“The book’s title, ‘The People Without History,’ is therefore just as ironic as the translation of ‘people’ as ‘peoples’ in the German edition is characteristically misguided. Wolf’s sketch of the world in 1400 attests to the diverse relationships that existed through trade, exchanges between pastoralists and arable farmers, and also war. Western Europe was then transforming ‘from a marginal zone of the Old World into a center of wealth and power.’ Beginning in the 16th century, England and the Netherlands linked trade and war in a grand expansionist strategy. Wolf illustrates this transformation of the entire world through four exemplary cases: the creation of Iberian colonies in the Americas, the North American fur trade, the transatlantic slave trade, and the establishment of European control in South and East Asia.” (from a contribution by Reinhart Kößler and Tilman Schiel in world-views)
Eric R. Wolf 1986: The Peoples without History, Europe and the Other World since 1400. Frankfurt am Main: Campus