Latouche (a second fragment from the Introduction)

Robert Latouche (1961): The Birth of Western Economy. Online editions:

1. the 2005 edition as a Google Book with 42 preview pages (of 376 pages); and
2. the 2013 edition as a Google Book with 58 preview pages.

I prefer the first of those two links.

Vladimir Simkhovitch (1916): "Rome's Fall Reconsidered". Open access at JSTOR.

 
Latouche, most of one paragraph, from page xiv of the Introduction:

We shall have to explain our attitude to the dangerous illusion fostered by those who differentiate sharply between a natural economy (Naturalwirtschaft), regarded as the typical economic system of the Early Middle Ages, and a money economy (Geldwirtschaft), believed to have prevailed in the ancient world and to have made a diffident reappearance at the end of the eleventh century.

A "diffident" reappearance -- I like that.

We shall also come up against other traditional ideas, which will have to be less rigidly interpreted, as for instance that of a closed economy, for many years the classical definition of the Carolingian economic system. Without wishing to anticipate a controversy which will be dealt with at some length later, need we also continue to accept as axiomatic the predominance of the great landed estate during Merovingian and Carolingian times?

Oh, that is important. The predominance of the great landed estate defines the economy of ancient Rome. And according to Vladimir Simkhovitch's translation of Pliny, "The large estates, the latifundia, were ruining Rome as well as its provinces." So how did we get from the unsustainable great estates of Rome to great estates that were not only sustainable but formed the basis of economic society under feudalism? This is why Latouche's book fascinates me. I think he may have the answer I'm looking for.

If for almost a century the great domain has been considered as the basic framework of rural life under the Carolingians, the unanimity with which scholars have accepted the idea must be attributed to Charlemagne, the author of a detailed Capitulary on the organization of his villae, and also to several wealthy abbots of the eighth and ninth centuries, to those of Saint-Remi of Rheims, of Prüm, and in particular of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, who have left us in the form of polyptyques minutely detailed inventories of the property owned by their monasteries. It is, however, all too readily forgotten that side by side with the great landowners whose numbers and whose power are not in question, there existed a host of small, illiterate landowners who kept no archives and of whose way of life we know little.

I like this book! "All too readily forgotten" are the poor, who once were called the middle class: those who do not publish books describing life from their own point of view. Many of them do not even have their own point of view but simply repeat what they hear from their favorite media. Simkhovitch, too, reminds us that history and literature preserve not the "ruts of a muddy country road" but the "mountain-climbing expedition":

The story of the plain farmer we can expect to find in neither literature nor history. [p.205]

The "polyptyques" --  "minutely detailed inventories of the property owned" -- remind me of Michael Wood's Domesday book about William the Conqueror's survey of wealth and property in all of England as of 1086. Apparently, William was not first to create such a list.

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polyptyques: "In medieval history, the Polyptych (or Polyptyque) was a document detailing the lands that a noble owned." - Wikipedia

Capitulary: "A capitulary was a series of legislative or administrative acts emanating from the Frankish court of the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties, especially that of Charlemagne..." - Wikipedia

diffident: "modest or shy because of a lack of self-confidence." - Oxford Languages via Google