The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, by Fernand Braudel
Baumann, Fred
BOOKS IN REVIEW - The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II Fernand Braudel / Harper & Row / $5.95 & $6.95 (2 vols.) n 1923 Fernand Braudel began a study of I Philip II's...
...The account of Spanish diplomacy served merely as the core of the work's last third, and Braudel only decided to include it after much hesitation...
...n 1923 Fernand Braudel began a study of I Philip II's Mediterranean foreign policy...
...In discussing decisions taken in potential opposition to economic self-interest, such as the expulsion of Jewish merchants and Morisco peasants, the burden on the proponent of cultural "destiny" becomes even heavier...
...The separation into three levels follows Braudel's image of history as a "song for many voices...
...Henry Regnery, Editor Eliseo Vivas has attained eminence and respect as a philosopher, teacher and author...
...i Viva Vivas...
...The attempt to assimilate the Moriscos, disaster that it was, shows this...
...It is the sort of thing one enjoys in Rabelais or Ripley's Believe It or Not, but No .Avawilable: The Theory of Moral Sentiments By Adam Smith Adam Smith's first book will startle those who think capitalists are purely selfish, for Smith fully understood that liberty must be based in a moral order...
...Occasionally, partisanship simply distorts the argument...
...The great catastrophe of Philip's reign, the war against the Netherlands, was undeniably fateful for the Mediterranean...
...And its ultimate teaching, radically opposed to Braudel's own sentiments, is the vulgar triumphalism Jacob Burckhardt warned against, the base and wicked advice always to cheer the conqueror and mock the victim...
...Still, there is a tension between the claim of scientific objectivity and underlying emotions and moral concerns...
...In 1949 he published it...
...His own account (page 1040) makes it clear that the decisive issue was Philip's own refusal to rule over heretics, something that his equally pious father Charles V had ultimately had to accept...
...Braudel shows repeatedly and ingeniously how climatic and geographic conditions forbade certain choices and relationships and commanded others...
...Those who persuade, whether by words—like Joseph Goebbels or Martin Luther—or by example—like Joseph Stalin or Vladimir Bukovsky—often have a considerable power to create new conditions within which men once more understand themselves to be compelled...
...Two things had happened in the meanwhile...
...Countervailing contemporary sources are treated skeptically as probably expressing class bias...
...That is, they are political considerations...
...Iberian civilization" was no exception...
...The rise and decay of the two great empires of Turkey and Spain are produced by these forces, and the contrast between Turkish tolerance and Spanish persecution of minorities is referred to differences in population density...
...But Braudel also adduces Spain's cultural destiny as an explanation...
...To order these books, or for a copy of our catalog, write: LibertyPress/LibertyClassics 7440 North Shadeland, Dept...
...Of course, these details never stand alone but invariably serve to prove or illustrate some more general observation...
...And then there is the intriguing story of the fashion in clothing that skipped from China and Siberia to Bulgaria, Catalonia, and eventually to France...
...But although he states that the war was inevitable, his evidence seems to point in the opposite direction...
...Large cities especially are monsters and parasites, their luxury industries mere waste and exploitation—not, as one might think, chances for employment for those whom the land cannot support...
...The first, "The Role of the Environment," is an original, brilliant, and Fred Baumann is a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution...
...for instance, could the chance of freedom in the city have been worth the chance of an empty stomach...
...His fundamental thesis about the Mediterranean is that it did not decline in the sixteenth century, as earlier historians had thought, but that visible decline set in only after 1650...
...Just as Braudel's success in explaining, for example, the mutual disengagement of Habsburgs and Ottomans at the century's end is made to support his Tolstoyan fatalism, so too his pessimism about the power of human reason and will to influence the course of history permeates the content of his work...
...Second, using an approach emphasizing geography and long-range economic and demographic forces, he had produced a classic historical work...
...The second part, "Collective Destinies and General Trends," is a social and economic history containing set-piece treatments of topics like the century's inflation and its alleged connection with American silver...
...It is distinguished by a sedulous care to balance the traditional emphasis on Spanish policy with a picture of parallel Turkish developments...
...A worthy tribute to a worthy man" — The Christian Century...
