Epoch, Action, and Legal Form in the Making of the Rich

Abstract

Contributing to recent debates on inequality, Guido Alfani turns his attention to the rich in his impressive social, economic and demographic history, As Gods Among Men. Alfani not only attempts to define the rich and understand the paths by which individuals accumulated and transmitted great wealth, he also considers why the rich have been such a troubling figure in Western social and political orders over roughly the last millennium. Implicit in such an approach is a theory of social order in which historical periods structure the conditions of possibility for enrichment, opening paths that individuals may seize in ways that either conform with social norms or become objects of ridicule, jealousy or opprobrium. After outlining this implicit social theory, this article responds by stressing the importance of legal form in shaping the interrelations between epoch and individual action. It not only argues that legal form plays an important, if under acknowledged role in the history of the rich, but also that Alfani’s account depends on law and legal forms in revelatory ways.

Keyowords: History of Law, Legal Form,  History of the Ideas of Wealth, Inequality, History of Capitalism