56
PARTISAN REVIEW
histories of their peoples. It was no accident therefore that our literary
men knew Europe's past and present as well as their own country's.
Had a book with a theme like this been written about a century ag<r-Of
course it could not have been the same book-it would have been eagerly
read by intelligent people in New York and Philadelphia, Charles–
ton and New Orleans.
Miss Beard, I am afraid, is doomed to a limited reading public be–
cause Americans are not yet equipped with a cultural apparatus to make
her book intelligible or important for them. Only contemporaneously
are we returning to the main current of European affairs.; and as our
destiny becomes more and more linked with that of Europe our interest
in Europe's past-which, we are beginning to see, is America's part as
well-is bound to become more real. Works of this kind, if they could
only be assured of an adequate public, would hasten that process.
For those who are unfamiliar with the subject-matter of European
economic history, I cannot recommend a better introductory manual.
It is far and away the most sophisticated (in the literal sense of the
word) presentation currently available. Miss Beard has read every sig–
nificant product of European scholarship of the past fifty years and has
mastered its contents. Like her father, she carries her learning easily.
Only the person who is technically familiar with
the
literature can appre–
ciate the extraordinary labors that have gone into its composition. Those
who have learned to recognize the names of Pirenne, See, Sombart,
Weber, Hauser and Hecksher- among the outstanding'figures in modern
European historiography- will also be able to note with what ease Miss
Beard makes her way through the tangle of conflicting theories.
A History of the Business Man ,
.starting with 'antiquity and pro–
ceeding to the present, seeks to tell the. story of business activity in tenns
of the part played by the individual enterpriser. This plan has its virtues
as well as its faults: for within such a frame it is possible for the author
to show the relations between material interests and culture and politics.
It should be no cause for surprise, therefore, that the richest chapters
in the book have to do with the period from the thirteenth through the
seventeenth centuries, in which the 'economics of the Italian, Gennan
and Dutch cities predominated. The chapters concerning themselves
with the epoch of English and French mercantilism are almost equally
good. From then on the narrative becomes more hurried and the
bo.ok's intention somewhat confused.
Miss Beard is no materialist (none of her mentors is, either; which
does not mean one cannot learn from them ) ; there is no inner rhythm
to her narrative, as a result. Civilizations come and go, somehow re–
peating the same pattern, although under different circumstances. That
is not to say that she has no awareness of the impact of economic matters
upon politics; for her shrewd analyses of the English, American and
French Revolutions indicate her familiarity with the
immediate
causative
rOle of economic crises upon political decisions, particularly at those
points which have been crucial in human history. The pattern she em–
ploys is one that merits extended examination, from the political point
