This topic is suggested by the direction and results of intensive research undertaken in the post-war period, both in socialist countries, in particular by Soviet specialists, and in Western countries. From the standpoint of Marxist historicism, the interest of historiography in such a "century", designated and formulated as a problem of independent research, is dictated not by considerations arising from the study of "pure chronology", but by the desire to find out the fundamental importance of the question of which turn of events determined the specifics of the course of history in this century (i.e., what place it belongs to in the history of a national, regional, or global organization). Only in this sense - a deeply meaningful one, not a formal one-is it legitimate to think about the problems formulated by analogy with the one proposed in the title of this article. The interest in a chronologically marked historical period is especially justified when it comes to inter-formation transition epochs (as well as periods of changing stages in the movement of a given social formation). This explains the close attention of Soviet historiography to the problems of the history of the 17th century: it is one of the decisive phases of the transition period from feudalism to capitalism.

What was the historical content of this phase, what new things it created, it brought to the process of this transition-these are the questions that are still missing in our historiography, despite the long and seemingly close attention to them. As for non-Marxist historiography, the question of the place of the 17th century in the history of Europe gradually crystallized in the course of many years of international scientific discussion on the problem of the so-called "crisis of the 17th century".1 . It began, in fact, in the work of the French historian R. Mounier "XVI and XVII centuries", published in the series "General History of Civilizations", edited by Francois Kruse. In it we read: "The seventeenth century is an era of crisis that has affected man as a whole, in all spheres of his activity - economic, social, political, religious, scientific and artistic, his entire existence - at the deepest level of his vital forces, his feelings and his will. This crisis, one might say, was continuous, but with sharp swings up and down. " 2 The period between 1598 and 1715 seemed so dramatic and truly tragic to this undoubtedly great contemporary historian. This characteristic could not fail to attract attention to her-

1 For discussion materials, see: Crisis in Europe. Lnd. 1965.

2 See Mousnier R. Les XVI et XVII siecles. Le progres de la civilisation europeenne et le declin de l'Orient 5e ed. P. 1967, p 160.

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without the attention of specialists. It should be noted, however, that despite all the justification of this characteristic (each side of it can be documented in one way or another on the material of any European country of this time) Nevertheless, we will not find in this work the really deep foundations of this extraordinary drama in the history of the seventeenth century.

In 1954, Munier's problem of the "general crisis" of the seventeenth century became the subject of "reflections aloud" by the English historian E. Hobsbawm, who published an article entitled "The General Crisis of the European Economy in the seventeenth Century" in the pages of Past and Present magazine. 3 And although its coverage of this "crisis" turned out to be far less emotionally colored in comparison with Munier's interpretation, Hobsbawm nevertheless uses the latter definition: "general crisis". However, Hobsbawm, as can be seen from the title of his article, was mainly concerned with the economic crisis. Thus, we read: "The European economy in the seventeenth century went through a 'general crisis', the last phase of the transition from a feudal to a capitalist economy. " 4 It is not difficult to see that the problem has deepened considerably in comparison with Mounier's work. Now its connection with the question of the transition from one socio-economic formation to another has already been outlined. But at the same time, it was unduly narrowed, and so much so that, in the end, the meaning of defining this "crisis" as "universal" (unless we were talking about its geographical boundaries) was lost, since the crisis of the formation structure as such was reduced to a "crisis of the economy". In the future, the participants of the discussion continued their policy of narrowing the content of the concept of the " crisis of the XVII century."5 as long as it is not reduced to the concepts of "cyclical economic crisis", "financial crisis", "financial crisis", i.e. to the price situation, trade volume, state of payment means, etc.

However disappointing the conceptual outcome of this discussion may have been, it undoubtedly played a role in the study of the economic history of the seventeenth century, since it introduced a large and fresh body of factual material (and, importantly, statistical material), and revealed the need and opportunity for revising many of the more recently "canonical" economic theories."in the light of this material and in connection with the ongoing discussion in Soviet historiography on the question, as if long ago clarified in it - "On the beginning of a new history"6 , the author of these lines turns to the problems of the history of the XVII century, offering its modern vision, and not a solution. In addition, the article leaves out the problems of the history of the XVII century based on the material of Russia, which are still the subject of lively discussion in our historiography. Being a specialist in general history, the author, of course, did not consider it possible to take a position between the disputing parties.

3 См. Hobsbawm E. J. The General Crisis of European Economy in the 17th Century. - Past and Present. 1954, NN 5, 6. Along with the English magazine " Past and Present "(hereinafter-PP), historical journals of other countries - " Revue Historique "(hereinafter-RH) (France), "Rivista Storica Italiana" (Italy), "Annales, E. S. C. "(France) and a number of others. Almost two dozen monographs and articles have been published on this issue, which will be mentioned below.

4 См. Hobsbawm E. J. Op. cit. - PP, 1954, N 5, p. 41.

5 An example is: Spooner F. The European Economy 1609 - 1650. In: New Cambridge Modern History. Vol. IV. Cambridge. 1970.

6 The latest publication on this issue is an article by a corresponding member. Academy of Sciences of the USSR V. I. Rutenburg "Early bourgeois revolutions" in "Questions of history", 1984. N 3.

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The European scale of the task we are facing implies the possibility of two approaches to its solution. In one case, we can talk about a country-specific approach, i.e. a certain "review" of the state of the problem by "countries", and then the very concept of "Europe" will appear mainly in the geographical sense, i.e. as a set of countries within the continent, each with separately occurring processes, "closed on itself", which can lead to the development of a new world. It can only lead to the "patchwork" history of Europe, to the" completeness " of factual information, and to the equally obvious scarcity of scientific and historical information. The second approach, which the author of these lines adheres to, consists in the experience of considering the history of European countries in interrelation and interaction, which for the XVII century is more than justified even from the actual side, i.e. in the experience of a systematic consideration of this history, in which Europe acts as a historical, i.e. dynamic, integrity. The essence of the problem of the century is revealed in this case, first of all, by the material of the countries in which it was most fully and clearly expressed, the countries that embodied in this century the main direction of the historical development of the continent as a whole. The course of history in other European countries is seen as the ultimate "answer" to a major pan-European problem (or problems), prompted by specific conditions of place and time. At the same time, one should be careful not to confuse the ultimate sociological essence of "national responses" with their concrete historical form.

