An excerpt: Civilization and Capitalism

자료: 구글도서
출처: Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century: The wheels of commerce
지은이: F. Braudel

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(...)

The world outside Europe

To ask whether Europe was, or was not, at the same stage of exchange as the other densely-populated regions of the worldㅡthat is other previliged areas like itselfㅡis to ask a crucial question. But production, exchange and consumption, ^at the levels at which we have so far described them^ are elementary obligations for all populations; (...)


(...) Islam is famous for its crowded markets and streets of narrow shops, grouped according to their specialty and still to be seen today in the celebrated ^souks^ of its big cities. Every imaginable kind of market is to be found here: some outside the city walls, spreading over a wide area and forming a gigantic traffice jam at the monumental city gates, ‘on a sort of no man's land’which is not quite in the city, finding a place for themselves as best they can in the narrow streets, unless they occupy large buidlings like Bezestan in Istanbul. Inside the towns, markets were specialized. Labour markets appeared very early in Seville and Granada during Muslim ruleㅡand in Bagdad. And there were countless run-of-the-mill markets for grain, wheat, barley, eggs, raw silk, cotton, wool, fish, wood, sour milkㅡno fewer than 35 different markets inside Cairo according to Maqrizi. Did one of them act as an Exchange, at least for money-changers, as a recent book suggest(1965)? [478]

In short, all the characteristics of the European market are there: the peasant who comes to town, anxious to obtain the money he needs to pay his taxes, and who simply looks in at the market long enough to do so: the energetic salesman with his ready tongue and manner who pre-empts the rural seller's wares, in spite of prohibitions; the animation and the social appeal of the market, where one can always find prepared food on sale form a merchant, ‘meatballs, dishes of chick pea, fritter.’

In India, which very soon fell a prey to the money economy, there was not a village, strange as it may seem(...) which did not have its market. The reason was that dues payable by the community to absentee landlords or to the Great Mogulㅡwho was voracious as the formerㅡhad to be converted into money before being paid. To do so meant selling grain or rice or dye-plants and the Banyan merchant was always on thad to facilitate the operation and make a profit for himself if possible. In the towns, (...)