Review Article

THE GEOHISTORY OF FERNAND BRAUDEL

Any historian feels free to shift, enlarge, or contract his spatial or temporal
field of attention, but the building of formal conceptions of time and space
as flexible is something else. Fernand Braudel's recent book contains many
revisions of judgment concerning the economic history of the centuries it treats,
and also a way of handling space and time that gives the volume theoretical
as well as historical interest.1 In his title, "the Mediterranean" refers to the
region as well as to the sea. His "Mediterranean world" includes various out-
side areas, some remote, that have been related to the region by the activities of
man in society. Peripheral mountains and deserts, for example, are considered
in much detail, and four historic corridors (he calls them isthmuses) to northern
waters are formally discussed. His "Epoch of Philip II" is in the first third
of the book hardly a temporal "home port"; it is touched more frequently in
Part II and is much used in the final section.
In Part I we find "geographic time." "Geohistory" is presented to us as human
geography in historical rather than descriptive order. This handling of the
connective tissue between social and natural phenomena produces surprising and
rather happy results, for though natural settings are not in the social scientist's
own field of investigation, they cannot be ignored. The "geographic time"
treated reaches from the beginnings of occupation of the region by man. In
Part II the emphasis is shifted to social development in a somewhat shorter
"social time," but the reader is constantly reminded of natural settings. This
method results in some repetition. In Part III, we find "individual time," but
the epoch turns out to be roughly the century 1530-1630, or considerably more
than one lifetime. By this organization of his volume, M. Braudel has placed
the short-run or "eventmental" history (Simiand's fails evenementiels)—the
momentary surface of events—in contact with the problems of the long run.
The author's heart is really in the longer continuities. Even in Part III, which
deals with the shortest time and is packed with information, attention ranges
freely from an epoch that was a transition period and in itself long for "indi-
vidual time." The work combines vast research with even larger syntheses.
Many years of observation and study have left Braudel with the conviction
that the Mediterranean environment is stubbornly resistant to human designs.
In line with much other recent work, he revises sharply downward the old
estimates of ancient population and settled area. He gives to transhumance in
semiarid regions its proper place as a factor in shaping institutions. Coastal
plains and marshes which, once reclaimed, were the most fertile areas, presented
obstacles in many cases too great for ancient equipment. The successful projects
were typically large and integral ones, unfavorable to small proprietorship and
making for servile tenures that changed more in form than in meaning over
the centuries.

1
Fernand Braudel, La Miditenanet et le monde mcditeiraneen a Vvpoquc de Philippe II.
Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1949, pp. XV, 1160. Fr. 1800.
 Geohistory of Fernand Braudel 213
Contrary to what is often alleged, great extensions and improvements of
cultivated area were made by the Moors in Spain and were continued under
their successors. Similar developments in other Mediterranean lands occurred
with little lag, and in some cases perhaps with none. The separation of the
African grain fields from Spain by the final defeat of the Moors in Spain is
viewed by Braudel as a major and lasting handicap. It prevented the proper
specialization of Spanish agriculture and made the basic food supply chronically
hazardous.
This consideration of human geography is a basic element in Braudel's
interpretation of the contest between Spain and Turkey. He thinks that the
African coast eastward to the Sicilian narrows could have been taken by Spain
with relative ease at any time until well into the sixteenth century. A little
more foresight and concentration of effort could have sharply limited the struggle.
The Turks themselves were drawn on and weakened by false hopes of a
decision in the West, failing to see their most promising destiny in the East
until too late. The terms in which the contest was waged diverted Spanish
resources and attention to the control of lands and sea routes far off the course
of Spain's great opportunity, and caused her to fight without reliable allies.
Venice could never stand a war that would cut off her food supply and markets
in the eastern Mediterranean for a considerable length of time. Spain got heavy
subsidies from the Papacy for fighting infidels and heretics, but these grew to
a point that imposed choices, and some Popes wanted all enemies fought at once.
French territorial ambitions and French tendencies to Protestantism and to favor
the Moslem side chronically menaced Spain. Moreover, the land mass of France
could hardly have been in a more embarrassing position between Spain and
areas vital to her, especially in an age of crude organization and slow, erratic
communications. With two quite different sea frontages, Spain was not able
to unify her fleet or to exert sufficient force either way. Some of the most
interesting detail in Braudel's book deals in this connection with fleets of war
galleys and with corsair groups of many, mixed, and uncertain nationalities.
M. Braudel's major proposition concerns the shift of financial and commercial
preponderance from the Mediterranean. He maintains that the balance was
consistently with the South until well into the seventeenth century and supports
this contention with a chain of revisions that will be discussed roughly in
the sequence of the conditions and events to which they refer.
Population growth and urbanization had gradually shifted the Mediterranean
region from a net export to a net import position with respect to grain. The
effects took on decisive importance during the second half of the sixteenth
century. Among the effects was much easier and larger access of northern
shipping to Mediterranean waters. Venice, with an economy as close as any
to what is now called "capitalism," was drawn by immediate gains into the
forwarding of northern goods such as English woolens at the expense of manu-
facturing development that was sadly missed in the long run. This specialization
in foreign trade was most attractive during a great revival of prosperity in
the Mediterranean region toward the end of the sixteenth century, to be men-
tioned again below, but the lack of industrial development was sadly missed
in the long run.

