In this issue we publish a symposium on the book which emerged out of this essay, The Economics of Global Turbulence (2006). Ten years ago, NLR devoted a special number of the journal to Brenner’s equally remarkable entry into the field of modern economic history, ‘Uneven Development and the Long Downturn: the Advanced Capitalist Economies from Boom to Stagnation, 1950–1998’-no less of a historiographic landmark.
The international controversy aroused by his arguments became a landmark, since referred to simply as ‘The Brenner Debate’, and published under that name. Thirty years ago, the field of late medieval and early modern economic history was the scene of a famous discussion in the pages of Past and Present, set off by a path-breaking essay by Robert Brenner, ‘Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe’. SYMPOSIUM ON ‘THE ECONOMICS OF GLOBAL TURBULENCE’
