crisis
... how did it come about? Or did it occur at all during this period? These were the questions originally tackled by the historians of the period. From the pages of the journal Past & Present in the mid-1950's sprung a debate lasting several decades. An examination of the origins of the crisis theory must start with its key proponents, Eric J. Hobsbawm and Hugh Trevor-Roper. In 1954 E. J. Hobsbawm published his essay "The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century" in Past & Present. This essay was the first one collected in Trevor Aston's Crisis in Europe, 1560-1660, as a review of the academic debate published in the mid-1960's. A Marxist historian and scholar of English history, Hobsbawm saw an economic crisis in the 17th century that was the final break from the feudal economic system that had been in place for centuries to the capitalistic economy of the Industrial Revolution. For Hobsbawm, capitalism had in some areas almost taken hold at different times up to the 16th century. By the 18th century it was established in the rising bourgeois society, so that the change must have taken place in the interim of the 17th century. In discussing this change, he divides his essay into two portions: the first provides his evidence for and explanation of this economic crisis, and the second details the changes it produced and how it was overcome. The advance of capitalism is the key theme for Hobsbawm. He asserts that Europe in the early 17th century was faced with a number of obstacles to economic development. Population declined or stagnated, the gains of the northwestern states not exceeding the losses of the Mediterranean world. He argues for a distinct period of crisis in commerce from the 1620's to the 1650's, citing as evidence the Sound tolls of the Baltic, trade of foodstuffs, the poor profits of the Dutch and English East India companies as well as Amsterdam's Wisselbank's profits. He argues that the expansion of Europe experienced contraction from 1600-1640 while at home it experienced a socio-revolutionary crisis from 1640-1660. Hobsbawm says one of the only positive results of this crisis was the rise of absolutism, since for him it solved three main problems in Europe. Government became enforced over large areas; it could gather enough capital for lump-sum payments; and it could now run its own armies. But even absolutism was a result of economic crisis. For the causes of this crisis, Hobsbawm cites four areas: the specialization of `feudal capitalists' in the case of Italy, the contradictions of expansion in Eastern Europe, the contradictions of expansion in overseas and colonial markets, and the contradictions of home markets. To Hobsbawm, Italy was a prime example of how the capital up to this point was poorly invested. The poor economic choices of the wealthy (investment in the arts and architecture instead of improved means of production) created the economic decline of Italy. In the old colonial system he sees initial costs followed by a crisis because of rising protection costs and limited technological advancement. This same lack of innovation meant the s...