From the ‘spirit of capital’ to the “spirit” of capitalism: The transition in German economic thought between Lujo Brentano and Max Weber

I dedicate this essay to the memory of the late Wolfgang Mommsen—the subject would have been congenial to him. It is one of a series of offshoots from a central project: a scholarly edition of Max Weber's Protestant Ethic with commentary. When I first told Prof. Mommsen of my plan in 1994 he looked me full in the face and gave a characteristic growl: “All that work!” Here was a man who knew what he was about. My thanks to Ross McKibbin and Keith Tribe for reading this paper in draft.

The article begins by examining Max Weber's relations with Lujo Brentano, much the most important “precursor” to Weber in the field of economics. In particular, Brentano conducted a form of parallel inquiry into the rise of ‘the spirit of capital’ in England 35 years before Weber looked for the origins of “spirit” of capitalism there, and the contrast between these two ideas casts much light both on Brentano and on Weber's Protestant Ethic. This personal history leads into a broader history of the transition in German economic thought between the 1860s – the formative decade for Brentano but also the era of Marx's Capital – and that of Weber's generation coming to maturity c.1890. Marx and Weber remain the two great canonical thinkers and original minds; but any authentic historical comparison between Marx and Weber must take in Brentano. The essence of the contrast between the generations is that between Weber's novel conception of an ethical ‘capitalism’, and the materialism and naturalism underpinning Brentano's and Marx's ‘capital’, although Weber and Brentano are alike as liberals, democrats and bourgeois.     

Teaching “notre littérature”: The Place of la littérature québécoise in the Curriculum in Quebec

Recent calls for a greater emphasis on the teaching of Quebec literature from primary school to cégep once more link the teaching of Quebec literature with the survival of a language and a culture. The current debate echoes those which have taken place over the last 100 years, both under the denominational system of education and since the Révolution tranquille. Different pedagogical and ideological factors have influenced not only whether Francophone Canadian literature has been taught, but also what has been taught and how it has been taught. Anxieties about the status, history and definition of “notre littérature” have recurred throughout the century, as have concerns about the relationship between the literature of Quebec and the literature of metropolitan France. This article will discuss the teaching of literature in Quebec since 1900 to conclude with a consideration of the teaching of Francophone Canadian literature in Quebec today.     

Pre-hispanic goldwork technology. The Quimbaya Treasure,Colombia

One of the most important pre-Columbian gold assemblages made up of more than one hundred objects from two tombs in the Cauca river valley, Colombia, was studied to obtain archaeometric information. Although several attempts have been made to arrange gold production in time and space from the stylistic point of view, no firm conclusions were possible due to the lack of archaeological contexts. This paper presents first results of a new, fully instrumental approach, in which different analytical techniques, including OM, SEM-EDS, XRF, PIXE, RBS, AMS and X-ray imaging, were applied in order to determine a technological, metallurgical and chronological frame of the so-called Quimbaya Treasure.     

Review Article: The Ways of the World

S. E. FINER. The History of Government from the Earliest Times: Volume I: Ancient Monarchies and Empires. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. xvii, 610; Volume II: The Intermediate Ages. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. vii, 613–1,061; Volume III: Empires, Monarchies, and the Modern State. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. vii, 1,065–1,701. $270.00 (CDN), for the three volumes. Reviewed by A. P. Thornton