"'대서양주의'라는 유령"이라는 제목으로 사학사를 정리해볼까 하는 생각을 갖고 있는데 일단 레닌 연재분부터 팍팍 진도 나간 다음에 해야 할 것 같다. 내일 올리고, 금요일에 올리고 그리고 서평 하나 더 올리고 해서 다음주에는 조금 많이 올라갈 예정이다. 아무튼 내가 보기에 한국의 서양사학계도 그렇고 여러 역사학계들이 '대서양주의', '대서양 정체성'에 대한 비판을 반복적으로 행하고 있다. 오래 되었지만 새롭게 한다랄까? 한국에서도 주경철의 <대항해시대>부터 시작해서 브로델의 <지중해> 번역에 스벤 베커트의 <면화의 제국> 등의 담론들을 보면 확실히 그런 것 같다.
대서양을 중심으로 서구식 근대문명과 자본주의적 세계시장이 발흥하게 되는데 이 지점을 계속 타격하기만 한다. 사실 대서양이 아니라 지중해가 중요하다든지(브로델), 그 지중해조차도 사실은 더 큰 13세기 세계체제에 속해 있었지만 16세기 자본주의적 세계체제가 평등했던 기존 질서를 위계적으로 재편하면서 발전했다든지(아부-루고드), 대서양 문명은 면화 생산을 위한 노예제, 학살, 식민화 등의 폭력 없이는 존속할 수 없던 잔혹한 문명이었다든지(베커트, 주경철) 등등의 논의들이 점점 세밀하게 전개된다. 동의하는 지점도 없지는 않으나, 의미가 얼마나 있는지는 여전히 회의적이다.
요즘에는 아예 미국에서 '새로운 자본주의 역사'가 나와서 이 흐름들을 비판적으로 보고 한국에서도 슬슬 그런 쪽의 시각에 동조하는 연구논문들이 나오는 듯하다. 문제는.. 이 사람들이 자신들의 논의의 연원을 1970년대까지 소급해서, 주로 2007~2008년 금융위기 즈음에 집단화되기는 했지만, "제3차 자본주의 이행논쟁"이라는 거창한 명명까지 하는 것에 비해 논의들이 조금 많이 부족하게 느껴진다. 베커트의 <면화의 제국>만 해도 이미 여러 옴스테드와 로드가 신랄하게 비판했듯이 면화생산 통계 오독, 있지도 않은 동인도 정책을 날조한 것, 베어링 은행의 대부사업을 소설처럼 사실과 다르게 각색한 것, 대영제국이 노예제에 왜 비판적인 태도를 취했는지에 대한 이해가 부족한 것, 남북전쟁기 면화생산이 증대한 것에 대한 잘못된 이해와 통계 오류 등등 무수한 사실관계의 오류가 발견된다.
그럼에도 어쨌든 반향을 일으킨 건 논지 자체가 주는 파급력 때문인데, 베커트의 핵심논지는 1) 자본주의 발전에서의 국가의 중요성, 2) 전 지구적 차원의 신용 네트워크 형성의 중요성, 그리고 3) 자본주의의 잔혹성이다. 내가 잘 이해가 안되는 건 2)는 니얼 퍼거슨이 굉장히 강조했고, 1)은 찰스 틸리 등의 역사사회학이 이미 다뤘으며, 3)은 심지어 마르크스조차도 대서양 양측에 '직접적인' 노예제로서의 흑인노예제와 '간접적인' 노예제로서의 임금노예제로 19세기 자본주의가 움직인다고 이미 거의 180여년 전에 다 지적해뒀다. 더 문제는 이들은 마르크스가 흑인노예제를 그 자체로 "자본주의"라고 했다고 주장하는데, 마르크스의 입장과 미묘하게 다르다. 마르크스는 흑인노예제가 자본주의에 "포섭된" 노예제라 보았지, 그 자체로 "자본주의"라 하지는 않았다. 그런 적이 없다. 이런 식이면 남북전쟁 당시에 남부와 북부의 이질성의 심화와 그로 인해 연방제를 유지하려 링컨이 전쟁을 일으킨 것에 대한 이해를 다 바꿔야 한다. 동질한 두 자본주의 사회가 왜 전쟁해야 하는가?에 대해 해명해야 한다. 그리고 마르크스 아니더라도 많은 논자들이 말하지 않았나? 왜 이렇게 특별하게 취급받는지 잘 이해가 되지 않는다.
