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The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century, Volume 1
By examining in detail the material life of pre-industrial peoples around the world, Fernand Braudel significantly changed the way historians view their subject. Volume I describes food and drink, dress and housing, demography and family structure, energy and technology, money and credit, and the growth of towns.
Paperback, 623 pages
Published
December 23rd 1992
by University of California Press
(first published 1981)
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(Not everyone will find this book easy to read. The author makes no concessions whatsoever to the reader. The book is crammed with place names and technical vocabulary from weaving, joining, planing, sailing, ploughing, leaching, waxing, glazing, coining, minting, metallurgy, etc. etc... none of which are ever located or explained. Readers of Whitman or Catullus, poets who revel in proper nouns, will not be troubled by this cornucopia of names. For me, the book was fabulous, rich, insightful...more
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"The past is like a foreign country: they do things differently there." One need only have seen a painting of England's Elizabeth I to have realized as much—who nowadays wears a ruff? Though Fernand Braudel had in mind a different purpose in writing The Structures of Everyday Life, it could be taken as another stack of evidence for L. P. Hartley's pithy observation. And it's a bounty.
This book is one part of a three-volume survey of pre-industrial economic life—of the entir...more
This book is one part of a three-volume survey of pre-industrial economic life—of the entir...more
Those who think about the apocalypse, and wonder if it will happen to us, should read this book and be reminded that great tragedies are the norm, rather than the exception for most of human history.
I'm going to start a review of this book even though I'm not done with it, because I think I may not finish it. It's a little on the pedantic side, with the author using academese and endeavoring to prove the merits of his methodology even at the cost of readability. It has illustrations...more
I'm going to start a review of this book even though I'm not done with it, because I think I may not finish it. It's a little on the pedantic side, with the author using academese and endeavoring to prove the merits of his methodology even at the cost of readability. It has illustrations...more
I don't know if I'll ever finish this - I use it mainly to read myself to sleep, and my edition is so shittily bound that it is falling apart. But it's great stuff - fascinating delving into everything from cereal production to patent applications, with a meandering narrative that somehow brings out the wider implications of all the minutiae in interesting ways. It purports to be global, but like most things written by Western authors that purport to be global, it has a heavy European focus, tho...more
Braudel is a French historian famous for his longue duree conception of large-scale change, which he laid out in his Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme, XVe-XVIIIe siècle, tome 1 : Les structures du quotidien, written in a POW camp in WWII (ha, what did YOU do when you were in a POW Camp in WWII? Olivier Messaien, put your hand down.) In this three volume set he lays out his argument for a conception of history as taking place on three main spheres: material life, which has develop...more
Epic in both vision and execution, Braudel's "Stuctures of Civiliisation" turns your accustomed way of thinking about history up side down. In writing his history of the world from the 14th to 18th centuries, Braudel eschews the personalities and events that fill the pages of most history. Instead, he focuses on the day-to-day lifes of normal (non-elite) in an attempt to compare and contrast the various civilisations, sub-civilisations and cultures of the world.
Although th...more
Although th...more
The first volume of Braudel’s massive work on the construction of capitalism in the 15th to 18th century sets the stage for all that is to come. It is an exhaustive survey of the social and economics conditions in Europe and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the world at the beginning of the 15th century.
The amount of primary research that went into this is mind boggling. Everything you ever wanted to know about how much livestock the average farmer in Batvia had to what were the tren...more
The amount of primary research that went into this is mind boggling. Everything you ever wanted to know about how much livestock the average farmer in Batvia had to what were the tren...more
Okay, then. Let's be clear: This is how it's done. This is how the structures and flows and mapping of another world, another time are analysed. This is how it's done. The first volume of Braudel's 3-volume "Structures of Everyday Life: Civilisation and Capitalism, 15th-18th-C." is magisterial in the clear sense of the word: the work of a master.
This isn't narrative history. I'll warn you about that. This is an analysis of the bones of history, of the economics and commerc...more
This isn't narrative history. I'll warn you about that. This is an analysis of the bones of history, of the economics and commerc...more
It's hard to imagine a modern historical landscape without Braudel's influence. I really, really like the idea of a "bottom up" history that takes into account all the raw material that makes up everyday life.
OK, so he's a Eurocentrist and, maybe worse, a Francocentrist. Oh well. Take the bad with the good. I'd probably like him a bit more if he focused on specific material histories rather than trying to write a History of Everything Everywhere, but if I think of this as...more
OK, so he's a Eurocentrist and, maybe worse, a Francocentrist. Oh well. Take the bad with the good. I'd probably like him a bit more if he focused on specific material histories rather than trying to write a History of Everything Everywhere, but if I think of this as...more
This goes for this whole series - Braudel is a genius, and a patient one. I can't imagine anyone poring over so many seemingly mundane details and mining gold from it as he does.
And yet much of it is lost to me. I simply can't read him for more than 15 minutes at a stretch. If anyone has tips on how to read him with greater profit, I'm all ears.
And yet much of it is lost to me. I simply can't read him for more than 15 minutes at a stretch. If anyone has tips on how to read him with greater profit, I'm all ears.
This three-volume set should be required reading for anyone with a serious interest in the pre-industrial past. The work abounds with useful information on the past conditions of everyday life on a wide variety of subjects. I was interested while reading to gauge Braudel's economic theories--he more or less equates capitalism with big business and admits that market trade at least at the smaller level of everyday life was largely beneficial to the people. It makes an interesting read in terms...more
I read the chapter about the advent of artillery, printing and modern navigation. I admit I was surprised by the quality of Braudel's writing. He manages to condense a lot of information in a style similar but more eloquent than Chaunu's. Definitely, this book is worh reading in its entirety! :)
An amazingly readable, informative, and enjoyable book. The sources sparkle, the scope does not overwhelm. I recommend this read wholeheartedly.
Ryan
is currently reading it
This is one of the most thorough accounts of european history i have read. It seams like a college text book, but the read is rather enjoying
Jan-Maat
added it
The chapter on daily bread is compelling and worth the cover price of the book. An amazing recreation of the early modern period.
The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization & Capitalism 15th-18th Century Volume 1 by Fernand Braudel (1979)
The first volume in a three-part series by renown historian and social historian Fernand BRaudel.
This book, and the entire three volume series, offers a different way to look at history. Braudel cuts across the traditional time-line view of history to give us glimpses of the history of normal, everyday things, such as food, clothes, furniture, farming technology...
He paints pictures of human life often ignored in biographies or the histories of wars, countries and empires.
This book is well worth the read. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading history or...more
He paints pictures of human life often ignored in biographies or the histories of wars, countries and empires.
This book is well worth the read. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading history or...more
NICE
Isaac Martin
added it
Love it so far.
Reads like a textbook -- fairly dry & factual -- but it contains some interesting material about what life was like during those four centuries, how things changed and what didn't change. It seems to have a European focus, with material about the middle East, far East, and the new world.
Lots of reviews say this is hard to read...I disagree. Very entertaining book.
Basically a humanist/historian version of Vaclav Smil.
Basically a humanist/historian version of Vaclav Smil.
He doesn't get 5 stars because of the torturous prose (it must be nasty to read in French), but this is a simply brilliant book.
I just adore Braudel - his way to combine things together and show you the relations between them. Super!
Fascinating stuff but so broad-ranging I lost focus, for the time being.
Fl�vio
added it
Sociologia...
Graydon
marked it as to-read
Lean
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Teresa
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