Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/784

774 Rcviezus of Books Western Civilization in its Economic Aspects {Mediaeval and Modern Times). By W. Cuxxixghaii, D.D. (Cambridge University- Press. 1900. Pp. xii, 300.) Professor Cunningham has a way of breaking new ground. He is essentially a pioneer. His Growth of English Industry and Commerce introduced for the first time the ideas of continuity of development and correlation of parts into the broad domain of English economic history. The work which this volume completes and of which it is decidedly the most important half is similarly a book on new lines. It is not an eco- nomic history, nor is it an economic interpretation of history. It is rather a study of the influence of the other great forces of history on eco- nomic conditions. It is an examination of economic histor)' in the light of all the other influences which combined to make each period what it was : an effort to appraise the contribution of each nation and period to civilization, especially to civilization in its economic aspect. It is, therefore, a book of generalizations, of broad views, of suggestions, of insight, of grouping of facts, rather than of investigation and detailed statements. Dr. Cunningham distinguishes three periods since the fall of the Roman Empire. The first is Christendom as reconstructed after the con- fusions of the barbaric invasions ; united by its common religious belief and ecclesiastical subordination to Rome, depending on traditions and survivals of the Empire for its industrial arts, but distinguished from it by its higher conception of the dignity of man and its fuller recognition of human responsibility in the use of wealth. This period reached its cul- mination in the centuries from the twelfth to the fifteenth. The great discoveries of the fifteenth century brought in another age marked by the realization of vaster possibilities of wealth to be gained by trading with the Orient and America, and more complete utilization of the internal re- sources of the separate nations that were being organized, of the possible solution by thought and effort of the problems of national greatness. This period involved a gradual "secularization" of daily life as opposed to the ecclesiastical administration of the Middle Ages, a disruption of the unity of Christendom due to the Reformation and to the stronger national tendencies, and an elevation of capital into the position of the most influential of all economic factors. This second period endured till in the eighteenth century a sudden introduction of improvements in the industrial arts initiated another age of rapid economic changes. The most striking characteristic of this period is its apparently irresistible ten- dency to overspread and modify the portions of the world not heretofore affected by Western civilization and perhaps even to assimilate them to its own characteristics. The details on which the description of the first of these periods is based are largely worked out by Dr. Cunningham himself. For the later and more extensive periods he is naturally more dependent on other investigators. The bibliographical references to these numerous varied