It so happened that, until recently, the seventeenth century did not appear in historiography as a single and integral period of European history7, illuminated by the light of a universal (pan-European) idea, like the sixteenth century, which, despite its generally recognized diversity, was traditionally covered by a continuous veil called the "Renaissance", which was embroidered with such alluring sequins, or the eighteenth century, covered by an equally universal "Enlightenment". It is precisely because of the absence on the visible surface of the history of the European XVII century of a phenomenon that could be called "pan-European", a leitmotif captured at the continental level of history, through the discord of local events, that this century has recently been judged as a century of "contradictory", "impersonal", "transitional" (but it is permissible to ask: what age in this sense is not "transitional"?), the beginning of which is illuminated by the "evening dawn of the Renaissance", and the end-by the "morning dawn of Enlightenment" 8 .

It is not surprising, therefore, that for a long time the seventeenth century did not attract any close and even more systematic attention from historiography. Its history was studied only in its "dramatic nodes", so to speak - the Thirty Years 'War, the Fronde, the" Great Rebellion " in England, etc. In general, the history of this century remained so poorly studied, especially in the sphere of socio-economic structure, that even in the 20s of our century, the Russian historian A. A. Kropotkin wrote: N. Savin called the 17th century a" white spot " in historiography 9 . And this judgment remained essentially valid until the early 60s .10 However, even in the subsequent period, the lack of a common-

7 And as a consequence, works devoted to the history of the seventeenth century are, as a rule, only a collection of disparate topics, united only by a common binding (see, for example, Clark G. N. The Seventeenth Century. Oxford. 1960).

8 См., напр.: Chaunu P. La civilisation de l'Europe classique. P. 1966.

9 See Savin A. N. Lectures on the History of the English Revolution of the 17th century, Moscow, 1923.

10 Even in 1970, the historian Bouwsma referred to the seventeenth century in the historiographical sense as a "backward fringe" located between two "overdeveloped areas" (i.e., between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries) (see The Secularization of Society in the 17th Century, M. 1970, p. 1).

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However, despite the widespread "explosion" of research interests in the history of this century and the vast amount of factual material accumulated in this area, judgments about the character of the seventeenth century may have been so different until recently that in one case it was necessary to consider the place of the seventeenth century in the history of Europe. In one case, it was characterized as the "iron Age" 11, and in another-as the "golden age" 12 .

But if we ignore such evaluative characteristics of the 17th century, it is legitimate to recognize one really great success of historiography achieved in the post - war period: as a result of intensive and multidirectional research, which primarily concerned the socio-economic history of European society, historiography came close to the idea of the unity of the history of this century, or rather, to the realization of It is necessary to search for such an idea, that is, to search for the event surface and diversity of local events hidden behind the multiplicity and inconsistency of the common European historical structure of the century, its red thread. In other words, historiography has come very close to the question of what should be seen as the fundamental shift that distinguishes the XVII century from the XVI century and thereby gives uniqueness and uniqueness to its place in history. From the moment when the feudal formation entered into a "general crisis" on the basis of the formation of a capitalist system in its bowels, and this happened, as far as we know, by the XVI century. only within Europe, the development of this process has become the personification of the leading ("limit") line of world history, more precisely, a pointer to the direction of its course, a meaningful synthesis of it both in the overseas regions with which Europe interacted in one way or another, and the processes that took place in the countries of Europe itself. This is the objective reality that has developed since that moment and has persisted for centuries due to the uneven rhythms of the movement of history in various ethnopolitical areas, which until then had developed more or less separately. With the beginning of the capitalist colonial system, an additional factor came into play, interrupting and deforming the immanent development of regions that became the object of active colonial expansion of European states.

As already noted, most of the participants in the discussion, which was conducted on the pages of the most authoritative periodicals in the West in the 50s and 60s, saw the answer to the question of the place of the XVII century in the history of Europe in the shift of the economic situation in comparison with the XVI century in the direction of "recession","curtailment", "crisis"13 . In a word, the specificity of the seventeenth century was seen in the fact that in the economic history of Europe it turned out to be the "age of crisis" in contrast to the previous "century of economic growth", "upward development", "expansion"14 .

It is necessary to make a small digression here in order to clarify the essence of these definitions. One of the achievements of specialists studying the economic history of Europe is undoubtedly

11 See Kamen H. The Iron Century. Social Change in Europe 1550 - 1650. N. Y. 1972.

12 SEE Ashley M. The Golden Age. N. Y. 1955.

13 The concept of "crisis" has become widespread in post-war non-Marxist historiography. The very vagueness of its meaning was the reason for its popularity. They denoted a variety of phenomena: social "tension", slow or even backward (apparently) movement, and this movement was considered independently of the hidden essence of the phenomena. It should be particularly emphasized that bourgeois historians often substitute the term "crisis" for the term "revolution" (cf. Kula W. La metrologie historique et la lutte des classes. - Studi in onore di Amintore Fanfani. Vol. V. Milano.1962).

14 Wallerstein I. The Modern World System. Vol. I. N. Y. 1974.

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in the elucidation and thorough investigation of the so-called "long-term" economic cycles 15 . There were two such cycles between 1000 and 1750: 1) 1000-1450 and 2)1450-1750. Each of these cycles was, in turn, two-phase. The first phase was marked by "economic growth", while the second, on the contrary, is characterized by "economic depression", "crisis". Chronologically, these phases are distributed by year as follows: cycle I-1000-1450 (1500); phase I-1000-1300, phase II-1300 - 1450 (1500)16; cycle II-1450 (1500) - 1750; phase I - 1450 (1500) - 1650, phase II - 1600 (1650) - 1750 17 .

It should be noted that the dates given in this diagram remind us that if we are talking about the processes that made up the historical "face" of the century, the latter becomes a very chronologically conditional concept. For example, the European Enlightenment began much earlier than 1700 (in particular, in England) and similarly ended before the onset of 1800. This, however, does not prevent the historiographical tradition from referring to the eighteenth century as the "Age of Enlightenment."

As follows from the above diagram, the second half of the seventeenth century is the "epicenter" of the "general economic downturn" 18, although the change in the growth environment of the sixteenth century by the "crisis" environment was already outlined at the beginning of the seventeenth century. 19 This fact has been established on the basis of data from various regions as a result of numerous and rather thorough studies and in itself does not cause any doubts 20 . However, is there enough data on "business activity", i.e. the volume of exports, imports, market price dynamics, etc., also to give a" face " to the century as a structural integrity of European history, to characterize the most important shifts that occurred at various levels of sociality, and thus to determine the place of this century in historical events? the fate of European peoples? It seems to us that the answer to this question can only be negative, especially since the available data relate mainly to the conjuncture of the market of goods and money, but they do not tell much, and often even nothing, about the dynamics of the sphere of production, and above all about the movement of social forms of its organization, the social division of labor, the geography of production, and so on and so forth.