...Hardcover $7.95, Paperback $1.95...
...The rapid increase of population and the consequent food shortage explain both the boom of the century's first half and the increasing malaise of the second—with its banditry, ruinous inflation, and bankruptcies...
...Thus, he balances his expressed distaste at Spanish persecution of Jews and Moslems by arguing its inevitability...
...The Theory of Moral Sentiments was greeted with rapturous praise in its own day...
...Answering them involves calculation and choice by all the actors in the public arena...
...30 The American Spectator April 1978...
...But in Braudel's case, the methodological argument against focusing on "the actions of a few princes and rich men, the trivia of the past," is explicit and insistent...
...Libe Press LibertyClassics We pay postage on prepaid orders...
...The "mob of literati," Hume added, "are beginning to be very loud in its praise...
...Thus, the Portuguese discovery of a direct route to the East Indian spices did not end the traffic through the Red Sea to Venice...
...BOOK REVIEW The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II Fernand Braudel / Harper & Row / $5.95 & $6.95 (2 vols...
...Now available in two imposing and relatively sturdy paperback volumes, it seems to be earning the recognition it deserves...
...In a significant touch, he even compares the brigands' use of border areas to Voltaire's move to the borders of France...
...In expelling the Moors and the Jews, Spain chose Europe over Africa or the Orient...
...There is a bravura passage on the ice and sherbert trade which climaxes with a report from a Venetian traveller that the Syrians "sprinkle snow on their food and dishes as we would sugar...
...Even the Baroque, as Italian a cultural movement as the Renaissance, is brought in as evidence of the Mediterranean's vitality...
...The evidence he submits throughout is most varied, extensive, and convincing...
...In his conclusion, Braudel defines the true man of action as the one who takes advantage of the weight of the inevitable, exerting his own pressure in the same direction...
...By pursuing it, Spain ignored its "geographical mission" to subdue North Africa and unite the Western Mediterranean...
...First, Braudel had renounced traditional political history, the study of individual actors and events, in favor of the method of the Annales school of social and economic history, pioneered by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre...
...In the end it was Philip, not History, that chose, and it was History, more than Philip, that changed...
...In fact, his rejection of political history is not a merely technical matter, separable from the real interest of the book...
...Braudel admits that Philip erred in trying to turn a commercial, northern nation into another Spain...
...He notes Margaret of Parma's relative success in dividing the aristocracy from the radical Calvinists before Philip sent the ruthless Alva...
...Like all civilizations, Spain had to shed part of its past in moving forward...
...This volume in his honor includes a bibliography of his published works and essays by Hugh Kenner, Russell Kirk, Peter J. Stanlis, Stephen J. Tonsor and others...
...Fred Baumann elaborately detailed geographical survey...
...Italy held a favorable trade balance with the north throughout the century and the Genoese bankers were the paymasters of Europe between 1579 and 1627...
...But, fortunately, the work is not a scorecard...
...Its abstract opposite, the theory of cultural survival through acceptance of the past, is equally banal and equally true...
...Chapter and verse are provided for each quoted passage...
...The real questions are what (or who) gets pruned, at whatcost, and why...
...Hardcover $7.95...
...The last section, "Events, Politics and People," is a wide-ranging history of diplomacy and war that is almost contemptuously tacked on...
...According to Braudel, the bankruptcy of the Spanish state, incurred in that war, tipped the balance of power...
...Traditions are of course powerful conditioners, just like harvests and mountains...
...But for its proclivity to catch cold, it appears there might not have been a Lebanese civil war last year...
...The effort is desultory and confused in the case of the Morisco expulsions, more articulated in regard to the Jews...
...Spain in fact becomes the object of rhetorical pity, having been "forced to inflict so much change upon itself...
...But cultures are also "songs for many voices" and there is usually room for interpretation of the tradition...
...Long an unread classic for American undergraduates, Sian Reynolds' flowing translation was only published in hardcover in 1972...
...At other times, Braudel seeks to check the expression of sympathy by invoking scientific objectivity...
...In this case the general theory of cultural pruning begs the issue...
