ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the General Economic History because it is a comprehensive historical account of the origins of modern capitalism. It is accordingly a very useful text for the interpretation of Weber's thought, despite the unusual nature of its creation. Importantly, and in contrast to The Protestant Ethic, Weber includes very lengthy discussions of non-religious factors. Schluchter argues that Weber's approach has both a genetic and simultaneously a comparative aspect, and he coins the expression "developmental-historical perspective" as a way of characterizing Weber's method. Weber's writings on capitalism present a number of difficulties of interpretation. Weber seeks to cope with these methodological issues by conceding that, in a sense, all scientific theorizing involves an inherent one-sidedness, to use the Nietzschean notion, "perspective". The role of the city in the emergence of capitalism is an aspect that has not been as widely recognized by scholars as it deserves, but it is an issue to which Weber devoted considerable attention.