In other words, the data on the basis of which the concept of the "crisis of the XVII century" was crystallized is so narrow and specific that it remains-

15 For the categorical content of this concept, see: Braudel F. Ecrits sur l'Histoire. P. 1969, p. 255. See also: Afanasyev Yu. N. Yesterday and Today of the French "new Historical Science". Voprosy istorii, 1984, No. 8.

16 These phases were studied by the English historian M. Postan (see: Postan M. Essays on Medieval Agriculture and General Problems of Medieval Economy. Cambridge. 197,3).

17 As early as 1932, this "cycle" was divided into two phases, A and B (see Simiand Fr. Recherche anciennes et nouvelles sur le mouvement general de prix du 16 e a and 19 e siecles, P. 1932, p. 3).

18 The already mentioned I. Wallerstein suggests replacing the concept of "crisis" with the idea of retarding growth (retardation)," less growth "(lesser growth), " relative retreat "(see: Wallerstein I. The Modern World System. Vol. II. N. Y. 1980, p. 9).

19 From this point of view, the first half of the seventeenth century is a time of transition to the "crisis", which became an indubitable fact by the middle of this century (see: Wallerstein I. Op. cit. Vol. II, pp. 8 - 9. Ср. The Fontana Economic History of Europe. Vol. IV. Glasgow. 1974).

20 См.: Besnier R. Histoire des faits economiques: la fin de la croissance et les prodromes d'une revolution economique en Europe au XVII siecle. P. 1961; Chaunu P. Le XVIIе siecle. Probleme de conjoncture. In: Melanges d'histoire economique et social. T. I. Geneve. 1963, p. 337; Braudel F., Spooner F. Prices in Europe from 1450 to 1750. - Cambridge Economic History of Europe. Vol. IV. Cambridge. 1967; Romano R. L'ltalia nella crisi del secolo XVII. In: Tra due crisi: Italia del Rinascimento. Torino. 1971; Deyon P., Jacquart I. Les hesitations de la croissance 1580 - 1740. P. 1978; Essays in European Economic History 1500 - 1800. Oxford. 1980.

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It is precisely those facets of the economy that are most essential and fundamental for characterizing the state of the latter, not to mention the state of society as a whole, that remain out of sight .21 Meanwhile, even the available but not properly generalized data related to the market economy of the 17th century allow us to present the essence of the "crisis of the 17th century" as a much more comprehensive and profound fact of truly epochal, and not at all opportunistic significance, to which it is reduced in the works of most of the participants in the above-mentioned discussion. 22 Therefore, the essence of the matter lies not in the concept of "crisis" itself, but in the level (or, what is also the same, at what depth) of the historical process its content is revealed - at the level of a structural change in the European economy or its opportunistic, cyclical fluctuations. It is obvious that in the first case, the concept of crisis is filled with content that gives the historical processes an irreversible character ("crisis" becomes the starting point of historical development at a fundamentally new stage), in the second case, the movement takes on the character of "pendulum", i.e. reversible (the cycle of "depression" is replaced by a cycle of "growth", and vice versa).

If we also take into account that the concept of the conjunctural "crisis" of the XVII century, on the one hand, includes the need to take into account the impact of such, in fact, non-historical factors as climatic conditions (for example, the second half of the XVII century was marked by such a significant and prolonged deterioration of these conditions (cold and rainy summers, harsh winters). the fact that it is called the "little ice age" in historical climatology), the frequency and spread of undergrowth, epidemics, etc., and on the other hand, it leaves out of sight the impact of many purely historical circumstances (such as shifts in social forms of production, features of the dynamics of the social structure of the village and city due to the movement of property, changes in in the public consciousness-mentality, etc.), then the narrowness of the "conjunctural interpretation" of the analyzed category will become quite obvious. One way or another, but while recognizing the cognitive significance of the concept of "long duration" 23 (and the conjunctural interpretation of the "crisis of the XVII century" is its undoubted product), we must also state the unsuitability of this concept in order to identify truly turning points in the movement of society as a whole24. Moreover, based on this concept, it is impossible to take a step forward in the search for an answer to the question: how, in the conditions of asynchronous rhythms of movement of various components of the system "society", such phenomena as "crisis" are synchronized, affecting the entire depth of the social structure (due to which it, in fact, acquires the character of "universal").", i.e. it acts as a structural crisis of the given system as such)? However, the same question can be formulated in another way: under what conditions does the "depressive" phase of the "long-term economic cycle" indicate the process of transition of society from formation to formation, and under what conditions does it indicate only a change in the state of the economy?-

21 Hobsbawm E. Op. cit.

22 See, for example, Jacquart J. Des societes en crise. In: Dejon P., Jасquаrt J. Op. cit. Moreover, the "crisis of the seventeenth century" was by no means geographically pan-European. So, for example, in Holland, he made himself felt, in fact, only at the end of the century. In the same way, Sweden experienced one of the "flourishing periods" of its history in the 17th century (see: De Vries J. The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age 1500 - 1700. New Haven. 1974; ср. Sweden's Age of Greatness 1632 - 1718. N. Y. 1973).

23 См. Braudel F. Expansion of Europe and the "longue duree". - Expansion and Reaction. Leiden. 1978.

24 In this sense, its capabilities are as unproductive as those of structural sociology, of which T, Parsons, K. Murgon, and others are the largest representatives in the United States (see Mills Ch. The Sociological Imagination. N. Y. 1959).

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diy in the movement of the same formation? It is obvious that the concept of "longue duree" ("long duration") does not give an answer to such questions, and, in truth, it is not intended to give it, because in its very essence it was conceived as a tool for dividing the whole, decomposing it into parts, and not synthesizing it into something integral, self-moving and especially developing.

The work of the English historian Christopher Hill played a well-known role in preparing a pan-European approach to the problems of the seventeenth century, although he focused only on the history of England in the seventeenth century .25 In Soviet historiography, B. F. Porshnev came closest to the idea of the unity of the 17th century and its world - historical significance in the fate of European civilization .26 However, he saw the possibility of revealing the real content of this idea only in the sphere of social movements, or rather, in the fact of the simultaneous rise of a wave of popular movements in various countries of Europe of the XVII century, while missing the fundamental difference in the historical (stadium) nature of the causes that gave rise to these movements - from one country to another. However, while expressing serious doubts about the legitimacy of interpreting the historical appearance of the 17th century as the century of the "pan-European revolutionary situation", only on the following grounds:Considering that a number of other European countries27 experienced some form of social upheaval simultaneously with the English Revolution of the 1740s , we see the possibility of a scientific synthesis of this situation in fundamentally different ways.

