The Self-Perception of Early Modern "Capitalists"
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: June 24, 2008
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 272
ISBN-13: 9780230604476
Subjects: Modern - 17th Century; Modern - 18th Century; United States - Revolutionary War; History / Modern / 18th Century; History; History - General History; History: World
Description: "Labeled as greedy and self-interested, capitalists have often suffered in historians' eyes. This book looks at merchants, entrepreneurs, and other individuals from around 1500 to 1800 - with some attention to their medieval roots - and asks how they actually saw themselves. Coming from deeply religious cultures, how did they relate their worldly activities to their beliefs and values? Did they see a conflict, as Weber might have imagined, or did they live at relative ease with the tensions between obedience to faith and the necessities of competition and striving? Drawing on personal letters and diaries, as well as handbooks, portraiture, and other pieces of material culture in general, the contributors to this volume each help to reconstruct an understanding of the people who put in place what became the dominant economic system in the Western world."--BOOK JACKET.