Bruce M.S. Campbell, The Great Transition: Climate, Disease and Society in the Late-Medieval World (2016)

This is an extremely impressive, well-written, and stimulating book. It successfully instantiates what Michael McCormick called for in 2011, a "science of the human past" that integrates traditional historical methods with new scientific measures of historical climatic change and ancient DNA. Nonetheless, after reviewing the book's many strengths, I also note some lacunae. Campbell skilfully toggles between the three domains identified in his subtitle, climatic change, disease, and economic life, showing both their independent trajectories and interconnections. Though trained as an historian (or perhaps social scientist), Campbell seems to have made himself expert in the other two fields, an impressive accomplishment. He writes knowledgeably of the factors contributing to Europe's commercial expansion from roughly 1100 to 1300, subsequent plateau and outright contraction from the 1340s. For me some of the most interesting sections were about the reorientation of European economies in the fifteenth century, especially in the Low Countries, England, and a few other places in response to the demographic collapse and blockage of most trade with the east. While I'd known some of this in outline, Campbell filled in much interesting detail, including the role of "Smithian" growth, transaction costs, factor markets, etc. The real innovation of the book, however, is to place all this human activity in a much broader context. After reading this book, any traditional economic history of the time will seem woefully incomplete - climatic changes, especially the onset of the Little Ice Age in the late fourteenth century, and the various animal and human epidemics (not just the Black Death and follow-on waves) must be included and integrated in the account. While Campbell casts an eye on other parts of Eurasia, as well as the Americas and Africa, his focus is Europe. Given how impressive this book is, it may seem churlish to offer any criticisms. But I wish he had, at least occasionally, used comparisons to strengthen his causal claims. We learn next to nothing about the Bubonic Plague in China. Campbell suggests that the Great Transition prepared the way for the Great Divergence between Europe and China. But without explicit treatment of China, his argument remains at most suggestive. This is also true of his effort to integrate human, climatic, and epidemic history. Since all three domains turned in a negative direction starting in the early fourteenth century, we don't know quite how much of the downturn was due to the Black Death, the beginnings of the Little Ice Age, and, say, increasing warfare and rising transaction costs. Only comparison - between Europe and China and, even more importantly, between different explanations - might have helped tease out their different contributions.

Branko Milanovic, Capitalism Alone: The Future of the System that Rules the World (2019)

I read this book a few years ago and thought highly of it, but realized, as I was recently reading Mike Davis's Planet of Slums for my book club, that I remembered very little of Milanovic. So I reread it. Milanovic is a highly respected economist, who served in a senior post in the World Bank and has made his name by gathering and analyzing data on global inequality. In this book, he casts a sober eye on the system that, as the subtitle says, rules the world. Today capitalism comes in two forms, liberal meritocratic capitalism (the US, Western Europe, etc.) and political capitalism (China, above all, but also Russia and some others). One of the great strengths of the book is that Milanovic carefully, and to my mind, very judiciously, assesses both the advantages and disadvantages of each. The main problem of the liberal variant at present are the several, mutually reinforcing tendencies that are strengthening a closed elite. The US, in particular, is moving in the direction of becoming a plutocracy. In contrast with classical capitalism (late 19th century), those today who are capital rich are also rich in terms of income from labor. The main problems of political capitalism are, similarly, income and wealth polarization, but also the corruption that's endemic to the system. Milanovic is a somewhat heterodox economist as he credits Marx (and Marxists) with getting some things right, for example, that the bourgeoisie has captured the political system in liberal meritocratic capitalism and that capitalism was the main cause of WWI. He also explains why communism was necessary for creating the conditions in which political capitalism might emerge. Finally, Milanovic sketches out some potential positive future developments, but he seems to think that we are most likely headed toward ever greater atomization and commercialization, as market relations dissolve (nearly?) all others. This sober and tragic view reminded me of Weber.