Publisher's Synopsis
This second collection of articles by AndrÚ-E. Sayous continues directly with the themes of the first; Sayous himself saw his articles as a series, parts of an effort to establish the essential groundwork for a history of the development of capitalism in Western Europe. The full scope of his work can be seen from the bibliography. Though Sayous always insisted on the primacy of careful archival research, he was ready to take issue with theorists such as Sombart or Weber over the nature of capitalism, and echoes of the polemics are evident here. But the enduring merits of his work are its attention to detail and the fact that it gives a picture of how commercial and financial operations were actually run. Of the articles here, over half deal with the trade and monetary relations between Spain and its new American empire, noteworthy being the emphasis on the key role of the Genoese, and the treatment of the 16th-century Spanish mercantilists. The remaining articles carry the analysis forward to Augsburg and Amsterdam in the late 16th and 17th centuries.
