I finished James Belich’s The World The Plague Made. It’s not a period or topic I know a lot about so it’s been kind of a struggle to read. I picked it up b/c it won the Wolfson prize last year and seemed interesting. I can’t really assess his argument but I found some things very interesting, like tying the Atlantic Slave trade back to labor shortage during the plague. He also makes an argument that Italy, especially the Genovese, had a lot more to do with the capitalist innovations that get attributed to the Netherlands and England. He made an interesting point of the number of Genovese in England in finance in the 17th century and points out how Cromwell’s family heavily intermarried with their families.

The basic thesis is there’s a group of innovations during the plague era that were used throughout the world to different degrees that were responsible for a lot of the innovation in the following centuries and it those innovations were more widespread across Europe and the Middle East than generally assumed. The basic ones were crew labor groups (groups of men not needed for grain production who went into other work like commercial sailing/mercenary work/specialized trades), gun powder militaries, gun forts and armed galleons. I don’t know enough to assess those, but he does make an interesting argument and provides examples of various Arab and Muslim nations and Russia/Muscovites using these innovations to expand into Asia and/or Africa.

It seems like one of those big books that probably has a lot of issues, but that popularizes a lot of other people’s ideas that will be important in the next decade. I just don’t know enough to assess any of it. It also has a lot more to do with the 16th and 17th century than the 14th century than I would have thought based on its topic.

One of the more interesting tidbits to me was there was a specific type of Italian mercenary that would just heckle the opposing army. They weren’t fighters. They were just hired to heckle. One army mentioned early in the book used the number of these guys they could hire as an example of how much military force they could hire b/c they had a whole company of these guys. I can’t remember the name of them and I couldn’t find it in the index or notes, but it started with a B.

If you're interested in the lead up to industrialization, economics of the 16th century, and a more integrated look at middle eastern and European history for this period I would recommend it. It was really interesting. Even if you're like me and mostly read about the 19th century, there is still a lot to get about this.

7 points elmonoenano

I finished James Belich’s The World The Plague Made. It’s not a period or topic I know a lot about so it’s been kind of a struggle to read. I picked it up b/c it won the Wolfson prize last year and seemed interesting. I can’t really assess his argument but I found some things very interesting, like tying the Atlantic Slave trade back to labor shortage during the plague. He also makes an argument that Italy, especially the Genovese, had a lot more to do with the capitalist innovations that get attributed to the Netherlands and England. He made an interesting point of the number of Genovese in England in finance in the 17th century and points out how Cromwell’s family heavily intermarried with their families.

The basic thesis is there’s a group of innovations during the plague era that were used throughout the world to different degrees that were responsible for a lot of the innovation in the following centuries and it those innovations were more widespread across Europe and the Middle East than generally assumed. The basic ones were crew labor groups (groups of men not needed for grain production who went into other work like commercial sailing/mercenary work/specialized trades), gun powder militaries, gun forts and armed galleons. I don’t know enough to assess those, but he does make an interesting argument and provides examples of various Arab and Muslim nations and Russia/Muscovites using these innovations to expand into Asia and/or Africa.

It seems like one of those big books that probably has a lot of issues, but that popularizes a lot of other people’s ideas that will be important in the next decade. I just don’t know enough to assess any of it. It also has a lot more to do with the 16th and 17th century than the 14th century than I would have thought based on its topic.

One of the more interesting tidbits to me was there was a specific type of Italian mercenary that would just heckle the opposing army. They weren’t fighters. They were just hired to heckle. One army mentioned early in the book used the number of these guys they could hire as an example of how much military force they could hire b/c they had a whole company of these guys. I can’t remember the name of them and I couldn’t find it in the index or notes, but it started with a B.

If you're interested in the lead up to industrialization, economics of the 16th century, and a more integrated look at middle eastern and European history for this period I would recommend it. It was really interesting. Even if you're like me and mostly read about the 19th century, there is still a lot to get about this.