I’ve recently read"The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World" and want to hear what all of you think the answer is, because I feel like the book was missing something in its thesis and I am not very sure what that is.

  • captcha [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    You still need the permanent war though:

    1. Permanent war.
    2. Spain dumps new world gold and silver on the fire.
    3. War intensifies
    4. Capitalism finally emerges
    5. Northern Europeans start colonizing either as capitalist for-profit ventures or to escape capitalism.
      • captcha [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        Its cheaper than two continents of gold and silver but its not “like air”. Permanent war. Always on the home front, not the frontier. Western Europe ground on for like a millennia without any empire establishing itself.

        • intensely_humanEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          Think of the life of a rabbit. That little thing lives the life of a soldier deep in enemy territory. The rabbit’s life is a state of war.

          Without a system of police to monopolize violence, allowing individuals to therefore stop managing violence themselves, the life of a conscious entity is wartime.