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244 The Origin of Civilisation

light on how the civilised states of AD 1488 differed from those of AD 1888 or 1988. We can, however, discuss the evident metamorphosis that civilisat ton has undergone during the modern age as an exponential 'log' phase culminating in a 'stepped ascent' on the long-term trajectory. The concept was introduced in the generał theory, on pages 111-112.

Evidence to suggest the occurrence of a dissipative structure, wlth the co-alescing of a new order from the breakdown of the old, does not, by itself, eliminate the simultaneous genesis of a new civilisation euent, as the latter will also encapsulate the emergence of a higher order, morę sophisticated structure. However, a true civilisation might also emerge from the gradual but continuous consolidation of the established cultural ethos, as may we11 have been the case from 3500 to 3000 BC in ancient Sumer. It is here, in just this context, that we face the problem of identifying a true ciuilisation genesis within the continuum of historical change, mouing forward to today in spasmodic bursts, from the feudalism of the medieval world. How, then, are we to isolate such a seguence within a period spanning perhaps six centuries of turbulent disruption? With hindsight, did the fifteenth, sixteenth, seven-teenth or eighteenth centuries undergo a truły decisive genesis, but lacking industrialisation, or were these four centuries of gradual consolidation, leading to the emergence of a thoroughly modern civilisation explosion during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? ⁷⁹

The Impact of the Renaissance

Before we can evaluate the evidence we need same comparisons, and naturally the obvious place to begin is with the Italian Renaissance. W.J.Durrant saw the age of Petrarch and Boccaccio (1304-75) as the prelude to the Renaissance proper, which he dates from 1378 to the death of Titian (1576). for him, the term Renaissance refers only to Italy; it does not, he writes, "properly apply to such natiwe maturations rather than exotic rebirths, as took place in France, Spain, England and the Lowlands in the sixteenth and sewenteenth centuries."⁸¹ He suggests:

Euen in Italy the designation lays undue stress on that revival of classic letters which was of less importance to Italy than the ripening of its economy and culture into their own characteristic forms. 82

Other authorities use different dates; Peter and Linda Hurray, in "The Art of the Renaissance," suggest the revival began as early as Giotto, who died in 1337, and was over by the death of Tintoretto (1594).⁸³ Most researchers are agreed that the impulse began earlier in Italy than elsewhere. A.L.Rowse des* cribes the subsequent radiation in terma that conform well with the picture of man as a message car ner for the auer widening contacts of an expanding culture system;

The Renaissance was italian in its origin, essence and largely in its effusion over the rest of Europę. Italians were ewerywhere in the sixteenth century, germ-carriers of new ideas, new modes and manners, the new inspiration.⁸⁴

The concept of a triumphant resurrection of the classic spirit, of letters and arts, aft er a barbarous lapse of almost a thousand years, sińce the fali of Romę in the West, was well recognised, ewen at the time. Harsilio ficino, writing to Paul of Hiddelburg in 1492, says,

This century, like a golden age, has restored to light the liberał arts, which were almost ęxtinct: grammar, poetry, rhetoric, painting, sculpture, architecture, musie, the ancient singing of songs to the Orphic lyre, and all this in Florence.⁸⁵

Ourrant reminds us that "it took morę than the reuiual of antiquity to make the Renaissance. And first of all it took money - smelly bourgeois money."®⁶He lists a multiple of factors which helped to generate the surge in northern Italy, explaining why this region was the first of many to experience the awakening. It was morę urban and industrial than any other region of Europę except Flanders; the latin language of the Classical era remained aliwe -Italian, he describes as being "merely a melodious wariant" of the ancient tongue; Italy lies in the heartland of the Mediterranean zonę, where ancient civilisation and trade had flourished; and a fuli feudalism had never properly become established in the region. Here, life centred on its cities, commerce and industry. Of the mowement in generał he writes,

So Italy adwanced, in wealth and arts and thought, a century ahead of the rest of Europę; and it was only in the sixteenth century when the Renaissance faded in Italy, that it blossomed in France, Germany, Holland, England and Spain.⁸⁷

In chapter 4 we noted the widespread decline that afflicted the entire Hediterranean area, coinciding with the comparatiwe decline in its wealth, together with a fali in total population size, as the Netherlands and England became the focus for an expanding industrial capitalism. A.L.Rowse suggests that what was happening was not so much the exhaustion of Italy, which cont-inued to be creatiwe, if not so intensely, as that other nations were closing the gap.⁸⁸ Howewer, Braudel expresses the northerly drift in these terms:

With Amsterdam the age of empire-building cities came to an end.lt was the last time writes Violet Barbour, that a 'weritable empire of trade and credit could be held by a city in her own right, unsustained by the forces of a modern state'.⁸⁹

This tradition of empire-building cities stretches back on the Eurasian continent to ancient Sumer. It encompasses Nineveh, Babylon, Persepolis, Athens and Romę, and spans a period in excess of four thousand years. Yet all these mighty city-centred empires suffered an ultimate eelipse, as indeed did the nation-centred empires of Holland and Great Britain, in due course. They