New Glossary Entry: Mercantilisation
— Heinrich Lang
1 Definition
The definition of the term “mercantilisation” relates to the “processes of transforming social practices and objects into merchandise” (Ascher 2007, 28). Therefore, mercantilisation describes the basic transformation of human as well as non-human (inter)actions, any kind of artefacts and material residues like natural ressources and energies into services or commodities.[1]
The fundamental difference between commodities and services on the one hand and general (non-)human (inter)actions, any kind of artefacts or material is that commodities and services are subject to market transactions. Hence, by mercantilisation any sort of social practices or objects become fungibles and are validated by prices on markets. This also means that any practices of violent transfer like plundering is substituted by peaceful (non-violent) transmission (Weber 1980, 43-4).
Price formation processes evolve in the context of conventional behaviour at the basis of an exchange value. The pecuniary validation is represented in numbers by a given currency. Hence, social practices, artefacts and material are transposed into fungibles within a unifying validation system and, therein, they are pecuniarily and uniformly measured in monetary, i.e. abstract, exchange value. Merchandise is commodities validated by prices on markets (Orléan 2011, 19-21; 47).
Generally, “mercantilisation” evolves in a societal context through the dynamics of economic development as driving forces. The transforming processes are embedded in a network of multifactorial and multilayered co-evolutions which, tend to impose an economic taxonomy on the entire human and non-human spheres (Granovetter 2017, 15-20).
A particular issue of “mercantilisation” is the “capitalisation”. The traditional forms of capital were a. land, as a special form of space, b. labour, as capacity of transformation, c. money, as transformable value. These are generally called “production factors”. “Capitalisation” refers to processing capital in a historical context: „capital is not necessarily a material factor of physical production. Rather, capital is a particular kind of pecuniary process of valuation, associated with investment, in which capital may (or may not) become a factor of production.“ (Levy 2017, 485)
In this context, the term “mercantilisation” is characterised by an evolutionary meaning, because it refers also to historical processes of bringing services, artefacts or materials to markets. In the course of the centuries we can describe distinct phases of commercial expansion when new markets were constituted – or periods of consolidation as well.
Pre-industrial history mentions two main arguments. First, the so-called “Commercial Revolution” coined by Roberto S. Lopez in his essay from 1976 refers to the period between the middle of the 10th century and the middle of the 13th century. At the core of this hypothesis are processes of intensification and densification of communication, trade and the mobility of objects, ideas, human- and non-human animals (Lopez 1976; Braudel 1979). A similar idea stemms from Bernard H. Slicher van Bath and refers to the changes in the European agrarian economy around 1150. He argues that the agricultural production exceeded the pure self-subsistence and brought products to local markets (Slicher van Bath 1963, 24). These hypotheses were heavily criticised for their euro-centric orientation (Abu-Lughod 1989, chap. 1).
The second argument expands on the so-called “Consumer Revolution”. This refers to the period from the late 16th century to the 18th century, particularly in the independent General States (Netherlands) and England. Broader echelons of society were consuming a growing variety of products, especially luxury products, and an increasing mass of goods. This was particularly due to the colonial economies and the import of commodities like tea, coffee and chocolate. Some historians are also claiming an earlier start of these tendencies in the Renaissance (McKendrick et al. 1982; Berg 2002; 2004; 2006; Blondé et al. 2006; McCants 2007; De Vries 2008; Trentmann 2016).
The term mercantilisation appears in a debate of a “phase in history of economic policy” which “can be described as a period of transition between the 16th and the 18th centuries” (Reinhold 2019, 1-2; 4). Some historians applied the term “mercantilism” to this period in European history. In this context the state as a protagonist of a set of integrating forces concentrated on “trade balances” in order to create improvement (“prosperity”). It fuelled economic activities by the supply with money, while trade policy was seen as an instrument for making money circulate. This kind of concept was based on the divide by political boundaries and hence limited economic expansion to the inside domestic economy in terms of growth as the state’s central interest. In this context general measure was to try to prevent primary commodities from export and foster the internal production of goods. “While English mercantilism was essentially based on merchants and was co-determined by them, French mercantilism was product of the civil service and the political theory of absolutism.” (Reinhold 2019, 16) However, there are serious doubts about the legitimate use of this terminology to historical processes (Magnussen 2014).
In a longue durée-perspective the concept of commodification (mercantilisation) is about the transformation from economies of self-subsistence (“Naturalwirtschaft”) and economies of scarcities (“Knappheitswirtschaft”) into economies of commodities and consumption. In the foreground was the transformation of agricultural economies where production like crops and cattle went to local and regional markets to sustain the population on the countryside and particularly of towns and bigger cities. In the case of Ottoman Egypt transformation processes evolved in the 18th century when the rural population – the peasants – were transformed into mere workforce and the products of the agricultural economy along the Nile became commodities which the government could dispose of and which the administration to the respective food markets (Mikhail 2011, 27).
As the last argument shows, a geographically broader understanding – often without naming the processes as mercantilisation – of commodification or commercialisation derives from regional studies on agriculture and long-term developments. In historiography the processes are mainly discussed in the context of European cities. However, it is very likely, that processes of mercantilisation were not only due to formations in urban spaces but also to the overlapping impact of religion and religious practices.
