
(London, 1899).

62
The 12 points are printed in T Scott and B Scribner (eds),
The German Peasants’ War
, pp252-257.

63
P Blickle,
Communal
, p50.

64
G R Elton,
Reformation Europe
, p59.

65
F Engels,
The Peasant War
, p449.

66
Villagers in Shaffhausen, quoted in P Blickle,
Communal
, p48.

67
G R Elton,
Reformation Europe
, p59.

68
Quoted in F Engels,
The Peasant War
, p419.

69
Quoted in L Febvre,
Martin Luther
(London, 1930), p258.

70
Quoted in L Febvre,
Martin Luther
, p258.

71
P Blickle,
Communal
, p199.

72
Quoted in K Kautsky,
Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation
(New York, 1966), p136.

73
G R Elton,
Reformation Europe
, pp58, 94.

74
Most famously in the case of Goetz von Berlichingen.

75
Quoted in P Blickle,
Communal
, p200.

76
H Heller,
Poverty
, p137.

77
H Heller,
Poverty
, p70.

78
Honore de Balzac,
About Catherine de Medici
(London, 1910), p59.

79
H Heller,
Poverty
, p175.

80
H Heller,
Poverty
, p139.

81
H Heller,
Poverty
, p172.

82
The centrepiece of the recent much acclaimed film,
La Reine Margot
.

83
H Heller,
Poverty
, pp246-247.

84
G B Elton, in his standard work
Reformation Europe
, can claim, ‘Nowhere did it [Calvinism] owe its original reception or its wider successes to…to any imagined advantages for middle class economic ambitions’, p234.

85
This certainly happened to their ‘foreign’ allies. There was bitter opposition in Strasbourg—still then part of the empire—to an alliance with Calvinist nobles who wanted to buy the bishopric of the town for one of their juvenile kin. See J Abray,
The People’s Reformation
.

86
For a very good selection of the contending interpretations, see T K Rabb (ed),
The Thirty Years War
(Boston, 1965).

87
They also played an important part in the progress of science and technology by carrying knowledge of certain post-Renaissance European discoveries to China. See C A Ronan and L Needham,
The Shorter Science and Civilisation of China
, vol 4 (Cambridge, 1994), p220.