The prerequisites for their detection are, first, the recognition of the fact that the ground for the manifestation of a social crisis in the conditions of the XVII century could a priori be of two kinds: either dysfunction, decomposition of this particular form of feudal exploitation, or degeneration of feudal exploitation as such, i.e., the crisis of this mode of production as such (it is obvious that for its statement requires, first of all, the presence of a fairly developed capitalist system in this country). Secondly, the historical nature of the" social crisis " in the seventeenth century should be judged at two levels of analysis: continental (which in those circumstances, in relation to Europe, already meant world-historical) and local - historical. At the first of these levels, we could talk about the formational "crisis of feudalism", and at the local-historical (regional-

25 For a bibliography of his works, see Hill Chr. Change and Continuity in 17th Century England. Lnd. 1974.

26 See: Porshnev B. F. Narodnye vosstaniya v Frantsii pered Fronda (1623-1648) [Popular Uprisings in France before the Fronde (1623-1648)]. A curious historiographical fact deserves to be noted: during a discussion about the "general crisis of the seventeenth century," Professor H. P. Blavatsky of the University of Oxford said: Trevor-Roper made a paper in 1960 (see Trevor-Roper H. R. "General Crisis". Contribution to Symposium. - PP, 1960, N 18), in which he developed the concept of the "general revolution of the XVII century" on the grounds that simultaneously with the English revolution of the middle of the XVII century, social movements took place, however, heterogeneous, in a number of other European countries: the Fronde in France, the coup d'etat of 1649 in the Netherlands, revolts in Catalonia and Portugal in 1640, Mazanielo's revolt in Naples in 1647-1648. It is obvious that with this interpretation of the concept of "revolution" itself, it has nothing in common with the phenomena of the general crisis of feudalism and, in general, with the social system of the European countries of the XVII century. By the way, back in the 30s of our century, similar views were developed in the book: Merriman R. B. Six Contemporary Revolutions. Lnd. 1938. For more information about this concept, see: Lyublinskaya A.D. French absolutism in the first third of the 17th century. 1965.

27 See, for example, Elliot I. H. The Revolt of the Catalans. Cambridge. 1963; Gateby M. et al. 17 Century Peasant "Furies". Some Problems of Comparative History. - PP, 1971, N 51.

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only about the "crisis", the disintegration of this form of feudal rent 28 .

So, the essence of the problem before us boils down to the following: what is the place of the XVII century in the process of transition from feudalism to capitalism? The latest research allows us to define this place as a truly pivotal, turning point and, therefore, an epochal one. Let's take a closer look at this problem. It is well known that in our historiography the period of the formation of capitalist forms of production - up to the establishment of the factory system - is identified without any reservations with the history of manufacture, and therefore this period is called the period of manufacturing capitalism.29 At a fairly high level of abstraction, this may be legitimate, since it emphasizes the dominance of manual production. However, at the level of concrete historical research, it is easy to detect a significant simplification of the actual process. It is easy to see that with such a generalized characterization of the almost three-hundred-year period of European socio-economic history, it is almost completely devoid of internal dynamics, which is why it does not require and does not allow any periodization of the process of forming capitalist production, in particular, during the XVII century. Unfortunately, it would be a waste of time to search our historiography for any clear answer to the question of what actually changed in the capitalist mode of production at that time. Since the new quality (the capitalist way of life) emerged in the sixteenth century, the rest was limited only to quantitative indicators of its movement, expressed in terms of: more - less, faster - slower. This apparent one - sidedness in the vision of things stems from one important omission: historiography has not noticed the fact that a new quality-a new mode of production, once it has emerged, has not only a quantitative history, but also the fact that the newly emerged quality itself has its own history with its inherent phases, stages, and levels of development. In other words, just from the fact that the process of establishing a new mode of production based on manual labor lasted for almost three centuries, it would be possible to conclude a priori that this process could not be reduced only to external expansion, without the quality itself being subjected to some structural, internal changes. But if we accept the need to distinguish between phases and stage differences in the history of early capitalism, we will inevitably face a new and even more complex question:what were these differences?

The fact is that although the genesis of capitalism (not episodic and ephemeral, as was the case in the cities of Northern Italy and Flanders), but formative (i.e. irreversible) dates back to the sixteenth century, the initial form of capitalist production and, for the time being, its predominant form was capitalist simple cooperation .30 Although even in this initial period of the genesis of capitalism there were undoubtedly already manufacturing forms of production, however, not these, but capitalist simple (without internal division of labor) cooperation - the cradle of the new economic order. Unfortunately, this aspect of the genesis of capitalism is still poorly understood in the history of Western European countries.

28 Ср. Elliot I. H. Revolution and Continuity in Modern Europe. - PP, 1969, N 42.

29 See Sovetskaya istoricheskaya entsiklopediya [Soviet Historical Encyclopedia], vol. 6, Moscow, 1965. Capitalism (p. 971 ed.)

30 See Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 3, p. 354 - " Out of fragmented small-scale production grows capitalist simple cooperation... It is precisely this starting point of capitalism that is observed, therefore, in our small peasant ("artisanal") industries."

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It is deeply and thoroughly studied on the basis of the history of Russia, which we owe first of all to V. I. Lenin's work "The Development of Capitalism in Russia" 31 .

