A BRIEF HISTORY OF ENGLAND

Dees offers a concise history of England that focuses on its evolving economic reality.

As the author points out, England has been claimed as historical model of capitalism by both Adam Smith and Karl Marx, though each, of course, drew sharply different conclusions. Dees attempts to chronicle England’s vast economic history with astonishing brevity—his study is well under 100 pages—to challenge the extent to which England’s progress from a band of warring tribes to a capitalist powerhouse was fueled by a turn toward the protection of property rights. In Dees’ interpretation, England’s economic progress is deeply complicated and was partially launched by King Henry VIII’s “obliteration of the Catholic Church,” a principal obstacle to moving beyond a feudal system. In fact, he asserts, it was the abolition of feudalism and serfdom in the 16th century, and not the industrial revolution of the 19th century, which spawned major increases in population and productivity. Still, he avers, it wasn’t property rights but “genocide and chattel and wage slavery” that powered its progress. Readers will find this to be a perspective that deserves a rigorous hearing. However, the author’s argument is far too quickly and cursorily developed to be convincing, and it’s undermined by a strident style: “Today’s professorial high priests of the sanctity of ‘private property rights’ always leave out the fact that the Roman slaveholders, the feudal lords, and the capitalists have always been the biggest violators of the property rights of others….” Dees’ work features many compelling suggestions; for example, he contends that the property rights of the smallholder produce far more economic progress than those of capitalists. However, this notion is insufficiently investigated. For the most part, this succinct work reads more like a political pamphlet than a scholarly study and is more about offering a moral message than engaging in deep economic and historical analysis.

An examination of economic evolution whose tone is more activist than academic.