{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.03501188675167495, 'fraction_numerical': 0.008212664793602767, 'mean_word_length': 5.018205461638492, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Compassion: Toward a Science of Value. By William Eckhardt. (Oakville, Ontario, Canada: CPRI Press, 1972. Pp. 311. $8.00, cloth; $4.00, paper.)

The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Century. By Georges Duby. (New York: Cornell University Press, 1974. Pp. 292. $10.00.) Georges Duby, professor at the College de France, is one of the most prolific medievalists active in the world today. In this volume, rendered into excellent English from the French edition of 1973, he explores in brief but masterly fashion the "early growth of the European economy," essentially the economic history of Europe from the seventh century to approximately 1180. Since the time of Henri Pirenne, there has been no clear and firm synthesis of the economic experiences of early medieval Europe, and much time and effort have been expended, in these past fifty years, in scholarly haggling over Pirenne's imaginative but untenable thesis. Pirenne gets short shrift in this present work (he is cited twice); Duby rather advances his own, totally independent thesis concerning the economic development of early medieval Europe. Although neither the footnotes nor the bibliography acknowledge it, the book is deeply indebted to the researches of anthropologists into the economic behavior of primitive societies. The work reads in parts like a practical demonstration of principles expounded in Marshall Sahlins' Stone Age Economics (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1972). Although Duby could not have seen this last work, he surely caught wind of the ideas it proposes, in the writings of French anthropologists, especially Marcel Mauss. "At the end of the sixth century, Europe was a profoundly uncivilized place." This, the first sentence of the book, conveys in the word "uncivilized" the essence of the thesis to follow. At least through the ninth century, Europe lived by "an economy of pillage, gift and largesse" (p. 57). What then changed this "gift economy" into the "profit-making economy" of the later Middle Ages? The architects of the new economic order were primarily the magnates, the great warrior princes and, in lesser measure, the prelates of the Church. Until the ninth century, these chiefs lived from booty, tribute and gifts. But when wars of conquest ceased after the reign of Charlemagne, they had to develop new sources of economic support. "To preserve their way of life," Duby explains, "the diminishing return from booty and tribute led magnates to stir up enthusiasm on the part of farm managers: manors had to be made to yield more." The magnates, or their farm managers, thus encouraged technological innovations and the settlement of virgin land. The peasants cooperated— there is even a chapter entitled "Peasant Conquests"—but the chief impetus to growth came from on high. "Power was the motive force behind increasing expenditure and commercial vitality." Duby thus locates the principal stimulus for economic advance in the actions of the aristocracy. And he does not doubt that there was advance. His last chapter is entitled "take-off," by which he means the triumph of the profit-making economy, characteristic especially of the growing towns, over the primitive forms of economic behavior of the early medieval world. Duby's work, saturated with anthropological concepts, brings us close to the society of the early Middle Ages—probably closer than any previous synthesis. Still, doubts persist about the appropriateness of the model Duby implicitly proposes. Did the magnates of the early Middle Ages become rational economic men and promoters of a productive economy when they rationally discerned that their earlier reliance on pillage was irrational? Somehow, the directions, allegedly given by the magnates to their "farm managers" to increase manorial yields, has a distinctly unprimitive ring. The manorial surveys of the early Middle Ages punctiliously list charges and services due from dependents; does this emphasis on regular rents, regularly paid, represent "an economy of pillage and largesse"? How primitive was European society in the early Middle Ages? This is the fulcrum upon which Duby's thesis tips or balances. Something surely persisted of the Roman legacy, which stressed clarity, precision, and rationality. Duby's orientation is clearly northern, rooted in Europe's newer lands, where this theory of dominant primitivism is perhaps more acceptable than it is when applied to the Mediterranean regions. Still, to his credit, he has written a book which is likely to remain for years to come a source of lively and fruitful debate.