The Mystery of Capital - Chapter 1

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

Fernand Braudel, The Wheels of...