History of Europe
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HISTORY
Subject
:
History
Paper No.
:
Paper - V
The Rise of Modern West
Topic No. & Title
:
Lecture No. & Title
:
(For under graduate student)
Topic – 2
The Rise of Modern Europe
(1550 AD – 1850 AD)
Lecture - 29 Transition Debate III
FAQs
1.
What was Brenner’s main query against the
commercialization thesis of Paul Sweezy?
Brenner
argued
that
since
commercialisation
contributed to growth of the demands of the feudal
lords in East Europe as much as in the West, so the
basic preconditions for the commutation of rent were
present.
Even the volume of commerce was not
insignificant that urban development would have
been altogether impossible.
In the circumstances
Brenner raised the question as to why then the
transformation occurred in the West and not in the
East.
2.
Why did Brenner dismiss Postan’s demographic
theory for the transition from feudalism to
capitalism?
Brenner pointed out that the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, population in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries had grown both in the East and in the
West, and that the demographic decline in the
fifteenth, sixteenth centuries too was common to
both the parts of Europe. Brenner felt that Postan’s
demographic theory had failed to explain why the
same phenomenon had different impacts in East and
West Europe.
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3.
How did Brenner’s approach differ from that of
the other Marxist historians like Paul Sweezy or
Maurice Dobb?
Brenner believed that dispensation of political forces
in a society were integrally linked to the economy,
and in many cases the political dispensation in a
society played a very influential role shaping the
socio-economic character of a community. The older
Marxist
approaches
of
Dobb
and
Sweezy
had
stressed heavily on forces of production, but not
production relations. Brenner argued that while even
Dobb looked at class conflict as structural to the
feudal society. Such shifts from class conflicts per se
to
other
factors
(viz.
technology,
changing
demographics and land-labour profiles), as the core
of analyses do not show that all such indices were
products of class-conflict which was the prime mover
in social change.
4.
What
significance
did
land
holding
arrangements have in the Brenner argument?
According to Brenner if land, labour, technology etc
be
seen
individually
ambiguous,
constantly
as
being
they
prove
landholding
questioned
to
be
arrangements
and
were
highly
were
always
changing – through attempts by the peasantry to
establish inherited rights, free-hold rights, fixed
rents, on the one hand, and the lords’ attempts to
establish greater control over the peasantry by
means
of
controlling
land-transfer,
marriage,
nobility, etc. by means of his extra-economic and
political powers on the other. The essential question
was that of distribution of property and applicability
of force in determining the relation between the two.
5.
Who were the proponents of the Demographic
Theory?
The main proponents of the Demographic Theory
were Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Michael Postan, Guy
Bois and Perry Anderson.
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6.
What are the general questions raised by the
Transition Debate?
The questions that the Transition Debate have raised
include those relating to the origin of feudalism, the
prime mover in the decline of feudalism, why
feudalism led to a crisis, why feudalism gave way to
capitalism and the role of merchant capitalism in the
transition from feudalism to capitalism.
7.
What according to Marxist interpretation led to
opposite consequences in western and Eastern
Europe?
Marxist scholars considered economic factors like
price and availability of wage labour along with
profitability of demesne production, as being crucial
to the divergent outcomes of the feudal crisis in
Eastern
and
Western
Europe,
leading
to
the
strengthening of feudalism in the former and to its
decay in the latter.
8.
What were Brenner’s views on the effects of
commutation of rent for the serf?
Brenner holds that the lord dictated commutation,
therefore it could also be reversed if he so required –
which is not quite freedom.
In twelfth century
England, for instance, commutation did not translate
into freedom. It was the power of an extra-economic
political agency that determined the lords’ ability to
determine rent.
Thus market could not come into
existence if the lord used force to determine rent or
even thwart labour mobility.
He therefore opined
that the power of the lord could be destroyed only by
means of a changing balance of the class forces.
Serfdom could be seen as destroyed only when the
landlord failed to force the peasant in any way.
9.
According to Brenner, what is the key factor
that led to the transition in West Europe?
In Brenner’s scheme of things, the real determining
factor in historical developments tends to be the
dispensation of political power. Brenner argued that
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the dispensation of political powers in West and East
Europe in the feudal era were considerably different.
In Western Europe, even at the height of the feudal
era, the Roman and Carolingian legal traditions
guaranteed the continued presence of state power as
a juridical entity.
The urge to contest the feudal
aristocracy prompted monarchs to increase their own
military strength. The resources required for this
increased might could be provided only by the
peasantry; hence the monarchs tended to be as keen
to establish their dominance over the countryside as
were the feudal lords.
This strategy ensured for the
peasantry in Western Europe certain rights predating
the feudal times, which even the feudal lords dared
not violate, because the monarch himself guaranteed
and enforced such laws.
10. Why did serfdom not decline in Eastern Europe
in spite of witnessing the same demographic
swing as the western parts?
East Europe had not experienced any centralised
state force to speak of in the feudal era. The Poles,
Wends, Magyars etc never rose beyond the level of
tribal kingdoms.
In the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, when the Germans embarked on a ‘Drang
nach osten’ (drive to the East) under the pressure of
growing population, the Germans prevailed over the
Poles, Wends and Magyars in the fierce battles that
followed because they were better organised. Having
led the drive for reclamation in the thick forested
lands of the east, the Germanic knights who had led
it enjoyed untrammelled socio-economic control over
the east European peasantry. The rump force of the
German empire was unable to stand forth and
defend the rights of the agricultural classes against
the feudal aristocracy.
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