Hence, even if we refer to this initial period of the genesis of capitalism as "manufacturing", we are not using this term in its proper sense. Karl Marx defined manufactory as a cooperative "based on the division of labor"32 . The beginning of the actual manufacturing period, as is well known, is dated by Marx "from about the middle of the sixteenth century" 33, since only from this time "manufacture is the dominant form of the capitalist mode of production"34 . It is obvious that a concrete historical study of the problem of periodization of the beginning of the actual manufacturing period in various regions of Europe is still ahead. However, it is important for our purpose to recognize the urgent need for such periodization, which is an actual historical problem. If we proceed from Marx's statement that the beginning of the manufacturing period proper falls in the middle of the sixteenth century, we will find ourselves forced to admit that the center of gravity of this period should be shifted to the seventeenth century, in other words, that the manufacturing period proper is the most essential characteristic of the political and economic appearance of this century. stories 35 . But if this is so, how could this new stage in the history of the manufactory be expressed? First, in the fact that in the seventeenth century the share of centralized manufactories in capitalist production increased dramatically .36 And secondly (and this is perhaps much more significant for the characterization of the period we are interested in), in the fact that in the XVII century there was a great movement, a mass "exodus" of manufactory from the cities, its relocation to the countryside .37
A number of factors contributed to an increase in the share of centralized manufactories in capitalist production in the 17th century. First of all, world trade expanded to a large extent the raw material base of European industry (including overseas silk, cotton, dyes, sugar, etc.) and thereby contributed to the establishment of many new industries in the form of centralized manufactories. 38 The same factor gave a powerful boost to shipbuilding 39 . The growth in demand for metals and metal products led to

31 See in this work chapter V, "The first stages of capitalism in industry," and in particular section V of this chapter, "Capitalist Simple Co-operation" (part 3).

32 See K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 23, p. 376.

33 See ibid., p. 348.

34 See ibid., p. 379.

35 See Marx's remark: "Political economy, which as an independent science appears only in the manufacturing period" (see ibid., p. 377).

36 См.: Bamford P. Enterpreneurship in 17th and 18th Century France. - Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 1937, Vol. IX, N 4, p. 204 f.; Boethius B. Swedish Iron and Steel. 1600 - 1955. - Scandinavian Economic History Review, 1958, Vol. VI. N 2, p. 144 f.; Coleman D. Technology and Economic History 1500 - 1750. - Economic History Review (далее - EHR), 2 ser., 1959, Vol. XI, N 3, p. 560 ff; Barbour V. Capitalism in Amsterdam in the 17 Century. Ann Arbor. 1963, p. 37 ff.

37 Aubin H. Die Anfange der grossen schlesischen Leinenweberei und Handlung. -Vierteljahreshefte fur Soziale und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Vol XXXV, 1942, N 2; Braudel F. Le decline de Venice au XVII siecle. In: Aspetti et cause della decadenza economica veneziana nel secolo XVII. Venezia. 1961; Thirsk I. Industries in the Countryside. - Essays in the Economuc and Social History of Tudor and Stuart England. Cambridge. 1961, pp. 70 - 88; Chambers T. The Rural Domestic Industry during the Period of Transition to the Factory System. - Second International Conference of Economic History. Aix-en-Provence. Vol. II. P. 1965; Aymard M. Production, commerce et consommation des draps de Laine - RH, 1971, N 449.

38 See, for example, Wallerstein I. Op. cit. Vol. II, p. 129 ff.

39 См. Barbour V. Dutch and English Merchant Shipping in the 17 Century. - Essays in Economic History. Vol. I. Lnd. 1954, p. 227 ff.

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intensive consolidation of such old industries as mining, metallurgy, and metalworking 40 . An important factor that worked in the same direction was the desire to bring the manufactory closer to the energy of water flows. Finally, governments interested in the production of weapons and military equipment (in connection with the transition to mercenary armies), as well as in the production of luxury goods, strongly encouraged the establishment of centralized manufactories .41 A fact of scarcely greater significance was the spread of capitalist domestic work (dispersed manufacturing) in the countryside. It should be emphasized that this particular form of manufacture remained until the end of the manufacturing period the main, truly dominant form of capitalist production, especially in such industries as wool, haberdashery, leather, ceramics, and a number of others. 42
It remains to be noted that an important role in the spread of capitalist work at home in the countryside was undoubtedly played by the desire of the entrepreneurial elements to free themselves from the restrictive restrictions and guild statutes that prevailed in the cities, 43 as well as the economic feasibility of bringing industry closer to the sources of raw materials (in particular, wool, flax, etc.However, it is not in these, though not unimportant, considerations that we should see the driving motive for such initiatives. The decisive prerequisite for the great movement of industry from the city to the countryside was that by this time the proletarianization process (in some cases open, in others hidden) of a significant stratum of small independent farmers in the past had sharply intensified, a process that took on a special scale in connection with the formation of large estates of the new era, intended mainly for leasing land rent and, therefore, for farming with the help of hired workers. It is obvious that in these cases we are talking not only about the consequences of the so-called spontaneous differentiation of the peasantry in the conditions of commodity production, but above all about the policy purposefully implemented by the seigniorial class of ousting economically weak strata of farmers from land use. Recent research on the agrarian history of Western European countries suggests that, unlike in England, where the process of so - called initial accumulation was already evident at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries, in the countries of the continent - and above all in France - this process became particularly noticeable in the 17th century .44 One way or another, in many areas of Western Europe, it was in the 17th century that the average size of farmsteads increased - at one pole of the village, and the number of low - land and landless inhabitants increased in it-at the other 45 . This was the main motivation for the relocation of capitalist forms of production to the rural area of cities. Entrepreneurs here were attracted primarily by the inexhaustible reserve of cheap labor, which was also combined with the smallest initial capital expenditures for organizing production. Not surprisingly, the so-called scattered-

40 See Flinn M. The Growth of the English Iron Industry, 1660 - 1780. - EHR, Vol. XI, 1958, N 1, pp. .144 - 203.

41 СМ. Industrialisierurg vor der Industrialisierung. Gottingen. 1977, S. 62 f.

42 СМ. Deyon P. Variations de la prodution textile aux XVIe et XVIIe siecles. - Annales ESC, Vol. XVIII, l978, N 5, September - October.

43 See Deyon P. Les societe urbaines. In: Histoire economique et sociale du Monde. T. II. P. 1978, pp. 297 - 216.

44 Goubert P. Le paysan et la terre: Seigneurie, tenure, exploitation. In: Histoire economique et sociale de Li France. Vol. II. P. 1970; ejusd. Le tragique XVIIe siecle. - Ibid; Leon P. Morcellerrent et emergence du monde ouvrier. - Ibid.

45 Jасquart J. Le rapports sociaux dans les campagne francaises au XVIIе siecle. In: Ordres et classes, P. 1973, pp. 167 - 179.

