A Microhistory of a Commodity?

Beckert seems to employ methods similar not only to Cronon but also to the microhistorians we have read.  Like Cronon, Beckert is claiming to look at how something often overlooked (a crop/market of that crop for Beckert, the environment in general for Cronon) has formative powers and influence on the development of modern capitalism.  However, it seems to be that both Cronon and Beckert end up arguing that capitalism/mercantilism/material needs in general have just as much if not more influence on driving history than the crop/market or the environment.  For instance, Beckert argues that Europeans’ “new combination of economic and political power” (43) has “transformative powers” (37), and enabled cotton merchants to gain control and widespread influence.  Arguments like this one throughout Beckert’s book suggest that it is economic and political power, not the cotton market itself, which drives historical change.  Similarly, Beckert describes capitalism’s ability to “reinvent itself ongoingly” (174).  Giving capitalism this agency supports the argument that material needs and ideology drives historical change.

Like the microhistorians we have studied, Beckert uses the method of looking at something seemingly small to ask big questions.  His scope is really big (5,000 years!) but in some ways, he writes a microhistory of a commodity, using “the biography of one product as a window into some of the most significant questions we can ask…” (xxii). What starts with a history of cotton quickly turns into a history of European war capitalism and the rise of the nation state.