change in the economic life of India? The answer given by Mr. Moreland is in the negative. The volume of European commerce in the period covered by this book was so small, from eighteen to twenty lakhs a year, that its influence upon the industrial system of India as a whole was negligible, though particular classes of artisans (growers of indigo and weavers of cotton cloth principally) in a few localities did derive substantial benefit from the opening of new markets. But speaking generally the system of production which prevailed at the death of Akbar remained unaltered during the reigns of Jehangir and Shah Jehan. "The land, by far the most important source of national income, was cultivated in small holdings by peasants, for the most part short of capital, and contributing a large share of the produce to the revenue of the State. Other forms of production, whether mining or manufacture, were likewise organised in small units and they were dominated by scarcity of capital and the demands of the Government or its nominees." This was, of course, the system prevailing in Europe before the industrial revolution; it was founded, as Mons. Paul Mantoux observes, " upon the co-existence and the close alliance of production on a small scale in agriculture and production on a small scale in industry." It is the system which has survived into our own times in India, and it is now slowly yielding ground to a capitalistic organisation.

What, then, Mr. Moreland's book does is to extend our knowledge; it does not compel us to revise our opinions; the new facts which he has brought to light are valuable corroborations of the truth of the hypothesis which had been provisionally framed before they were known. I should select as particularly instructive his analysis of the trade in cotton goods. All of it is interesting, and the fact that Indian cotton cloth was orginally purchased by the Dutch to barter against spices in the East Indian Islands is new to me, at least. In Chapter VII Mr. Moreland shows vividly the catastrophic results of famine in India before the days of roads and railways. His study of the famine of 1630 is a valuable addition to the history of Indian famines. The letters sent from the English factories in India mention the prevalence of cannibalism" in this direfull tyme of dearth," but I have seen nothing so convincing as the narrative of Van Twist quoted (p. 212) by Mr. Moreland. The following specimen must here suffice. "Some of our Dutchmen, coming from Ahmadabad, found some people sitting at a little fire where hands and feet were cooking, a terrible thing to see. Even worse was it in the village of Susuntra, where human flesh was sold in open market. This No. 134.-VOL. XXXIV.

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terrible divine punishment fell chiefly on the poor, who had nothing in store." I doubt whether this story will be believed, in modern India. "Le drame du pain au dénouement funèbre," as the Vicomte d'Avenel says, "ne se joue plus. Il est si oublié qu'il en devient improbable."

But though the famine of 1630 "disjointed all trade out of frame" and reduced the industrial efficiency of the province of Gujerat for years, such visitations were only occasional. The evil of bad government was chronic. Mr. Moreland's chapter upon the economic influence of the administration deserves very careful consideration. I confess that the sombreness of the picture surprises me; his conclusions suggest, as he himself confesses, that "the India of the seventeenth century must have been an Inferno for the ordinary man." The farming of taxes "by the year to the highest bidders " must certainly have produced calamitous results to the people, and the evidence of the misery thereby caused in certain places and at certain times is incontrovertible. But if such misery had been universal India would surely have made a painful impression upon all European visitors. This was by no means the case. Terry, for instance, speaks of India in terms so glowing that he is constrained to add: "But lest this remote countrey should seeme like an earthly Paradise without any discommodities, I must needs take notice there of many lions, tygres, wolves, jackals (which seeme to be wild dogs) and many other harmful beasts." "But," he continues, "there is no country without some discommodities; for therefore the wise Disposer of all things hath tempered bitter things with sweet, to teach man that there is no true and perfect content to be found in any kingdom but that of God." A very proper and wholesome reflection in the mouth of a grave chaplain of the East India Company, but surely pointless and superfluous had India been an Inferno for the ordinary man. Terry was two years and a half in India, and to my thinking he was an intelligent observer, and though I fully acknowledge that his evidence cannot carry the same weight as that of Pelsart, Linschoten or van Twist, yet I would not altogether disregard it, if only because it brings some light into a picture which would otherwise be too black to be credible. THEODORE MORISON

Die Gestaltung der Wirtschaftsentwicklung aus ihren Anfängen heraus (Primitive Economic Life). By RICHARD THURNWALD. Separately and also in Die Hauptprobleme der Soziologie. Munich: Duncker and Humblot. 1923. Pp. 60.

ETHNOLOGY has been remarkably slow in giving us a picture of primitive economic organisation. It is not difficult to find the reason in economics even more than in sociology it requires a highly trained eye to perceive the fact the scientifically relevant, the rule, the law-under the surface of apparently shapeless human behaviour. The savage can satisfy his hunger, thirst, his need of shelter and clothing in a relatively simple manner. The amateur traveller, missionary, planter, who is on the look-out for the homo œconomicus of the current text-books, if he does not overlook economics altogether, finds that there is nothing to say about this aspect of savage life. Hence in our typical ethnographic description we find much about the superstitions and beliefs, war customs and ways of cannibalism and headhunting, but hardly anything at all about economics.

