The Economic Crisis of the Seventeenth Century after Fifty Years

Since its introduction more than fiffty years ago, the concept of a general seventeenth-century crisis has met with skepticism from most historians of Europe. Yet this historiographical latecomer persists as a seemingly necessary feature of early modern periodization. The economic contraction of the era is broadly accepted, but the crisis concept makes a larger claim-that the economic reversals led, ultimately, to a regrouping, a transformation of basic patterns and possibilities of European economic life. The challenge has always been to find a common thread-a credible theory-capable of tying together the disparate events of the time. The theoretical apparatus of fifty years ago may no longer serve, but more recent research offers possibilities for a rehabilitation of the concept of economic crisis.