In The Structures of Everyday Life; the Limits of the Possible,
volume one of his three volume set Civilization and Capitalism 15-18th
Century, Fernand Braudel, by compilation of detail upon detail, by comprehensive
listings of the things that make up daily life, and by pointillist visual
and verbal maps of the world, combines the data of many disciplines so
as to suggest vast slow currents of civilization. He argues that the rich
context of pre-industrial societies can best be understood by portraying
the material civilization against the economic civilization. He confesses
that there is no clear demarcation between the material -- rural, barter-based
and static -- and the economic -- agile, market-based and sophisticated
-- portions of society, but suggests that together material and economic
"civilizations" erect above themselves a society which they must bear.
(Perhaps Braudel has a Foucaultian-style social archaeology in mind). For
instance, he discusses the relatively rapid changes in upper-class Western
fashion and asks
[c]an it have been merely by coincidence that the future was to belong
to the societies fickle enough to care about changing the colours, materials
and shapes of costume, as well as the social order and the map of the world
-- societies, that is, which were ready to break with their traditions?
There is a connection. Perhaps if the door is to be opened to innovation,
the source of all progress, there must first be some restlessness which
may express itself in such trifles as dress, the shape of shoes and hairstyles?1
Each part, then, of the structure of material life is emblematic and
expressive of deeper phenomena: "the energies, possibilities, demands and
joie de vivre of a given society, economy and civilization." (323) Braudel's
entire survey is shaped by the conviction that "at the very deepest levels
of material life, there is at work a complex order, to which the assumptions,
tendencies and unconscious pressures of economies, societies and civilizations
all contribute." (333)
Braudel starts by touching on the difficulties of estimating the population
of the world, choosing among methods of calculation, modestly picking middle
numbers and concluding that the world population around 1600 might have
been in the range of 287 to 442 million. He describes birth rates, death
rates, common diseases and the level of available animal resources for
food. As he moves on, he begins a comparison of the lifestyles of the rich
and poor, using these categories as a convenient substitute for a comparison
of the material and economic civilizations of the world. He offers an absorbing
discussion of the rise and distribution of crops, agricultural methods,
and the cooking methods prevalent for the staple items, explaining who
ate what, where, when and how. In this vein tracks the rise of luxury and
transitional luxury items such as salt, pepper, spices, tobacco, coffee,
tea and chocolate. He continues with home arrangements, furniture (mentioning
China as a unique blend of Western and Eastern styles) and fashion. He
canvasses sources of energy, including animal, wood, human and wind, focusing
on the development of coke. He notes that the Chinese may have known how
to produce coke and had the necessary mechanical technology for the industrial
revolution in the 13th century, but did not put the power and technology
together presumably because they were a static, non-innovative society,
as typified by their resistance to change in material things such as fashion.
Despite refinements like damask steel (origins mysterious) the great revolution
in metallurgy had yet to happen: the time period under consideration was
"very much the age of wood." (382) He moves swiftly through artillery,
printing and ocean navigation, listing competing technologies such as the
exemplary low-tech solution to a high tech problem: earthenwork barriers
thrown up around towns to stop cannon shot from breaking the heavy but
brittle stone walls. On this note he also mention the nearly world-wide
fear of the open sea, and stops again to point out that need alone drives
the application of technology. Finally he follows the cycles of competition
between gold and silver as they are mediated by a multitudinous jumble
of financial instruments. (Of money in general it can be said that its
velocity is slow and its direction is east.) Braudel ends in the towns
and cities, insisting on the town as a market, describing the town as the
queen of countryside, creating its own subjects and resources, and traveling
across the world illustrating the growth of the town into a city, a capital,
a synecdoche of the state.
Braudel's work suggests many avenues of pursuit, but three questions
stand out. First, what things "caught on," and why? For instance, beyond
climactic limitations, why were some crops more successful than others
in colonizing other parts of the world? What luxuries were desired, and
to what extent did they carry with them the essence of the culture they
came from? Second, Braudel mentions that the luxury of goods such gem encrusted
clothing is a means of government. Perhaps the notion of a hierarchy is
being visibly enforced? Then is mass production as a means of government
for democracies, the notion of replaceability being so enforced? That is,
would it be possible for the Duc de Berry to choose to order a hundred
shoes for poor people instead of a book of hours? Finally, Braudel asserts
that "[n]o innovation has any value except in relation to the social pressure
which maintains and imposes it. (431). In other words, technology is either
the possible unachieved or the ceiling needing to be broken (335). Technology
must be driven by need (or perceived need) otherwise the barriers to change
are too high. If agricultural technology is the prime example of the importance
of neglected material civilization, then what would be an example of the
neglected or undiscovered technology of economic civilization?
1 Fernand Braudel. The Structures of Everyday Life; The Limits of the
Possible. Civilization and Capitalism 15-18th Century, Vol. 1.. New York:
Harper and Rowe., 1979. 324. All quotations in the text are to this edition.