The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II

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1. ajtullochAug 2020
   For folks interested in this, Fernand Braudel's magnum opus "The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II" is an incredible work of history, studying the Mediterranean and the societies around it.
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2. paganelDec 2017
   > I would prefer if the intellectual class in the west recognized and reflected on the costs that the middle and lower classes in the west, in particular, have paid for it. reply

   Cry me a river. Those lower and middle classes in the west were built on the back of international trade, I mean back when said international trade was mostly from Western nations to more undeveloped ones (of which my country was then part of). One of the oldest (and most renowned) streets from the Eastern-European capital from where I'm writing this comment is named after the German city of Leipzig, which was providing most of the high-end merchandise back in the 1600s and the 1700s. There's a reason why the West has all the palaces, castles and other expensive stuff built from the 1400s up to the early 20th century, which expensive stuff mainly lacks from the rest of the world, and that reason is international trade. Asking us to stop international trade now that we've started to approach the West in terms of expensive stuff is pure hypocrisy (some would call it economic colonialism). Also, see Fernand Braudel's books, especially his "The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernand_Braudel#La_Méditerrané...)

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3. Aym_CJul 2014
   Dive into the classics.

   John Cowper Powys may help you to plan a great journey :

   http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/12914/pg12914.html

   (Despite a few bizarre choices. Paul Bourget, seriously ?)

   If I had to choose myself : Homer (The Iliad and the Odyssey), the Bible (David's psalms and Job's book), Augustine, Dante, Saint Simon, Shakespeare, Rousseau, Dostoievsky, Proust, Céline.

   Aparté :

   If you like ambitious history with economic insights, I would strongly suggest to read Fernand Braudel works. He wrote three fantastic triptychs :

   - The Mediterranean: And the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (his thesis)

   - Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century (the best history books I've ever read)

   - The Identity of France

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4. paganelOct 2016
   > there's really only one bad thing that can happen in a capitalist economy: bondholders not getting paid.

   Maybe I over-read it at the time, but I got the same feeling after reading a history of the 1500s Mediterranean countries (Braudel's "The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II"), more exactly that the a very great injustice had been made to the bankers of the time (mostly the Genoese and Fugger family) for not getting their money back from the King of Spain, to which they had lent a lot of money (it's like they had gotten a big haircut on present-day Government bonds). There's an interesting discussion about that at this link: http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/4432/what-were-th...

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