The Centre for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences “Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations” proposes the following characteristics of mercantilisation: “All actors, both urban and non-urban, pursue, more or less reflexively and with varying degrees of tangibility, highly divergent urbanization strategies, out of which very different urbanities develop analogously. Especially for spatializations in the economic and especially mercantile profiling of cities, the approach of grasping the interplay of religion and urbanity in its complexity proves to be particularly fruitful and requires a corresponding focus in the subsequent phase.” (Christ et al. 2023, 11).
2 Application in the context of “Religion and Urbanity”
Mercantilisation was and is brought on and shaped by the interaction of religious and urban practices, institutions, and agents, and hence characterises the triangular relation of economies, religion, and urbanity. The general approach of “Religion and Urbanity” includes different disciplinary perspectives and crosses historical epochs and regions to come to a more complex understanding of cities in global history.
Processes of mercantilisation mobilised humans, non-humans and goods within cities, along the (peri-)rural areas bordering cities, and along trade routes linking urban centres. Within this context mercantilisation refers to both the expansion of economic exchange relations into areas of life hitherto understood as exclusively religious or urban, as well as contrary developments. Economic practices like trading with objects and services or the bookkeeping of debit and credit as well as sins and virtues by religious and urban actors alike are just two examples of the mutual relation and overlapping of economies, religion and urbanity (Chiffoleau 1980; Lang 2019).
In the long history of urban settlements, markets and their infrastructures develop mainly in urban centres and structure urban life. Exceptions were cattle markets, outside of cities, linking urban and rural spaces. Economic practices changed the shape of societies and conflated urban and religious spaces. In the urban context marketplaces and sacred spaces were often interwoven and partially overlapped. In many cases, the presence of religious agents and their sites even fuelled economic activities in towns (Rau/Schwerhoff 2004; Rau 2019).
In many European cities, marketplaces often surrounded the cathedral or main local church, while the rhythms of the markets or even fairs were coordinated with religious feasts (on co-temporal structures of calendars see for example the CoMOR project). In Greek or Roman cities the same architectural features regarded the position of temples and economic activities. Another important area of research is the place of the mint where precious metals were coined and loaded with a value under the surveillance of the deities. In South Asia, very similar urbanistic arrangements came to structure the cities’ shapes. In Calicut, the entrances to the Big Bazaar – the city’s main street since the fifteenth century – are framed by mosques on either side. Today, the urban expansion financed by international capital re-structures the city or creates new quarters where religious traditions resurge. Souks were also related to the religious spaces like the central marketplace in Sanaa where mosques in a way marked the boundaries between the souk and the rest of the city. In the Islamic context, spiritual time also fostered recurrent patterns of market periods, for example the economy surrounding pilgrimage to Mekka and Medina. Across epochs and regions, the organisation of pilgrimage informed the infrastructure of towns.
Since economic practices re-structured societal and divine orders, mercantilisations were subject to governance – be it urban, imperial, or religious. Trade on marketplaces was regulated by authorities. Privileges approved by rulers also stimulated activities and brought growth or decline to markets and especially to fairs. Economic and religious practices interfered, determined technologies like credit instruments and charity organisation and constituted social groups that defined their operations to special fields of doing credit or receiving/giving alms. A special dimension of the triangular setting of economies, urban and religious spaces is the normative configuration of economic practices (Rüpke 2022).
Apart from the long traditions of religious norms on economies and particularly on profit which we find in any religious context, the economic values of economic practices referred mainly to urban settings and urban societies. Those labelled as poor were frequently coerced into relationships of exchange, usually material alimentation for spiritual or moral ‘caregiving’. In terms of institutions, monasteries acted not only as powerhouses of prayer but also of economic power, and often linked urban to rural spaces.
3 References
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Berg, Maxine, “From imitation to invention: creating commodities in eighteenth-century Britain,” Economic History Review, 55, 2002: 1-30 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0289.00212
Berg, Maxine, In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004
Braudel, Fernand. Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme, XVe et XVIIIe siècles: vol. 2: Les jeux de l’échange. Paris : Armand Colin, 1979
Bruno et al. (eds.), Retail circuits and practices in medieval and early modern Europe (Studies in European Urban History (1100-1800), Turnhout: Brepols 2006
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Christ, Martin / Fuchs, Martin / Iori, Elisa / Keller, Sara / Lätzer-Lasar, Asuman / O’Reilly, Klara-Maeve / Rau, Susanne / Rüpke, Jörg / Urciuoli, Emiliano Rubens / Wagner, Simone, ”Entangling Urban and Religious History: A New Methodology.” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte, 25, 2023: 1-72
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Rüpke, Jörg. Christmas and Christmas Markets. Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations. (December 14, 2022) Retrieved July 8, 2024 from https://doi.org/10.58079/v3fl
Slicher van Bath, Bernard H. The Agrarian History of Western Europe, A.D. 500-1850. London: E. Arnold, 1963
Trentmann, Frank. Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-first. New York: Harper Collins, 2016
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Weber, Max. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie. Fünfte, revidierte Auflage, besorgt von Johannes Winckelmann. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1980 (1921/22; 1972)
[1] The term “mercantilisation” is broadly used and discussed in French as “mercantilisation” and in Spanish as “mercantilización”. It stems from the word “mercantile” and is generally associated with the historical phenomenon of “mercantilism”.
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heinrichlang (April 2, 2024). New Glossary Entry: Mercantilisation. Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations. Retrieved September 9, 2024 from https://doi.org/10.58079/w59d