이쪽의 논의들의 문제가, 내가 생각하기에는, 너무 양극단에만 주목한다는 점이다. 그러니까, '새로운 자본주의 역사' 사이트 https://studyofcapitalism.harvard.edu/ 에 가보면 알 수 있지만 이 사람들 연구가 주로 금융과 노예제 - 노예무역에 집중되어 있다. 그러니까 자본주의의 양극단이라 할 수 있는, 가장 화려하면서도 동시에 가장 폭력적인 금융제도와 가장 잔혹하고도 직접적인 수탈이 이뤄지는 노예제 - 노예 무역에 주로 집중하는데 대서양주의 자체의 진정한 힘에 대해서는 논의를 잘 안 한다랄까.
예를 들어서 코카콜라를 다루는 바토우 엘모어는 코카콜라에 들어가는 물, 설탕, 원료 등을 어떻게 확보하는지를 주로 연구했다. 그걸 통해서 코카콜라가 새로운 수원지를 개발하고 그러지 않고, 도시에 이미 설치되어 있는 상수도를 이용해서 값싸게 그렇게 생산했다. 카페인 재료도 디카페인 공장에서 값싸게 조달했다. 아니, 이게 왜 문제인건가? 기업이 값싸게 잘 활용한거 아닌가. 읽으면서 계속 그런 생각이 막 드는데.. 줄리아 오트 같은 사람도 증권시장의 대중화 과정을 연구하면서 주식시장의 활성화가 사실은 기업의 경제력 집중에 대한 "민주주의적 비판"에서 나온 것이라고 본다. 대중의 기업의 소유권을 주식소유를 통해 보유하는 것을 통해서 경제민주화를 시도했다. 당시의 맥락을 이렇게 소환하는 것은 물론 훌륭한 일이고, 그로부터 당대의 민주주의적 비판들, 사실 여기서 한국의 김상조 등의 주주자본주의론이 떠오르기도 했는데, 그런 민주주의적 가능성을 끄집어낸다는 건 좋은 일이다. 그런 점에서 기존의 통계, 계량화 등으로 가득차 있던 경제사를 "인간의 역사"로 되돌리는 작업을 행하는 건 좋은 일이다.
문제는 이게 핵심이라 할 수 있는 자본주의의 동력 그 자체를 타격하지 못한다는거다. 이건 궁극적으로 "자본주의가 무엇인가?"에 대한 해답을 내놓지 못하는 것이다. 앞서 말한 논의도 문제가 노예제를 자본주의라 해버리면 로마 노예제는? 그리스의 노예제는? 다 수익성을 추구한 노예제라 자본주의가 되어버린다. "새로운 자본주의 역사"가 "초역사적으로 존재한 자본주의 역사"로 대체되는 순간이다. 흥미로운 사례들을 꾸준히 제시하면서도 자신의 이론적 베이스를 제공하지 못할뿐만 아니라 산업자본주의가 어떻게 발전하면서 나아갔는지에 대한 제대로 된 분석이 되지 않는다. 예를 들어서 앞서 말했던 줄리아 오트의 주식시장의 대중화=경제민주화라는 논의는 그 자체로 신선하지만, 이건 내가 매번 말하는 20세기형 세계시장을 뒷받침할 대량생산=대량생산=대량판매=대량소비=대량신용을 가져올 '미국형 생활양식'의 성립을 전제로 논의를 해야 한다. 포디즘부터 시작해서 백화점의 도입, 슈퍼마켓의 등장, 소매점의 확산, 라디오와 자동차의 대량보급, 주택시장의 형성, 대규모 은행신용 도입, 주식시장의 개방 등의 연쇄 속에서 파악해야 한다. 주식을 구입하는 신용의 '보편화' 과정이 포디즘의 발흥과 어떻게 연결되는지를 설명하면서 논의를 전개해야 말이 되는데.. 그런 지점들에 대한 탐구가 많이 부족하다. 다시 말해서 경제학적 분석이라는 핵심을 공격하지 않고 주변만 멤돌고 있다.