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industrial manufacturing (capitalist work at home) provided entrepreneurs with profits that successfully competed with the profits of members of many overseas trading companies, and at the same time with minimal risk of losses. Figuratively speaking, the scattered manufactory turned out to be gold placers discovered a few miles away from their hometown .46 The seventeenth century was the time of the true flourishing of this manufactory, which was essentially the personification of the actual manufacturing period of capitalism as such, since centralized manufactory was only an " architectural decoration "of this period until the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century. 47
Since it is obvious that this phase in the history of manufacturing could be achieved only in conjunction with a certain phase of the process of disintegration of the feudal system of exploitation in the countryside, the place of the seventeenth century in the history of the transition of Europe from feudalism to capitalism is unique in the degree of convergence of political and economic processes in the city and It is worth noting that in the eighteenth century the trend of seigniorial reaction (in particular in France) this degree has been drastically reduced. To the same extent that the seventeenth century is the center of gravity of the actual manufacturing period in the history of European capitalism, it represents (we repeat: from a pan-European point of view) the beginning of the last phase of the general formational crisis of feudalism .48 The coincidence of these two aspects of the unified process of transition from feudalism to capitalism in the seventeenth century was by no means an accident. When one party reached this stage, it was necessary to assume that the other party was also at the appropriate stage of development. Only by the close interweaving and interaction of these parties and their mutual conditionality was achieved what gave the social, economic and political processes in seventeenth-century Europe a truly world-historical significance. 49 The economic conditions necessary for the capitalist system of production to become irreversible have emerged .50
However, before discussing this situation in detail, it is necessary to resolve one doubt: is it possible to speak about the pan-European nature of the crisis of feudalism, if it is known that in the countries east of the Elbe River feudal forms of exploitation in the XVII century (especially after the Thirty Years ' War) took on the most tangible and brutal character, resulting in such a form of serfdom the likes of which Western Europe did not know until then. For an objective assessment of what happened in the countries east of the Elbe River, it is necessary to make a short excursion into the economic history of feudalism. It is known that elements of the" crisis of feudalism " appeared in Europe as early as the 14th and 15th centuries, i.e., long before the genesis of capitalism, in the conditions of simple commodity production. 51 However, in actual-

46 Dobb M. Studies in the Development of Capitalism. Lnd. 1946, p. 209 f.

47 See K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 23, p. 381.

48 In the Marxist sense, this concept means, firstly, a crisis of society at all levels of its functioning as a system, and secondly, we are talking about a phase of this crisis that is caused by the victory of a bourgeois revolution of "European scale"in one or several countries.

49 " The wider the individual circles that influence each other become in the course of this development, the further the original isolation of feudal nationalities is destroyed by the improvement of the mode of production, communication, and consequently the spontaneous division of labor between different nations, the more and more history becomes world history "(see K. Marx and F. Engels, Op vol. 3, p. 45).

50 Chistozvonov A. N. The concept and criteria of reversibility and irreversibility of the historical process. - Voprosy istorii, 1969, N 5.

51 См. The Transition from Feudalisms to Capitalism. A Symposium. Lnd. 1954.

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In fact, in this case, it was only a crisis of the seigniorial form of feudal appropriation, and not at all a crisis of feudalism as a system, as an organization .52 The desire of the lords to increase the rate of exploitation of the dependent peasantry, which was fueled by the commodity economy situation, in the context of the strengthening of the economic and, in a certain sense, legal foundations of the peasant economy that had taken place in the previous period, and the widespread resistance to the feudal onslaught, required the introduction of new, more centralized levers of non-economic coercion. Only political centralization and ultimately absolutism were able to connect the sources that fed the feudal system, along with taxes, and the revenues generated by the policy of mercantilism (the "patronage" provided for the time being by the feudal state of the capitalist system). The rising phase of absolutism was based on this foundation. However, in the seventeenth century the latter had already entered its downward phase, when the idea of" state expediency " could no longer justify in the eyes of its subjects the oppression of feudal statehood, which was ruining the countryside with levies and increasingly hampering the activities of the bourgeoisie with its regulations and obstacles .54
At this historical turning point, signs of a brewing social crisis have emerged in various areas. In each individual case, the facts of socio-economic shifts, as well as the manifestations of the social crisis in various countries (in which they are recorded), from the social point of view could be purely endogenous (i.e., having an internal origin). But this is only one aspect of the process that is noticeable if its study is conducted "country-wise" (i.e. separately, within certain state borders). If we proceed from the immutable fact that European society in the XVII century. If a certain historical unity of labor has already been established on the basis of the pan-European market and the division of labor that it implies on a continental scale , then it is not difficult to conclude that the "national horizon"is no longer sufficient to analyze fundamental processes. In other words, all regional manifestations of the social crisis, whatever their local-historical nature, regardless of the stage development of this particular ethno-political community, cannot be considered in isolation from the pan-European connectedness, i.e., first of all, in isolation from the question of the degree of impact of the existing European capitalist - according to its leading trend-market, the reaction directly to or indirectly related to it "national economic structures" on its regularities. This line of connections is still subject to further careful study (and our goal is to draw the attention of specialists to it), however, one thing is already certain at the current level of knowledge: the European aspect of any historical problem, especially since the XVII century, must be present in the framework of its regional-historical consideration.

In the light of what has just been said, it seems possible to reach a consensus on the problem of the genesis and character of the 17th-century system of serfdom, conventionally referred to as the "second edition of serfdom", which is still largely debated. In fact, what was this system: "progress" or "regression", "a step on the road to capitalism" or, conversely, "a backward movement in the course of the evolution of feudal regulations"? Still

52 See Barg M. A., Categories and methods of Historical science, Moscow, 1984, ch. VIII.

53 See Revisions in Mercantilism. Lnd. 1969, p. 140.

54 См. Goubert P. Louis XIV and Twenty Millions Frenchmen. N. Y. 1970.

55 CM. Hazard P. The European Mind 1680 - 1765. Lnd 1964, p. 5 f.

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So far, this question has been answered on an either-or basis. According to the historian of the GDR AND. In this case, the transition to a capitalist type of economy operating on the labor market was made (taking into account the associated process of the so - called Bauernlegen, i.e., the de - colonization of peasants, the increase in the share of domestic workers-in the homeland-in the processing of the domain). His opponents, on the other hand, find it more legitimate to view modern serfdom as a return to obsolete forms of production .57 In the same way, the question of the presuppositions of modern serfdom is solved by the same principle: whether they were internal or external, whether there was a spontaneous evolution or a steep transition.

