Entire Volume 17 issue 1 - Journal of World-Systems Research ...

THE COFFEE COMMODITY CHAIN 62
precisely of not having to confine oneself to a single choice, of being able, as today’s
businessmen would put it, to keep one’s options open.” (1982: 381) During the period from 1400-
1800 that Braudel was analyzing, capitalism’s “home ground” was the long-distance trade,
including the financing of this trade:
Long-distance trade certainly made super-profits: it was after all based on the
price differences between two markets very far apart, with supply and demand in
complete ignorance of each other and brought into contact only by the activities
of the middleman. … [I]f super-profits vanished from one line, it was always
possible to find them again on another route with different commodities.
(1982:405)
Capitalism only occasionally entered into the sphere of production before 1800. However, after
the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century, capitalism found a new home ground in
industrial production (1982: 231-49).
Since capitalism was based on power, it depended on the state. State power was
necessary to suspend the rules of the market economy, to guarantee the monopolies, and to
protect the super-profits of the capitalists. But state power was controlled by the capitalists: “The
city-states … were at this time tools completely in the hands of their merchants.” (Braudel 1984:
51) Braudel considers Genoa and Amsterdam to have been city-states; Britain was the first
territorial state to become a hegemon, but here, “England fell under the domination of its
merchants fairly soon after the 1688 revolution” (Braudel 1984: 51), that is, well before its rise to
hegemony. However, Braudel does acknowledge that there is the potential for conflict, because
states and capitalism do not always have interests in common:
[T]he state undoubtedly encouraged capitalism and came to its rescue. But the
formula can be reversed: the state also discouraged capitalism which was capable
in return of harming the interests of the state. … Capitalist interests, in the past as
in the present, naturally extend beyond the narrow boundaries of the nation; and
this prejudices, or at any rate complicates, the dialogue and relationship between
state and capital. (1982: 554)
If Braudel only sketches the characteristics of, and the distinctions between, his three
layers of analysis, he has even less to say about the connections between them. As Arrighi notes,
echoing other critics, Braudel “does indeed describe more than he theorizes.” (2001: 120)
However, it is an exaggeration to say, as Tilly does, of Braudel’s three-layer conceptualization:
“It does not, however, reflect a causal hierarchy. It does not unfold a tight analytical model that
guides the movement from one analysis to the next.” (1984: 66) There is a causal analysis in
Braudel, but like his descriptions of the three layers, it is scattered through his work. It is complex
and contingent, and maybe not as “tight” as Tilly would like. However, it is not clear whether a
“tight” causal model can really explain the broad sweep of historical time that both Braudel and
Arrighi seek to deal with.
On the one hand, first the market and later capitalism grow out of the base of material
life. As population increased, a division of labor became necessary, leading to the growth of
towns and the need to exchange goods. The existence of towns required a supply of food from the