Welsh Journals

The work of revision has in general been well done and in comparison with the second edition many illustrations have been greatly improved. More plans would have helped the discussion of pre-1066 French castles. Goodrich features heavily on pp. 95-100 but an illustration is omitted from this edition. The present reviewer wonders whether the discussion of rectangular and cylindrical keeps might not have been strengthened by comment on the residential superiority of the former; cylindrical keeps did not provide the same room-space-at Conisbrough a staircase had to be placed in one of the external butresses. It is inevitable that an attempt to cover so much ground should be open to criticism. Nevertheless, this is a good book offering a very readable survey and, in places, a trenchant statement of a personal point of view. D. R. BATES Cardiff BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EUROPEAN SOCIETY AND ECONOMY, 1000-1700. By C. M. Cipolla. Methuen, 1976. Pp. xi, 326. £ 6.25 hard covers, £ 2.95 paper covers. Any attempt to survey seven centuries of European economic history in a single text-book stands in danger of being classed as over-ambitious, but this production of Professor Cipolla is particularly liable to the charge. The author sets out to analyse pre-industrial Europe strictly according to econ- omic theory, but in this instance theory has become a strait-jacket rather than an aid to understanding the past. In general, Professor Cipolla seems disinclined to give adequate weight to the influence of social and political factors upon economic development, and even when he does introduce a socio-cultural element he tends to favour the curious or bizarre at the expense of more mundane, though more influential, factors. A similar taste for the off-beat seems to have infected his economic analysis; thus, prosti- tutes appear with the clergy as important productive classes on the grounds that both groups provide a therapeutic service, and by definition all services form part of the gross social product. However, even if one can go along with this definition of wealth one must surely reject an analysis which classifies armaments production as fixed capital investment? The book is formally divided into two parts, the first of which, entitled 'A Static Approximation', apparently seeks to demonstrate the basic similarity of all European pre-industrial societies regardless of time and place. The text is liberally interspersed with tables of'statistics' which are supposed to establish this point, but it is to be doubted whether figures taken, as these are, from widely different sources and of varying degrees of reliability can really prove the point. The second part of the book, 'Towards a Dynamic Description', is concerned with such change as did occur during the period under review. The proportion of the text devoted to the middle ages may be justified on the grounds that they occupy some five of the seven centuries studied, although a non-medievalist might argue that the strides made id the first centuries of the modern era demand more attention. Professor Cipolla might not necessarily agree with the latter view-point since he sees