Fernand Braudel Quotes
The key problem is to find out why that sector of society of the past, which I would not hesitate to call capitalist, should have lived as if in a bell jar, cut off from the rest; why was it not able to expand and conquer the whole of society?... [Why was it that] a significant rate of capital formation was possible only in certain sectors and not in the whole market economy of the time?
Braudel, Fernand. Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism. Translated by Patricia M. Ranum, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977, pp. 62-63.
A self-contained market would be one in which a country only makes products that it sells within its borders, and only sells products that in makes in the country. Very primitive cultures were self-contained markets, but trading generally takes place whenever two cultures interact unless politicians artificially prevent it.
Fernand Braudel was a French historian and a leader of the Annales School. His scholarship focused on three main projects: The Mediterranean (1923–49, then 1949–66), Civilization and Capitalism (1955–79), and the unfinished Identity of France (1970–85). His reputation stems in part from his writings, but even more from his success in making the Annales School the most important engine of historical research in France and much of the world after 1950. As the dominant leader of the Annales School of historiography in the 1950s and 1960s, he exerted enormous influence on historical writing in France and other countries. He was a student of Henri Hauser (1866-1946).