Scandinavia in the European World-Economy, ca. 1570-1625. Some Local Evidence of Economic Integration (review)

Reviews 211 convince m e that C. S. Lewis' conception of courtly love derives from a personal dilemma he faced at the time he was writing The Allegory of Love. (Why would his desire to break off an alleged affair lead him to repudiate the possibility of love in marriage?). I was also surprised to find her equating the Middle English word lewed, which meant 'ignorant' or 'illiterate', with lewd in the m o d e m sense (p. 28), as part of an almost wilfully naive reading of a passage in Chaucer's Merchant's Tale. Judith Maitland's article on 'The Body in Archaic and Classical Greek Art' is a pleasant read, but out of place in this anthology. Lee Jones, in her essay on the body and soul in medieval English thought, gets lost (or lost me, anyway) in an attempt to control a subject too large for an article; and Jennifer Smith cheats a bit by supporting a summary of patristic theory on gender with quotes from Aristotle (pp. 1079 ) (these are properly credited in the notes, but not everyone would bother to check). And Clare Everett tries too hard (and uses too much jargon) in collapsing a wide variety of theories and pronouncements into one supposedly monolithic male view of transvestism. Jargon and a certain grimness in the anatomising of patriarchy are perhaps the besetting tone of many modern contributions to gender theory, and this volume has its share of both. Viewed overall, however, its various contents clearly fulfil the editors' hope to bring medieval and early m o d e m studies out of the ivory tower of 'intellectual history'. In challenging the gendered and engendering assumptions underlying many different aspects of intellectual culture, these essays tellingly expose the male anxieties and appropriations that have formed the basis for many of our modern institutions of love and war. Joyce Coleman English Department University of North Dakota Maarbjerg, John P., Scandinavia in the European World-Economy, ca. 1570-1625. Some Local Evidence of Economic Integration (American University Studies, Series IX: History, Vol. 169), Peter Lang, N e w York, 1995; pp. xii, 300; R.R.P. US$49.95. Dr Maarbjerg is concerned with the Scandinavian response to economic changes in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Such a study of an area which has been poorly covered in works in English is an invaluable addition to our understanding of the function which geographically peripheral areas 212 Reviews played in European developments. Its main theoretical underpinning is a reworking of the idea of a European world economy with a critique of the Wallerstein thesis which holds that the northern periphery of Europe was inevitably backward and weak. This is because Dr Maarbjerg sees other factors such as religious change as important modifiers of purely economic elements. The discussion helps us understand how Christian PV of Denmark and Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden were both ready and able to intervene in the military conflicts of the Thirty Years W a r and how strong absolutist states developed despite a peripheral location. The monarchs, indeed, had successfully regulated the socio-economic structure of their kingdoms even in the sixteenth century, maintaining the rights of the peasants against the better-off. Since the economic outlook of the peasant was very much less market-oriented than that of noble or merchant, this significantly modified the way in which integration took place. Gustav Vasa's success in establishing a tax state was both remarkably early and remarkably efficient. Scandinavia, of course, had long dominated the provision of forest products to the rest of Europe and these were supplemented by the sixteenth century by grain from Poland and Prussia. The positive balance of trade stimulated development in local economic areas which were not suppliers of export goods. The decline of the Hanse and the opening of the Baltic to ships of all nations encouraged the integration of Scandinavia into the wider European economy although great diversity remained in the region. Maarbjerg illustrates this through a comparison of the Funen-Langeland landscape in Denmark and that of East Bothnia which is part of present day Finland. Funen-Langeland was an agrarian area...