Scandinavia in the European World-Economy: ca. 1570-1625. Some Local Evidence of Economic Integration.

John P. Maarbjerg's Scandinavia in the European World-Economy, ca. 1570-1625. Some Local Evidence of Economic Integration (New York/Washington, DC: Peter Lang, 1995; pp. xii + 300. $34) is significant on two counts: on the one hand, it challenges the generalizations of the World-Economy theorists; on the other, it offers what seems to be the first survey in English of sixteenth-century Danish social and economic history. Maarbjerg contends that the evidence from most of Scandinavia is irreconcilable with the main trend of the theories of Braudel and Wallerstein, who have made Poland and Prussia a paradigm for the whole region; whereas in reality the effects of the integration of the periphery and the core varied from country to country. Thus to assume the existence over the whole area of a semi-colonial subordination such as …