![]() Of course, these authors are not postcolonial cultural historians. Especially in postcolonial studies of the last decades, it has become common to "provincialize" Europe à la Dipesh Chakrabarty and thus to remove it from the mental center of world developments or to mention it only when the "discovery" of other continents by European merchants or conquerors is dealt with. The great merit of this approach lies in its worldwide coverage. War, as both authors acknowledge, is more than an intervening variable. These authors correctly criticize conventional economic historians for neglecting the factor of war as a constitutive factor in historical development. ![]() ![]() But "power" signifies even more: it is the use of force, of military instruments, in the course of history. It is a basis as well as an explanation for the rise and decline of trade exchanges-the "plenty" of the title. The history of trade, of course, cannot be written without a general look at economic developments. They are not only writing economic history, but in nuce, they provide us with an all-out history. One thousand years of global history! But the co-authors of Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium have both undertaken and achieved this challenge. ![]() Reviewed by Jost Dülffer (Historisches Seminar, Universität zu Köln) Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium. ![]()
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