Critics played an indispensable role in taming early modern capitalism and thus paved the way for England to become the first industrial nation. Members of the seventeenth-century English intelligentsia authored plays, novels, acts of Parliament, pamphlets, and fund-raising proposals that chastised profitmaking schemes that purported to be in the public interest but in fact were motivated by little else than avarice and greed. By bringing attention to the damages inflicted by these so-called projects and their initiators, “the projectors,” the republic of letters served in a crucial role as watchdog, pressuring entrepreneurs, undertakers, and innovators to operate in ways that contributed not only to their own profits but to the nation's opulence. Early modern England thus experienced a Polanyi-like “double-movement”: capitalism created a marketplace that enabled the production and circulation of humanistic writings, thus allowing for the dissemination of criticism that informed public opinion, which in turn served as a powerful tincture for the reformation and, ultimately, the justification of capitalism itself. Far from experiencing the death-rattle of the Thompsonian moral economy, a new moral counterweight to capitalism developed, grounded in notions such as politeness, reputation, and creditworthiness, many of which emerged directly from the quotidian experience of the new culture of commerce.
In making the powerful argument that the longstanding distrust of projects and projectors ultimately contributed to the legitimization of the creative destruction at the heart of capitalism, Koji Yamamoto's superb book, Taming Capitalism before Its Triumph, offers a fascinating account of how the productive capacities of economics initiatives were promoted and its destructive tendencies contained. As opposed to focusing solely on the turn of the eighteenth century, the period Daniel Defoe famously called the “Projecting Age,” Yamamoto commences his account with the late-Tudors. He argues that the combination of a growing spirit of scientific experimentation with a monarchical interest in economic improvement turned the concept of “project” into a standard shibboleth for referring to ambitious wealth-generating initiatives. Soon, however, these enterprises came under serious scrutiny. Many endeavors were found to be outright fraudulent and others involved government-sanctioned monopolies, which fostered rampant corruption and favoritism. The perpetrators of these early Stuart schemes quickly became tropes in popular culture. Yamamoto vividly describes how their characters were savagely condemned in ballads, plays, petitions, pamphlets, and visual satires. The resulting distrust of projectors quickly mounted, reaching an apex during the reign of Charles I.
While some of the critics of projects would have preferred a reinforcement of the old body politic, with its firm hierarchies and traditional social order, a new generation of improvers, tied to Samuel Hartlib, emerged during the Civil War and interregnum. While the millenarian-inspired efforts by the “Hartlib circle” to usher in an era of universal reformation were for the most part motivated by honest aims, they encountered a great deal of suspicion. Matters became even worse after the Restoration of Charles II, when their initiatives were often dismissed as Civil War radicalism. Yet, their vision for infinite improvement survived with the formation of the Royal Society and so began the gradual resuscitation of the projector's reputation. As the seventeenth century drew to a close, public officials and promoters of economic improvement increasingly mobilized their efforts and resources in the pursuit of utilitarian ends. While always exercising great care in not overstating his case, Yamamoto argues persuasively that England had now forged a new culture of improvement that laid the foundation for its commercial empire and the subsequent Industrial Revolution. Yamamoto is careful to point out, however, that while he traces the process whereby “visible hands contributed to the taming of incipient capitalism,” he is by no means intending to contribute to the existing body of celebratory accounts of capitalism-as-progress (p. 272). Improvement implied advantageous transformations for some segments but often entailed a forceful imposition of change on others, including Irish Catholics, Scottish Highlanders, Native Americans, and Africans.
This is a learned, meticulous, and highly nuanced account that admirably captures the essential features of the experience and perception of early modern English projects and projectors. It admirably situates these themes in broader social, cultural, and political contexts. While the author limits his intervention to the early modern period, his model for thinking about the relationship between criticism and capitalism can readily be applied to subsequent periods. At times the details overwhelm the narrative and distract from the analytical through-line. Perhaps sensing that his readers might have this reaction, Yamamoto provides clarifying conclusions to each chapter and ends the book with a remarkably effective big-picture elaboration that answers most lingering questions. A few questions remain, such as whether the concepts of emulation (chapter 5) and consumption (chapter 6) are well suited to the discussion of projects. Taming Capitalism before Its Triumph deserves much applause and a readership consisting not only of early modernists, economic historians, cultural historians, and historians of economic thought but also, and perhaps in particular, business historians.