...Granted that hunger was the major cause of banditry, it is still hard to avoid irritation at the sentimentalizing of brutality, particularly in view of our own ample experience with contemporary bandits who, surely no innovators in this respect, specialize in attacking the old, the weak, and the poor...
...Spanish destiny was apparently agile enough to avoid that exigency...
...One gets a powerful sense of the physical realities of Mediterranean life: how long it took to make certain journeys, how much corn had to be reserved for seed...
...The economic and demographic argument is weakened by Braudel's use of the fact of Jewish expulsion to argue back to the possibility that Spain was already overpopulated by 1492, half a century before the overpopulation pressures of his general theory are said to obtain...
...A7 Indianapolis, Indiana 46250 The American Spectator April 1978 29 with the additional charm of scholarly reliability...
...Ultimately, the reader must ask not only how convincing the evidence is for the historical theses Braudel proposes, but also what the connection is between these discussions and the larger case being made for the impotence of man...
...His sentiments are at least consonant with his methodology, which sets out to reduce the powerful and wealthy to their true historical insignificance...
...After all, what really compels is what is felt to be compelling...
...Initially, though, it is hard to ask anything in the immediate response of wonder and delight...
...Despite its erudition and brilliance, Braudel's history does not persuade me that this is true...
...Braudel places heavy reliance on Robin Hood stories to make his case for the popularity of brigands...
...The Concise Bible A condensation by Frances Kanes Hazlitt While only one-twelfth the size of the complete Bible, this edition introduces the reader to all 66 books, with the full text of the most famous passages from the King James version...
...And I am not convinced that a consideration of the "destinies" of France, England, and the Holy Roman Empire would have led one to expect their experiments in religious tolerance in this period...
...in 1563 the Portuguese themselves were negotiating for rights to that route...
...For it is in grain harvests and the birth rate that Braudel finds the keys to historical causation...
...Here, Braudel's love for the region emerges most vividly as the Mediterranean itself seems to become a living force...
...He vividly describes communities blackmailed by the government into handing over bandits, but gives no hint that the bandits themselves might have been extorting the villages' support...
...Hardcover $9.95, Softcover $2.95...
...They may provide order in the countryside and may even bring freedom to the peasant who flees feudal obligations, but they will not necessarily feed him or make him happy...
...Smith's friend David Hume wrote to him from London soon after the publication, telling him that "the public seem disposed to applaud it extremely...
...What gives the entire book much of its flavor is the profusion of illuminating and striking factual detail, derived from an astonishing quantity and variety of sources...
...Of course, the appeal to historical inevitability is itself one of the most powerful means of persuasion...
...So too does Braudel's own evidence that Philip II never more deserved the title "The Prudent King" than when dodging papal requests for a crusade against the Turks...
...He emphasizes Philip's caution in dealing with the Turks and the heretic Elizabeth for most of his reign...
...it reflects a radical difference from traditional historians in understanding the human condition...
...Any work that achieves great success tends by that fact alone to become an argument for the method by which its success is achieved...
...With grudging reservations, Braudel is passionately hostile to cities...
...The historian who argues for the inevitability of developments shoulders an enormous burden, and Braudel's efforts are appropriately Herculean...
...Then there is the provocative observation that non-Islamic communities survived the Arab conquest on mountaintops because the Arabs had the wrong kind of camel...
...And if northern ships appeared more frequently in the Mediterranean, this only shows the prosperity and importance of the region...
...The book is composed of three large sections which divide history into levels...
...The weight of economic forces may leave more room for choice than the determinist would allow...
...Braudel's passions are everywhere in evidence, engaged on behalf of the poor and obscure...
...E. G. West, who writes the introduction, asserts that "if The Wealth of Nations had never been written, this previous work would have earned for him a prominent place in intellectual history...
...What appeared, however, was something different, a monumental history of the Mediterranean Sea itself in the second half of the sixteenth century...
...Thus, a "form of vengeance upon the ruling class and its lopsided justice, banditry has been at alltimes, more or less everywhere, a righter of wrongs...
...Awesome erudition and great powers of organization and interpretation enabled him to overturn the categorical judgments of previous generations of historians...
Vol. 11 • April 1978 • No. 6
