Book contents
- Critical Junctures in Mobile Capital
- Critical Junctures in Mobile Capital
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Sovereign Nations and the Governance of International Finance
- 2 Coping with the Dangerous Component of Capital Flows and Asia’s Ineffective Cooperation
- 3 How Mobile Capital Plays Off Democracy
- 4 Mobile Capital as the Ultimate Form of War Finance
- 5 Capital Moves Financially
- 6 International Money after the Crisis
- 7 Beware of Financialization!
- 8 Lagoon Immobility
- 9 Impacts of Mobile Capital’s ‘Convenient Reverse Logic’
- 10 Imagine
- 11 Money, State and Capital
- 12 Superdiversity, Exploitation and Migrant Workers
- 13 The Bitcoin or the Reality of a Waking Dream
- 14 Capital Mobility and the Fragmentation of Monetary Sovereignty
- 15 Complementary Currencies as Weapons in Times of Financial Instability
- Index
- References
8 - Lagoon Immobility
The Exceptional Case of Imperial Venice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2018
By
Book contents
- Critical Junctures in Mobile Capital
- Critical Junctures in Mobile Capital
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Sovereign Nations and the Governance of International Finance
- 2 Coping with the Dangerous Component of Capital Flows and Asia’s Ineffective Cooperation
- 3 How Mobile Capital Plays Off Democracy
- 4 Mobile Capital as the Ultimate Form of War Finance
- 5 Capital Moves Financially
- 6 International Money after the Crisis
- 7 Beware of Financialization!
- 8 Lagoon Immobility
- 9 Impacts of Mobile Capital’s ‘Convenient Reverse Logic’
- 10 Imagine
- 11 Money, State and Capital
- 12 Superdiversity, Exploitation and Migrant Workers
- 13 The Bitcoin or the Reality of a Waking Dream
- 14 Capital Mobility and the Fragmentation of Monetary Sovereignty
- 15 Complementary Currencies as Weapons in Times of Financial Instability
- Index
- References
Summary
Mobile capital is contextualized within different settings. The Venetian Republic is used as a case study on the limits of mobile capital, which turns out to be a highly-constrained form of mercantile capitalism - though also adventurous in its use of credit money. These constraints, theorized in a very original way by the German jurist Carl Schmitt as a lagooned civilization, prompted economic historians notably Fernand Braudel in contrast, to place Venetian mercantile capitalism as the springboard to the transition from medieval to modern capitalism. Max Weber’s doctoral thesis on medieval trading companies restricted the Italian city states to the relatively closed stage of mercantile capitalism. The shift of financial centres to Northern Europe, Antwerp and Amsterdam and on to London in Braudel, to Weber becomes the true site of mobile capital. For Weber, it is not the shift of economic gravity to North-West Europe, but the transition of colonial fiscal states to territorial states competing for funds in colonizing the world. Mobile capital turns out to be a relational concept, and when it relates only to itself - as appears to be the tendency in global financial capital today - then the future of capitalism itself lacks assurance
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Critical Junctures in Mobile Capital , pp. 182 - 199Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018
References
Braudel, Fernand. 1984. Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century. Volume III. The Perspective of the World, trans. Reynolds, Siân (London: Collins).Google Scholar
Day, John. 1999. Money and Finance in the Age of Merchant Capitalism (Oxford: Blackwell).Google Scholar
Derman, Joshua. 2011. ‘Carl Schmitt on Land and Sea’, History of European Ideas, 37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingham, Geoffrey. 2015 ‘“The Great Divergence.” Max Weber and China’s Missing Link’, Max Weber Studies, 15.2.Google Scholar
Luzzatto, Gino. 1964. ‘Les Banques Publiques de Venise’ in van Dillen, ed., History of the Principal Public Banks (London, Frank Cass, 1964; 1st edition Martinus Nijhoff, 1934).Google Scholar
Mueller, Reinhold C. 1997. Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice. Vol II. The Venetian Money Market. Banks, Panics and the Public Debt. 1300–1500 (John Hopkins University Press).Google Scholar
Schmitt, Carl. 2001. Land and Sea, trans. Draghici, Simona (Corvallis, OR: Plutarch Press).Google Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1954. History of Economic Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press; reprint Allen & Unwin).Google Scholar
Soll, Jacob. 2014. The Reckoning. Financial Accountability and the Making and Breaking of Nations (London: Allen Lane).Google Scholar
Vries, Jan de and Woude, Ad van der. 1997. The First Modern Economy. Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815 (Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1927. General Economic History, trans. Knight, Frank (London: George Allen & Unwin).Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1976. The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilisations, translated Frank, R. I. London: NLB.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 2003. The History of Commercial Partnerships in the Middle Ages, trans. Kaelber, Lutz (Lanham, Maryland: Rowan and Littlefield).Google Scholar