David Landes, um historiador desacorrentado

An article on the historian David S. Landes distinctive course, concerning his last work The wealth and poverty of nations (1998), comparatively to his great first work The unbound prometheus (1969), going through his creative text Revolution in time (1983). The author´s central interpretation for the English primacy as well as for the Northern European countries industrialization take off stresses the superiority of European culture, specially in its empowerment of the Calvinist ethics, the methodic work, steady and systematic, conditions which supported by the protestant reform, impelled the intellectual process which would lead to the scientific and technological development in Europe. According to these postulates, the successful industrialization process in the United States and Japan are analyzed in reference to that paradigm; in contraposition the frustrated or partially achieved attempts in other regions are narrated. The decisive influences of historical conjunctures of the 60´s and 90´s in Landes writings are verified; from an author respected by his positions towards the colonial world exploitation and his contribution to the European economic development, he goes on in a sharp defense of hegemonic countries to the limit of openly justifying the imperialism. The work is, substantially, a hymn to the empire of globalization.