It seems that the solution of these questions is possible only by combining the above - mentioned aspects of analysis (national and European) in a dialectical (and by no means mechanical - like "i-i") way, i.e. by taking into account the internal prerequisites (initial conditions) of the process and external causes - the impact of the pan-European process of capitalist market formation on them. An example of such an approach to the analysis of this problem can be found in the well-known work of S. D. Skazkin "Essays on the history of the Western European peasantry in the Middle Ages". After a thorough analysis of the initial conditions of agricultural evolution in the countries located along the Baltic coast, including the Ostsee provinces of Russia, the author writes: "The development of grain trade among the nobility was a "harbinger" of the future of large-scale lordly economy. From trading in the bread that the knight bought from the peasants, it was one step to producing as much of this export item as possible in-house... The impetus for the organization of a new economic system... further improvements in the economic environment were observed. In the 15th century, grain exports increased... The strongest increase in prices falls in the 60s and 70s (XVI century). But just the second half of the XVI century. and it was the time of the greatest successes of serfdom " 58 . S. D. Skazkin's formulation of the problem "serfdom of the new age" deserves independent analysis due to its great scientific value. This is a kind of call to study the differences between the regional and European aspects of this problem, i.e., taking into account the interaction of internal historical processes and the influence on their course of such an external factor as the presence of a pan-European division of labor, established on the basis of the level of socio-economic development achieved by various European countries

The so-called agrarian dualism began to take shape in Europe as early as the end of the 14th and 15th centuries, when monetary (or in-kind) rent became dominant in Western Europe, and in the east of the Elbe River, the movement began in the opposite direction - from natural and monetary forms of rent to labor-based rent. 59 Finally, agrarian dualism was established only in the XVII century.

There is no doubt that the opposite evolution of agrarian relations to the west and east of the Elbe River was presupposed by the internal conditions that had developed by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. However, it is equally certain that the realization of these conditions (prerequisites) in each case was the result of a different type of agrarian reaction.-

56 См.: Nishtweis J. Zur Frage zweiten Leibeigenschaft. - Zeitschrift fur Gesehichtswissenschaft (далее - ZFG), 1953, N 5. Nichtweis did not proceed from the method of production, but from its purpose. In the second edition of serfdom, non-economic coercion was subordinated to the goal of quenching the insatiable thirst for surplus product. But that goal doesn't change the way seniors strive to achieve it.

57 Heitz G. Zur Discussion uber Gutsherrschaft. - ZFG, 1957, N 2, S. 278 f.

58 See Skazkin S. D. Izbrannye trudy po istorii [Selected Works on History], Moscow, 1973, pp. 246-247.

59 Rusinski W. Uber die Entwicklungsetappen der Fronwirtschaft im Mittelund Osteuropa. - Studia Historiae Oeconomicae, 1974, VII, pp. 27 - 45.

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social structures on the same process of the genesis of capitalism. Its personification on a pan-European scale in the 17th century was the international division of labor through the market. So, in particular, the fact that the seigniorial class in the countries of this region has taken over key positions both in the domestic market and in the ways of trade exchange with the West is already explained by the internal specifics of the social and political evolution of the respective societies. Only under the political dictatorship of this class and its legal sovereignty sanctioned by the state did it become possible to subordinate the corvee economy to the goal of obtaining the maximum market product .60 This explained the possibility of establishing modern serfdom in the respective countries. However, the need for such agricultural regulations, their economic "justification", in other words, the fact that the region to the east of the Elbe river fell to the share of the function of food and raw materials hinterland of countries that had developed a capitalist way of life at that time, was already the result of the functioning of the pan-European market 61 .

What, in the historical perspective, was the new serfdom system that prevailed in the region east of the Elbe River in the 17th century: a return to the past of European feudalism or a step forward to capitalism? Viewed in the short-term historical perspective, both propositions are incorrect. The first assumption is erroneous for the simple reason that European feudalism did not previously know of such a system (at least for the purpose of corvee farming and the resulting legal status of the peasants).62 . However, the second conclusion is no less erroneous: being a product of the European market system, the agrarian system in the region under consideration in the XVII century was a particularly cruel form of feudal exploitation, which had nothing in common with the capitalist mode of production, generated by the "division of labor" in this system. The colossal growth of the corvee, the attachment of the peasants not even to the land, but to its master, and the transformation of them into living implements of the estate ~ - this is the essence of the agrarian system in this region. This was the system of the so-called Cutsherrshaft, i.e. serfdom, corvee farming, set up as a commercial enterprise. The very combination of these two definitions best shows that we are talking about a degenerate system of feudal labor rent deformed by market economy, which so predatingly consumed the productive forces of the peasant household that it was heading towards its disintegration (here we can draw a parallel with the system of the "Grundherrschaft" - the seigniorial system-in the West, which made the same path to its decomposition, but only through the monetary and product forms of rent). In the first quarter. As soon as the peoples whose production is still carried out in comparatively low forms of slave, corvee labor, etc., are drawn into the world market, which is dominated by the capitalist mode of production and which makes the sale of the products of this production abroad the predominant interest, so are they drawn into the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, etc. d. the civilized horror of excessive labor joins in"63 . The unlimited need for surplus product kills the worker.

So, at the continental level of analysis in the history of the XVII century, Tolstoy-

60 Makkai L. Neo Serfdom: Its Origin and Nature in East Central Europe. - Slavic Review, Vol. XXXJV, 1975, N 2. Cf. Skazkin S. D. Uk. soch., p. 198.

61 Der Aussenhandel Cstmitteleuropa 1450 - 1650. Koln. 1971 f.

62 See Skazkin S. D. Uk. soch., p. 247.

63 K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 23, p. 247.

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However, a single socio-economic process was leading and determining - the transformation of the capitalist system into a formative factor of the European and world market, and on this basis the transition to the proper manufacturing form of capitalist production in industry and to large-scale, entrepreneurial-type production in agriculture. Derived from this leading process were such forms of economic development that were led by the nobility: in one case, the trend of seigniorial reaction in the Grundherrschaft system, in the other - the system of corvee, serfdom of modern times - in the Gutsherrschaft region. Both tendencies can be rightly regarded as manifestations of the last phase of the general crisis of feudalism as a formation.