14'
 Melvin M. Knight
Braudel thinks that relationships between North Italian and South German
cities have been misconceived because they have been approached too largely from
the German end by modern historians. The vogue of Ehrenberg is particularly
noted. Braudel argues that, even at the height of Antwerp's prosperity when
the situation was confused by German relations with the Iberian peninsula
through that city, the balance never shifted from the South. He has no doubts
regarding the continuing supremacy of the South in the period following the
decline of Antwerp.
The brief financial and commercial primacy of Antwerp in the North (not in
Europe, according to this view) is attributed to the fact that the city was the chief
distributing center in its region for Spanish treasure. Let me warn that my
statement is too crude. Interwoven in Braudel's treatment of the whole period of
a century and more is an undeveloped suggestion that the commercial use of
means of payment was an indispensable factor in the location of nucleuses of
activity. The argument is much more complicated and tentative than the old
wheezes about the failures of Spain. Some decline of Antwerp by 1570 is noted.
It is explained by the growing insecurity of sea traffic through the Bay of Biscay
and the English Channel. Barcelona was revived, and specie was sent more and
more by sea to Genoa for diffusion northward over land routes.
Thus Genoa, here viewed as the most important immediate successor to
Antwerp, enjoyed for roughly a half century after 1570 or 1580 the greatest
wealth in all its history. In fact, the shift of Spanish routes was followed by a
great general revival of prosperity around the Mediterranean. Ragusa was then
at its peak, and as specialized as Venice in foreign commerce, but was a more
general carrier. Genoa was drawn by opportunity more and more into inter-
national finance as a specialty. This glowing Indian summer of Mediterranean
prosperity continued well beyond the dates most stressed in our histories in
discussing the rise of Amsterdam as a great commercial and financial center.
Mediterranean decline was gradual from about 1610, then more noticeable from
about 1620 to 1630, when (according to Braudel) preponderance shifted to the
North. This is a revision indeed. He suggests that Spain might have made its
position stronger and more durable by amalgamation or full partnership with
Portugal, especially if Lisbon had been made the nucleus of economic and
political control.
Antwerp's swift decline after great beginnings left open a magnificent opportu-
nity at the crossroads of northern commerce in the Low Countries. The Dutch
Netherlands combined defensibility with ready access to a German hinterland
that ripened for exploitation as the importance of contacts with ocean-borne
trade increased. Other Dutch advantages, including the disintegration of the
German Hanse and the weakening effects of the Thirty Years' War, need not
be discussed here. Much of Ludwig Beutin's argument concerning quasi-colonial
or economic-colonial exploitation of German areas by the Dutch after 1648 applies
also to the earlier' period of Antwerp's primacy.2 The question of systematically

