Basically what it says so in the title. Is economy and making money the biggest driving force in history? That's what one of my friends thinks at least. He views most if not all wars as being waged upon the sole purpose to make more money. Al the other factors that might contribute to the beginning of war like ideology or nationalism are purely a disguise for its true reasons, namely money. My friend is really stuborn in his view. I however have the feeling that that's not entirely so. I agree that economics is a big part of what drives history. But there are many other factors like enviorment, culture etc... I'm not asking you to be the judge and give me the "correct" driving force to ALL history. My questions is: are there any examples that this view of economics is wrong. Or I'm I wrong? Is history just money?
Definetively not that simple. Take the Crusades, for example. extremely expensive, often bankrupting nobles and kings during the attempt to get the ships, supplies and food needed to move an army to the Holy Land. Some of them had to sell or pledge everything they owned to get the money needed.
Sometimes they even had to raid cities to get more food and supplies before even leaving Europe, depending on how well prepared the crusade was. They didn't do stuff like that for economic gain.
You'll not get a complete answer from anyone, as there really is no 'correct' way to see history.
Certainly economics has been a large-scale driver of historical change. This is among the foundations of Marxian and other historiographies. Entire libraries could be filled with books whose authors see the struggle -- or dialectic, if you're so inclined -- between the haves and those who have less as what drives change.
But, as an example, think for a bit about something like the beaten-like-a-dead-horse origins of WW2. Certainly a large-scale change in the world, no? Was WW2 caused by money? You could make an economic argument -- that the onerous reparations caused the poverty and whatnot that made H's rise to power possible, etc., -- but that becomes a bit stretched logically, doesn't it? It requires a telos that I don't think is supported by the evidence. Was H's rise to power only because of economics? If so, it almost requires a view that the Treaty of Versailles set in place a pre-determined outcome. Again, an argument can be made, sure, but it would elide many other factors that are perhaps equally important.
I'm a labor historian. I definitely see economics as a huge driver of change. But I've also studied numerous people and events that didn't have much if any economic relevance. While I'll not give out the title, my dissertation focused on choices workers made that were not necessarily driven by economics. People certainly act as rational self-interest maximizers most of the time, but self-interest is not always economic.
Is history just money?
Considering that there are many societies who didn't use money, I think this notion can easily be debunked.