Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London's Overseas Traders, 1550-1653.

This complex book includes at least three important contributions to an understanding of the many changes England experienced in the seventeenth century. First, it describes the commercial changes which created a new group of merchants separate from those who controlled the chartered companies which dominated English trade in the early century. Second, it describes the involvement of various economic, religious, and social groups in the politics of the revolution. Third, it presents a comprehensive interpretation of the economic and political changes of the seventeenth century.

The first section of the book describes the commercial changes which created the new merchants; it offers some new interpretations. Brenner shows that it was not a decline in the traditional cloth trade which led to development of the long distance eastern trade, but a recognizing of the value of import trade. The East India Company, the Levant Company, and other chartered companies willingly paid the imposts levied by the early Stuarts in exchange for royal support of their monopolies. The men who controlled those companies were London's traditional social and political leaders. Though they briefly allied with the parliamentary leadership during the ascendancy of Buckingham, they generally supported the crown.

The traditional merchants were not interested in establishing colonies and abandoned the Americas to a new group of merchants with meaner backgrounds. These new merchants, in cooperation with certain landowners interested in colonizing, opposed royal policies and urged freer trade. They occasionally ignored the rights of the privileged companies and infringed on their protected trade routes.

The second section of the book tells the complex story of how opposition to the king became revolution. Brenner's main interest is in the roles played by the various London interests. The company merchants lost control of the City and the new merchants allied themselves with London radicals, first cooperating with the parliamentary group led by John Pym then becoming more radical than parliament. When all attempts to compromise with the king failed, London pushed for a new republican solution. Preceding the national revolution was revolution in London; the traditional leadership was replaced with leadership from the new colonizing merchants. This portion of the book is the most complex, because the changing and shifting groups with different interests were themselves so complex.

Brenner's broad view is summarized in the final section, a section entitled "Postscript." Building on the old debate over the gentry and on his own previously published interpretation of England's capitalist evolution, Brenner argues that English landowners became "aristocratic capitalists," thus making bourgeois revolution unnecessary. The capitalists wanted a strong state, but differences between them and the monarchs over religion and foreign policy led to a clash with the monarchy. The landowners who dominated Parliament wanted a Protestant church and foreign policy, while the monarchy preferred flexibility in foreign affairs, which led to a less militantly Protestant religious policy. The new merchants temporarily allied themselves to the landowners and the result was revolution and civil war.

Brenner argued that the Commonwealth was more radical than many historians acknowledge. Since it was dominated by the new merchants, its foreign policy was favorable to their overseas commercial interests. After an attempted political union with the Netherlands failed, it used military force to secure commercial and colonial parity with the Dutch. At home, the Commonwealth reformed the administration and the law in the interest of efficiency. The narrowness of its political base and its inability to appeal to a wide spectrum of political and social interest doomed the Commonwealth.

The story of the trading companies and the emergence of the new merchants is based on thorough research. Biographical information about some of the most important merchants is included showing that many of them were related or were business associates. The evidence supporting Brenner's revisionist view of the reasons for the development of long distance trade seems adequate. The story of opposition turning to revolution and the shifts within that revolution is interesting and well told, though one can easily lose track of the many political and religious factions. And while his integration of constitutional and religious principles into the economic and social conditions is valuable, his broad interpretation is not entirely convincing. It depends on such concepts as the "aristocratic capitalist" and it downplays the significance of the landowners as landowners. They were, after all, the dominant force in parliament and in the army and they were the leaders of both Independent and Presbyterian parties. Those who were not convinced by the earlier arguments that the landowners were really bourgeois will not be convinced by Brenner's analysis.

Yet the book is important and can be read with benefit by all interested in England's most remarkable century. It is a bit repetitious because the author frequently reiterates his new interpretation of the economic changes and the significance of the new merchants. The "Postscript" goes far beyond the evidence which supports the main portion of the book but is the most interesting and challenging section.

Steven R. Smith Savannah State College