2
"Nordwestdeutschland und die Niederlande seit dem Dreissigjahrigen Kriege," Vicrtcljahr-
schrift fur Sozial-und-Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Band 23, Heft 2, 1939, pp. 105-47. ' n similar
vein, M. J. Bonn once called late Czarist Russia an economic colony of Germany.
 Geohistory of Fernand Braudel 215
imposed terms of trade largely escapes Braudel, possibly because he has committed
himself to another explanation of development.
In dealing with early modern times, Braudel keeps referring to the influx
of precious metals as though it were rather literally the cause of general or
"structural" changes in politically defined economies. The idea is applied to Spain,
to Antwerp, to Genoa, and finally to Holland (in scattered statements like that
on p. 502). It seems clear that the monetary-impact feature of Franc,ois Simiand's
theory of economic development has been taken over, and has escaped the
reservations which Braudel admits (pp. 1096-97) were imposed upon him by
Earl J. Hamilton's massive data on treasure and prices in Spain.3
Beutin's work on the Mediterranean trade of the Hanse cities is noted, and
Dutch and English commercial relationships with Italian cities get considerable
attention. Although Braudel gives no account of the northward transfer of
advanced financial and commercial organization, it is clear that complex "Nordic"
business institutions were imported in large part from the South. The temporary
profitableness of the forwarding trade in northern goods, and of financing it and
Spain's distant adventures, was clearly a factor in the distortion of city-state
economies, shaping them to activities beyond their control. Cautious and limited
self-containment can have long-run advantages that the short-run economies of
a few years ago ignored.
As far as the Mediterranean-European end is concerned, the synthesis in terms
of times, places, and relative amounts is admirable. The account should end the
confusion about the times in the sixteenth century when the old land routes
from the East were important. But Braudel's flexibility in the treatment of space
is obviously reduced by a tendency to identify economic units with political ones
and by attaching critical importance to the impact of money as an exogenous
growth factor. In the medieval expansion of Europe from a settled fringe to a
settled continent, we are shown widely separated nucleuses of activity, connected
by land corridors and unified as commercial space. Once the period of great
oversea voyages is reached, the extension of Europe's economic space receives
little attention. Treasure arrives from somewhere, dislocating relationships and
somehow producing growth as- it is shifted from one area in Europe to another.
Otherwise America as a stimulus is practically ignored. Spices now arrived from
the East by way of the Atlantic as well as by the overland routes, but they
simply arrive.
Without specifically applying it, Braudel presents much material which is
applicable to the problem of Dutch commercial and financial leadership. The
defensibility of a small homeland and the singularly advantageous location have
been mentioned above. What is too commonly ignored is the timing. The Dutch

8
Simiand did not identify money with treasure, but broadened his definition of money
to fit cases as his attention moved down the centuries from the sixteenth to the twentieth.
He summarized his complex theory of development with the minimum of data and no
mathematical argument in Let Fluctuations iconomiques a longue periode et la arise mondiale
(Paris, 1932), Part I, pp. 1-62. Although not cited, the work used by Braudel was presumably
Recherche* anciennes et nouvelles sur le mouvement gineral des prix du i6e au ige siecles
(Paris, 1932). Earl Hamilton's works are too well known to need to be cited in detail here.
816 Melvin M. Knight
won a tremendous lead before the large territorial states became organized to
muster their potential wealth and power. Spanish finances ran dry every few
years, state obligations being written down in what Braudel miscalls "bank-
ruptcies." This term does not apply to a unit that remains sovereign, but to call
the phenomena "panics" or "crises" would suggest our periodic trips through the
wringer and invite other misapprehensions. And with respect to public finance
and administration, Spain was not so much more chaotic than other states at
the time as is often assumed. Overpledging of anticipated revenues, including
treasure, was chronic. Sales of titles, offices, annuities, monopolies, and public
lands were common practices, tending among other things to corrupt leadership
and prevent the development of an administration such as a large state required.
France was not much better organized at the time, and improvements in the
seventeenth century contributed more to military power than to general welfare
or competitive efficiency.
A small state such as Holland was less handicapped by the slow advance
toward a solution of the problem of organizing large contiguous space under
conditions of vast oversea expansion. Dutch commitments at considerable distances
were largely commercial in type. Commercial organization had been highly
developed during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and needed only to be
adapted to new and larger problems. The notion and practice of limited controls,
optimum for economic purposes and with as little added for political and other
reasons as possible, were to have continuing importance. The detailed timing of
events beyond their control also favored the Dutch in notable instances. They
were able to seize the opportunity afforded by the destruction of the Armada,
though the Spaniards were mainly responsible for the timing and the principal
agents were the English and the weather.
It was England, relatively small in population and area, and maritime rather
than continental in position, that was to succeed Holland as the main nucleus of
international commerce and finance. A sporadic, shifting, and increasingly unequal
partnership between the two is too little stressed in our general economic histories.
The Dutch had little choice as large territorial states solved their organizational
problems, and as technical advances favored other patterns of natural resources.
Vestiges of the British partnership were to help the Dutch in preserving earlier
gains for two centuries after they shifted to a minor relative position. It is
interesting to note that during a modern expansion of Europe, which is now
presumably over, no large continental state was able to make itself the main
nucleus of economy.

University of California, Berkeley MELVIN M. KNIGHT