Absorbing reading for those interested in developments which eventually led to the rise of the European Economic Community (EEC).

Publisher Comments

Categories: Banking & Finance | History Of Interest: Jacob Fugger the Rich: Merchant and Banker of Augsburg, 1459-1525 The Folklore of Capitalism The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank: 1397-1494

This book presents a detailed history of the development and influence of European culture and its attendant economic institutions. Beginning with the precapitalist period, it traces European economic society through the foundations of capitalism to its dominance in the first part of the twentieth century. One important tenet is that fundamental economic institutional changes operate across, and frequently in disregard of, political boundaries. Today's transition to the Euro is a case in point, sixty-nine years after Nussbaum expounded his theory.

From the back cover blurb:

This book presents a detailed history of the development and influence of European culture and its economic society. The story is traced from the pre-capitalist period through the foundations of capitalism and its early states, to the point in which it become dominant in the first part of the twentieth century. The book confirms a recognition that the political units of Europe are not mutually independent and self-determining in the economic sense, as they claim to be in the political sense. Fundamental institutional changes operate across and frequently in disregard of political boundaries. These changes are the result of evolution and have gone through stages of growth and decay. This book makes for absorbing reading for those interested in the developments which eventually led to the rise of the formal Economic Community.

From Book News: 

First published in 1933, this volume was penned by the late economist Nussbaum for the purpose of bringing the main ideas of the economic history of Europe propounded by Werner Sombart in his three-volume Der Moderne Kapitalismus (Munich and Leipzig, 1916-1927) to an American audience. Sombart's work itself owed a great debt to the thinking of Karl Marx. A central tenet of the analysisis that fundamental institutional changes operate across political boundaries and a consequent emphasis is placed on the modes and institutions of economic action. He begins his narrative with an examination of precapitalistic feudal and exchange economies, following by the rise of modern capital and its eventual dominance over European economic life. Annotation c. Book News, Inc.,Portland, OR

Frederick L. Nussbaum, 1885-1958, was an internationally acclaimed historian. He received a B.A. degree at Cornell in 1906 and a Ph.D. degree form University of Pennsylvania in 1915. After teaching at Northwestern, Temple, and the University of Southern California, he joined the faculty at the University of Wyoming in 1925 and taught there until his retirement in 1956. He was the author of numerous books, articles and reviews.

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