"FOLLOW THE MONEY"... 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SURFACE

AN ECONOMIC FOCUS TRANSFORMS THE MEANING OF MANY EVENTS

Anthropology shows how things work.  

Blook I showed, for example, how "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" let capitalism take off.

Blook II explains how societies with only their agricultural base in common react in similar ways when economic growth destabilizes them.

Examples are 16th- and 17th-century France and Djimini, an  hinterland of the Ivory Coast where in the 18th- and 19th centuries growth was just beginning.

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Contents

0.1. Why choose Africa? 

0.2. My background as a historian of Africa

I. Hinterlands at the dawn of sudden economic growth

II. Keeping gain from being invested

2.1. One can't bring in the harvest alone   

2.2. Curbs on profits that villagers impose  

2.3. The grandiose destruction of wealth

2.4. Elders, chiefs and kings

2.5. Ways whose logic escapes us 

2.6. Were — are —  the real aims recognized? 

2.7. Awareness of the economic base would avoid tragedies and nonsense

III. Curbing growth: kings and ritualized warfare

3.1. Kings maintain the status quo 

3.1.1. Kings concentrate wealth, then make it circulate 

3.1.2. African kings, prestige and constraint 

3.1.3. "Absurd" succession practices 

3.1.4. Kings of medieval Europe are also restricted  

3.1.5. Detour: Images of Christ, from shepherd to warrior to king 

3.1.6. Commercial peoples' subordination

 3.2. Ritualized warfare, another brake on growth

  

IV. Africa: choosing a backwater

4.1. The African past revisited  

4.2. Commerce strikes a communal society   

4.2.1. Legendary empires of the medieval savannah   

4.2 2. Trade strengthens social systems, then transforms them

4.2.3. Classless communities that elders lead

4.2.4. Cowries, new traders and textiles... 

4.2.5. The cowrie currency meets violent resistance

4.2.6. Introducing a pattern of change

 

         4.3. Throughout the savannah, same cycle 

4.3.1. Back to the hinterland: Violence reappears

4.3.2. Commercial forces win, then crumble

4.3.3. Another narrative

V. "The past is another country:" pre-industrial France

     5.1. Enigmas, often clues 

     5.2. Growth and the "Wars of Religion"

     5.3. Absolute Monarchy wins

     5.4. The Sun King, anti-capitalist? 

The end of brakes on gain — 

 almost

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Next,

0.1. 

My background as a historian of Africa