Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Heck Gene William
Title : Charlemagne, Muhammad, and the arab roots of capitalism
Year : 2006

Link download : Heck_Gene_William_-_Charlemagne_Muhammad_and_the_arab_roots_of_capitalism.zip

Introduction. I. The Export of Islamic Economic Doctrine. A. The Historiographic Challenge. The dramatic demise of global communism within the past two decades - leaving mercantile capitalism as the world’s most enduring economic system - has been hailed as a defining moment in the ideological evolution of the West. From sundry sectors - business, politics, academia, and the fourth estate - have come paeans of praise for the remarkable triumph of the free market system, defined as a wondrous “Western invention.” Few have denied the merits of the case. Yet self-indulgence notwithstanding, the primary origins of capitalism itself remain remarkably ill-defined. Did the Western “free market system” really arise Phoenix-like from the ashes of medieval Europe’s prolonged “Dark Ages,” as much conventional Western business history contends? Was it a natural complement to the “Protestant Reformation,” as various other sources suggest ? Where did this so-calledWestern capitalism first set roots ? Did it not stem from earlier cultures and religions - and those prevailing in the Near East in particular ? Focused serious inquiry into such issues of provenance holds significant implications for the economic historiography of the West and East alike. For it is regrettable, but true, that medievalist historiography, and that focused upon the Near East in particular, was not characterized by a distinguishing “scientific approach” until the past half century. Indeed, much of what today is often accepted as “fact” was written more than a century ago by non-historians - soldiers, explorers, missionaries, clerics, businessmen, and other self-styled “Arabists” - dilettantes who not only lacked qualifications but also the benefit of rigorous scholarly techniques. ...