In conclusion, we must address one more question: is the transition to the second phase of the genesis of capitalism, i.e., the manufacturing period proper, a sufficient condition for the transformation of the genesis of capitalism into an irreversible process? The fact that this process did not become such in the sixteenth century is shown by the experience of a number of countries in which capitalist economic forms, which seemed full of vital energy in this century, largely, if not completely disappeared by the end of the century (Spain, South-West Germany and a number of regions can serve as an example of this course of events Italy)64 . Practically the second phase of the genesis of capitalism, the phase of manufacturing proper, is found in the seventeenth century mainly in the region of North-Western Europe: in England, Holland, and Northern France .65 What specific historical conditions enabled this region to achieve this phase? In the most cursory terms, these conditions were as follows. In the sphere of industrial production, manufacture prevailed not only over handicrafts, but also over forms of simple capitalistically organized cooperation. The manufactory reached such a volume and efficiency of production that it became a decisive factor in expanding the market up to the limits of the world (by the beginning of the XVIII century) .66 Meanwhile, sixteenth-century manufacturing was driven by the demands of a market that had suddenly expanded beyond Europe. And inasmuch as these impulses knew their considerable variations, caused by wars on land and privateering at sea, so far as manufacture in this century, with its outward successes, was generally unstable as a form of production, it flourished, then collapsed and disappeared .67
Finally, an important condition for the transition of the country's industry to the manufacturing phase proper was the transformation of the idea of mercantilism into the basis of state policy, which consisted in the" guardianship "of industry within the country and the protection of the interests of the" national manufactory " on foreign trade routes and markets. It is known that the classical period of mercantilist politics falls only in the 17th century. 68 .

Finally, one of the fundamentally important conditions for the transition of the genesis of capitalism to the second, manufacturing phase proper, was such shifts in the sphere of agrarian relations, which testified to the emergence in agriculture of forms of large-scale entrepreneurial economy based on wage labor, forms that were presupposed by the more or less intensive process of landless development of the peasantry, its social (class) stratification, formi-

64 См. Histoire economique et sociale du monde. T. II, p. 78 sq.

65 СМ. Britain and the Netherland in Europe and Asia. Lnd. 1968.

66 Wallenstein I. Op. cit. Vol. II, p. 76 f.

67 Chistozvonov A. N. Uk. soch.

68 Revisions in Mercantilism, p. 91.

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the existence of a large stratum of landless and landless peasants in the countryside, for whom earning money on the side was a crucial condition for their rural existence. 69 The degree of correlation between the process of destruction of medieval forms of land use (including semi-feudal forms of small-scale rent-polovnichestvo, etc.) and the degree of distribution of manufacturing production itself was obviously greatest in the country of classical development of capitalism - in England. It is legitimate to see this correlation as an objective criterion for distinguishing the first phase of the genesis of capitalism from the second phase of this process.

However, the crucial character of European history in the 17th century is not limited to this. This century proved to be the watershed between two world - historical epochs - the Middle Ages and modern times-for the reason that within its borders the class that represented the capitalist system formed in the bowels of feudal society first became politically dominant as a result of the victorious social revolutions in Holland and England. The bourgeois revolutions in this region were the final act of transformation of the economic system into a bourgeois social system. Bourgeois civilization was born. This is the core of the history of the European XVII century.

It is well known that Marx called the English Revolution of the mid-seventeenth century - in contrast to the Dutch Revolution of the sixteenth-a revolution of "European proportions", and he saw the reason for this in the fact that it "meant the victory of a new social system", that it was from it that a new epoch of European history began to count its chronology. After all, this is the only way to understand Marx's words that the revolution of the mid-seventeenth century was not "English" in the sense that its significance went far beyond national borders and it solved problems not so much local-historical as world-historical. This revolution was the first to proclaim the "political system of the new European society", in a word, which it expressed, along with the French Revolution of the late eighteenth century, "to a much greater extent the needs of the whole world at that time than the needs of England itself" (and France).70
If a conclusion is needed after all of the above, it can be extremely brief: the Marxist periodization of history is based on the doctrine of social formations. This means that the identification of large historical periods should be closely linked to the beginning of a real change of one formation to another. However, when implementing this unique scientific approach to this problem, the historian faces a difficulty, the successful solution of which is associated with the need to distinguish between two levels of historical analysis: 1) world-historical (which for Europe since the XVI century meant continental), 2) regional, or local - historical.

It is known that the problem of periodization is relatively easy to solve in relation to the dating of the beginning of modern history, since socialist relations are not formed in the bosom of capitalism. The victory of the socialist revolution in our country is therefore a clear milestone in the beginning of the history of the new formation. The situation is different when the historian tries to distinguish between world-historical epochs in relation to the history of class societies. It is known that as a way of life, the relationships that represent the coming formation are formed in the bosom of the formation that is still functioning. This, in particular, was the case with the capitalist system, which was developing in the bosom of feudalism. It is obvious, however, that a new world-historical epoch is opened not by a new way of life in the bosom of the old formation, but by a breakthrough

69 Chambers T. Op. cit., p. 429 f.

70 See K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 6, p. 115.

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in the international system of this formation, the establishment of new social relations as determining the political and legal superstructure of society within one or several historical and ethnic communities that marked the beginning of the history of the new formation. The state of the subjective factor of the revolution in those conditions was such that the breakthrough of the feudal system could occur only in the extreme historical region (i.e., at the advanced socio-economic turn of history).

The first revolution on a European scale was, by Marx's definition, the English Revolution of the mid-seventeenth century. The basis for this assessment of its historical significance is a number of its features. First, in this revolution, the struggle between the class protagonists of the old and new modes of production, despite all the circumstances that obscure this essence, was already so clearly expressed that the social nature of events was completely clear even for contemporaries (for example, for T. Hobbes and D. Garrington). Secondly, it is precisely because of the openness of class confrontation that this revolution was able to express in the political principles it proclaimed the largely hidden essence of the less developed forms of class struggle in other European countries. In other words, in the English Revolution of the mid-seventeenth century. the whole set of socio-political contradictions that were eating away at European society at that time found its highest and generalized expression.

The seventeenth century was a true watershed between two epochs in the history of Europe - between feudalism and capitalism. It was from the seventeenth century - as a result of the final triumph of the Dutch Revolution and the victory of the "Great Rebellion" in England - that the genesis of capitalism on a European scale became irreversible. But it was precisely this circumstance that led to the entry of Europe into the last phase of the formation crisis of feudalism. An expression of this fact was the rise of a wave of anti - feudal popular movements-peasant and urban uprisings in the east and west of the continent. The political expression of the same crisis was the crisis of the system of absolutism, its creeping into a decadent phase by the end of the XVII century, including in its bastion - in France.

Thus, the seventeenth century marked the beginning of the formational history of European capitalism, i.e., its history not as a "non-systemic" way of life in the bosom of a feudal social structure alien to it, but as the dominant bourgeois social structure. The seventeenth century is the age of the establishment of bourgeois civilization, the watershed between descending feudalism and ascending capitalism. In this century, bourgeois political institutions were formed, the foundations of bourgeois ideology (Enlightenment) and, finally, a new scientific worldview were formed.

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