Historical Sociology’s Puzzle of the Missing Transitions

Abstract

Prominent accounts of the transition to capitalism have a far too limited understanding of pre-capitalist agrarian economies’ potential for dynamism. Recent research shows that conditions earlier accounts identify as triggers for a transition to capitalism could be present without a transition occurring. I expand on implications of these cases of “missing transitions” for theorizing the dynamics of pre-capitalist agrarian economies. I present a theoretical framework that shows how phenomena previously associated with the transition to capitalism—such as flexible property rights in land and labor, extensive markets, and accumulation of industrial and mercantile wealth—emerged in pre-capitalist societies without leading to capitalist development. I illustrate the analytic upshot of this framework by considering the case study of Japan in the Tokugawa era (1603 to 1868). For historical sociologists, early modern Japan has long been seen as an anomalous case, puzzlingly mixing developments thought to represent early signs of capitalism with evidence of the durable survival of the feudal social order. In light of a more accurate account of the forces for and limits of dynamism in pre-capitalist agrarian economies, Tokugawa-era Japan is no longer a puzzling anomaly.

Can the Periphery Speak: The Self-Representation of Tokugawa Japan’s Periphery in Suzuki Bokushi’s Hokuetsu Seppu

“…On the other hand, they were in a more advantageous position than the urban merchants because personal relations within the village still mattered a lot for commercial transactions. The wealthy peasants and landholders were therefore conveniently positioned as mediators between the han administration and the village populace, the urban market and the rural production (Cohen 2015).…”

“…Tsuda Mayumi, whose better-known research has focused on Bokushi's collaborator Santō Kyōzan, has also written important articles on Bokushi and his works (Tsuda 2001;2002;2015). In one of Tsuda's articles, Tsuda concentrates on Book Two of Hokuetsu Seppu, especially the parts that are marked as Kyōzan's writings and also those that are not marked but are evidently Kyōzan's additions China Report 58, 2 (2022): 228-243 (Tsuda 2002).…”