대서양주의를 비판적으로 독해하는 작업은 꼭 필요하지만 중요한 건 그 대서양주의가 성립할 수 있는 핵심동력에 대한 이해를 보다 다채롭게 하여 유색인종들이 그걸 활용할 수 있게 해야 한다. 서구문명이 세계의 중심인 건 부정할 수가 없다. 자주 얘기하고 또 안타깝지만 지금 세계를 뒤흔드는 러시아 등의 브릭스나 다른 제3세계 국가들 GDP 자료 모아서 한번 시계열로 그려보라. 2011~2012년 무렵에 딱 다 꺽인다. 1만 달러 수준에 도달하면 갑자기 확 꺽인다. 10년을 빌빌 거리는건데 자본주의적 세계시장 내에서 미국, 유럽, 일본(과 한국), 그리고 중국정도가 좀 규모도 있으면서 올라가지, 나머지는 1만 달러 찍는 순간 멈춰버린다. 대부분 1차산업, 원자재 수출 등이 핵심인 국가들이다. 말레이시아 같이 좀 낫다는 국가도 1인당 GDP 보면 1만달러 언저리에서 10년째 정체해 있다. 여전히 세계의 중심이 서구권 국가들에 있을 수밖에 없다. 1만달러까지는 세계시장에 참여해서 어떻게든 올라갈 수 있는데 그 이후부터는 정말 내포적 심화 과정을 거쳐야 하고, 그걸 가능하게 하는 노동력 육성 등이 중요해지는건데.. 그런 점을 좀더 강하게 드러내야 한다. 전쟁자본주의가 산업자본주의를 뒷받침했다는 주장은 현상 분석으로는 용이한 지점이 없지 않겠지만 원리에 대한 비판으로는 약하다.. 나는 이 대서양주의, 대서양 정체성 비판담론이라고 내가 부르는 흐름들을 보면 괜히 속상하다.. 소련 등의 비서구권 국가들의 시도가 계속 무너진 그 역사가 생각나.. 제대로 해야 한다 제대로..
About the Program on the Study of Capitalism | Program on The Study of Capitalism
HOME /
About the Program on the Study of Capitalism
Capitalism predominates over much of the globe today. As a political economic form it defines not only market dynamics but also governance structures, social relations, and repertoires of knowledge. The study of its development therefore attracts scholars from a wide variety of disciplines; their contributions powerfully stimulate mutual insight. As interest in exploring capitalism has exploded over the last two decades, our Program has organized a variety of workshops and conferences to provide a forum for the intensive interdisciplinary study of capitalism as a historically situated order. Our Program brings together faculty, graduate, and law students from departments within Harvard and beyond to engage in debates about the concept, framing, and operations of capitalism. Graduates of the Program now teach at universities around the world, and we welcome the next generation of students to join the expanding discussion.
We use capitalism as our framing concept because debating “capitalism” enables us to consider the connections between striking characteristics of the modern age from empire to the Industrial Revolution, from escalations in economic productivity to crises of worsening inequality, from financialization to racialized labor practices to global value chains. We are particularly interested in the disciplinary developments that split the phenomenon of “the economy” off from the realm of “politics,” as if markets and states were separate spheres and could be analyzed that way. At the same time, we are committed to understanding what scholars and others assume and imply when they talk about “capitalism.”
The Program on the Study of Capitalism includes the following activities:
The Workshop on the Study of the Modern Political Economy
The Workshop is the anchoring research seminar of the Program. Taught as a joint offering (history/ law) since 2005 by the Program’s chairs, Sven Beckert (FAS, History) and Christine Desan (HLS, Law), the Workshop brings graduate students from many departments into dialogue with scholars doing cutting-edge work on the history of capitalism.
Conferences
The Program sponsors a wide variety of conferences, including biennial conferences organized and oriented towards graduate students in the program (including 2017’s conference "Before the City/Beyond the City: Capitalism in the Countryside,") and a series of conferences on “teaching capitalism.”
Subject-specific conferences have included: "Money as a Democratic Medium," "Global E.P. Thompson: Reflections on the Making of the English Working Class," and "Slavery’s Capitalism."
Graduate Reading Group
Meeting bi-weekly, the reading group provides students with essential background in both historiographic and substantive material. Students identify, analyze, and critique a broad range of readings that they choose, sharpening their analyses and building an understanding of the stakes of scholarly debate.
Dissertation Group
To provide further support for research-in-progress, a distinct dissertation workshop began regular meetings in 2012-2013. Convened on alternate weeks from the reading group, students connected with the Workshop present a dissertation chapter or article in progress, participants provide written peer feedback on the pre-circulated work, and the discussion is oriented towards building a law student and graduate student research community.
Publications
A wide variety of the scholarship researched, developed, and/or presented at the Workshop has been published in journals including American Historical Review, Law and Social Inquiry, and the William and Mary Quarterly. In 2018, the Program chairs collected some of the most exciting work to come out of the Workshop: Beckert and Desan, eds., American Capitalism: New Histories (Columbia University Press). The volume offers a sample of scholarship to introduce both undergraduate and graduate students to the study of capitalism. It includes an historiographic essay about the changing shape of the field and new trends within it.
