By examining in detail the material life of pre-industrial peoples around the world, Fernand Braudel significantly changed the way historians view their subject. Originally published in the early 1980s, Civilization traces the social and economic history of the world from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, although his primary focus is Europe. Braudel skims over politics, wars, etc., in favor of examining life at the grass roots: food, drink, clothing, housing, town markets, money, credit, technology, the growth of towns and cities, and more. Volume I describes food and drink, dress and housing, demography and family structure, energy and technology, money and credit, and the growth of towns.

Rev. translation of: Civilisation mateÌ rielle, eÌ conomie et capitalisme : XVe-XVIIIe sieÌ€cle.Vol. 1: Translation from the French revised by SiaÌ‚n Reynolds; v. 2-3: Translation from the French by SiaÌ‚n Reynolds. Includes bibliographical references and index. v. 1. The structures of everyday life : the limits of the possible -- v. 2. The wheels of commerce -- v. 3. The perspective of the world.

This social and economic history of Europe from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution organizes a multitude of details to paint a rich picture of everyday life.

By examining in detail the material life of pre-industrial peoples around the world, Fernand Braudel significantly changed the way historians view their subject. Originally published in the early 1980s, Civilization traces the social and economic history of the world from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, although his primary focus is Europe. Braudel skims over politics, wars, etc., in favor of examining life at the grass roots: food, drink, clothing, housing, town markets, money, credit, technology, the growth of towns and cities, and more. Volume I describes food and drink, dress and housing, demography and family structure, energy and technology, money and credit, and the growth of towns.

Written from a consciously anti-enthnocentric approach, this fascinating work is a survey of the civilizations of the modern world in terms of the broad sweep and continuities of history, rather than the "event-based" technique of most other texts.

The concluding volume of the trilogy charts the growth of the world economy from the 15th to the 18th century concentrating on the human activity that underlies the business of life - the bustle of the market, the great manipulators of capital, the labour of the slave, the peasant and factory workers, the fashions of the rich and the rise of the great financial centres of Genoa, Venice, Amsterdam and London.

From the author of Memory and the Mediterranean, a comprehensive history of the Italian city states from 1450 to 1650. In the fifteenth century, even before the city states of the Apennine Peninsula began to coalesce into what would become, several centuries later, a nation, “Italy” exerted enormous influence over all of Europe and throughout the Mediterranean. Its cultural, economic, and political dominance is utterly astonishing and unique in world history. Viewing the Italy?the many Italies?of that time through the lens of today allows us to gather a fragmented, multi-faceted, and seemingly contradictory history into a single unifying narrative that speaks to our current reality as much as it does to a specific historical period. This is what the acclaimed French historian, Fernand Braudel, achieves here. He brings to life the two extraordinary centuries that span the Renaissance, Mannerism, and the Baroque and analyzes the complex interaction between art, science, politics, and commerce during Italy’s extraordinary cultural flowering.

“ Ingeniously stands the study of globalization and trade on its head.”—Edward Alpers, Chair of Department of History, UCLA