It needed the trained sociologist, acquainted also with economic principles, to show that there is much to be said about savage economics (cf. Schwiedland, Anfänge und Wesen der Wirtschaft, 3rd ed., Stuttgart, 1923). The facts, as they become revealed by recent researches, are often blurred and somewhat diffuse; sometimes ensconced in quaint borderlands between practical and ceremonial pursuits, as, for instance, in the remarkable customs of the Kula type, described by Prof. Malinowski in his Argonauts in the Western Pacific and in the ECONOMIC JOURNAL (March 1921). But they are always to be found, and most modern ethnographic records of field-work no longer ignore the economic aspect.

No student of Social Anthropology, however, has contributed as much to this branch of learning as R. Thurnwald, now reader in the University of Berlin, who during his several expeditions to New Guinea and the Melanesian Islands has been for years in close personal contact with the natives, and has given proofs of his methods and abilities in a considerable number of first-rate publications. The above memoir on early economic life is therefore of special value, for it unites unequalled experience in the field with a thoroughly theoretical grasp of the subject.

The author starts with an analysis of the simplest type of

economic organisation. He shows, that besides the simple food-procuring activities of the lowest savages, besides the somewhat more complex methods of the higher barbarians, we find, right down to the level of lowest savagery, a great deal of human activity devoted to what could be called ideal aims; that is, work not devoted to useful and rational ends, but squandered on some magical superstition or religious belief, or serving to satisfy some of the sinuous vagaries of native tradition. It is in the relation of this para-economic effort to the rational and adequate methods that, according to Thurnwald, some of the most interesting chapters of primitive economics can be found. For gradually-under the stress of harsh conditions of life, with the advance of knowledge and the development of technique, with the increase of population and the closer knitting of the family, clan, local grouping and State-there develop the rational schemes of work and enterprise. But these adequate, really economic modes of activity run for a long time side by side with the blind-alleys of para-economic work, each influencing the other in many interesting ways.

Professor Thurnwald gives among others a most valuable account of the psychology of primitive work. The native works not only for his means of subsistence, but also for the display of personal vanity, for social distinction, for the acquisition of magical powers and other forms of self-enhancement. It is interesting to follow, for example, the gradual development of money. This important social achievement hardly ever grows out of any object of use. It usually evolves out of some typical ornament or artistic production, out of some specially perfect type of implement or ceremonial object. Since with savages there is no common measure of economic value, "money " such as it is cannot serve to express it. Primitive money has therefore no direct relation to capital as we use this word, nor can it be strictly regarded as a medium of exchange. It is interesting to note that Dr. Thurnwald independently arrives at the same conclusions as those reached by another field-worker on economic matters, namely, Malinowski (cf. his Western Argonauts, chap. vi. and passim). The earliest forms of capital are to be sought in such commodities as fruit-bearing trees, domesticated animals and slaves.

Taking everything into account, Thurnwald is compelled to reject Professor Buecher's theory of an early stage of "closed housekeeping." The primitive unit of economic life is not the house, nor the family, but the communal group-either the clan

or the local settlement. Barter plays an important rôle even in very small communities.

Thurnwald refuses also to over-emphasise the dependence of native economics upon natural surroundings. Primitive man in possession of a simple technique only is obviously in a large degree determined in his pursuits by the environment. But how to account in the same deserts for the existence of Bushman hunters and of Herero cattle-breeders? Why do we find peoples with very different political and economic organisation in the same climate and cultural conditions-as, for instance, in the South Sea the Samoans or the Maoris with an aristocratic and feudal system on the one hand, and the Papuans with hardly any chiefs and a system of communal partnership on the other?

Thurnwald shows that the nature of economic life depends on three factors:

This

(1) First there is, of course, the natural environment. sets the economic problem, and at the same time it yields some -at times a great many-of the means of its solution.

(2) The stage of knowledge and of technical development supplies man with most of his means and ways.

(3) A third and a very labile factor is the type of social organisation, the type of relations obtaining among men and groups of men. Each political type of society is marked by its own system of estimating and selecting persons for leadership. And this influences the economic as well as all other functions of that society.

On the whole one comes to the conclusion, reading Thurnwald's thorough and stimulating books, that economic rationality and adequacy of means to ends had to be invented, just as much as the potter's wheel or the plough or the use of metals.

Thurnwald shows us how the economic process is not only the outcome of human intellect, but how it results from a complex play of instincts, working on and worked by the forces of environment and aided or hindered by social tradition and organisation (cf. my own Volkswirtschaftslehre, especially Vol. I., 3rd ed., Stuttgart, 1923).

The present study of Thurnwald is undoubtedly the best statement of economic development, based on an extensive personal acquaintance with natives, aided by a wide learning and a thorough grasp of economic theory.

EUGENE SCHWIEDLAND