It Was Italy That Gave Us Capitalism

Fernand Braudel wrote several smaller (in size) books that dealt with his favorite themes of capitalism and the Mediterranean. One of them is “Out of Italy” (or in the French original, “Le modèle italien”). Neither title is ideal because it does not convey what the book is really about. It is about the leading role that the “Italian” culture, architecture, trade, banking, poetry, music and science played in Europe between 1450 and 1650. “Italian” has to be put between quotes because it includes not Italy, a political unit which of course did not exist then, but cities like Venice, Genoa, Florence, Naples, Pisa, Rome, Milan. What the French call, “le génie italien”.