In the coming years, the Program aims to continue nurturing research and scholarship on capitalism, including debates over the very definition of the term and the nature of the field. We welcome a broad range of methods and arguments and plan to develop the channels for intellectual exchange that we have established. We will also innovate in several ways to expand our capacity. We emphasize two areas for development below:
First, we plan to expand the participation of teaching faculty in the Workshop and related activities. Harvard University is home to a diversity of scholars who target capitalism in their work; they will bring new ideas, specializations, and pedagogies into the Workshop. In the future, different faculty teams will rotate teaching responsibility for the research seminar and associated groups.
Second, we have developed several focal areas within the study of capitalism. They include initiatives on Commodity Frontiers (Beckert, Commodities), Global History (Beckert, GlobalHist) and Money, Monetary Design, and Democracy (Desan, Money&Democracy). We encourage scholars and students who are particularly interested in those areas to contact us. In the future, we hope to make each of these initiatives into a robust locus for research, resources, exchange, and exploration.
===
Featured Publications
American Capitalism: New Histories
American Capitalism: New Histories (2018)Sven Beckert and Christine Desan, eds.
The United States has long epitomized capitalism. From its enterprising shopkeepers, wildcat banks, violent slave plantations, huge industrial working class, and raucous commodities trade to its world-spanning multinationals, its massive factories, and the centripetal power of New York in the world of finance, America has come to symbolize capitalism for two centuries and more. American Capitalism presents a sampling of cutting-edge research from prominent scholars that venture new angles on finance, debt, and credit; women’s rights; slavery and political economy; the racialization of capitalism; labor beyond industrial wage workers; and the production of knowledge, including the idea of the economy, among other topics. Together, the essays suggest emerging themes in the field: a fascination with capitalism as it is made by political authority, how it is claimed and contested by participants, how it spreads across the globe, and how it can be reconceptualized without being universalized. A major statement for a wide-open field, this book demonstrates the breadth and scope of the work that the history of capitalism can provoke.
Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism
Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism (2014)Christine Desan
Money travels the modern world in disguise. It looks like a convention of human exchange – a commodity like gold or a medium like language. But its history reveals that money is a very different matter. It is an institution engineered by political communities to mark and mobilize resources. As societies change the way they create money, they change the market itself -- along with the rules that structure it, the politics and ideas that shape it, and the benefits that flow from it. This book tells the story of one particularly dramatic transformaiton in money's design that brought capitalism to England.
Empire of Cotton
Empire of Cotton (2014)
Sven Beckert
The empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners. Sven Beckert makes clear how these forces ushered in the world of modern capitalism, including the vast wealth and disturbing inequalities that are with us today. In a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful politicians recast the world’s most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to make and remake global capitalism. The result is a book as unsettling as it is enlightening: a book that brilliantly weaves together the story of cotton with how the present global world came to exist.
Publications by Program Faculty, Students, and Affiliates
Robin McDowell. 2019. “Bad Neighbors.” Boston Review.
Vanessa Ogle. Forthcoming. “Global Capitalist Infrastructure .” In Cambridge History of America and the World: The Twentieth Century, edited by Mark Bradley, David Engerman, Max Paul Friedman, and Melani McAlister. Vol. 4.
Vanessa Ogle. Forthcoming. “Time, Temporality, and Capitalism forthcoming .” Past & Present.
Lukas Rieppel. 6/24/2019. Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Forthcoming from the PublisherAbstract
Nikolas Bowie. 2018. “Corporate Democracy: How Corporations Justified Their Right to Speak in 1970s Boston.” Law and History Review, 36, 4.
Stefan Link. 2018. “The Charismatic Corporation: Finance, Administration, and Shop Floor Management under Henry Ford.” Business History Review, 92, 1, Pp. 85-115. Available from the publisherAbstract
Stefan Link. 12/2018. “How Might 21st-Century De-Globalization Unfold? Some Historical Reflections.” New Global Studies, 12, 3, Pp. 343-365. Available from the publisherAbstract
Lukas Rieppel, William Deringer, and Eugenia Lean. 2018. “"Science and Capitalism: Entangled Histories".” Special Issue of Osiris, 33. Available from the publisherAbstract
Caitlin Rosenthal. 2018. Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Available from the publisherAbstract
Sven Beckert. 2017. “American Danger: United States Empire, Eurafrica, and the Territorialization of Industrial Capitalism, 1870–1950.” The American Historical Review, 122, 4, Pp. 1137–1170. Available from the publisherAbstract
Eli Cook. 2017. The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Available from the publisherAbstract
Vanessa Ogle. 2017. “Archipelago Capitalism: Tax Havens, Offshore Money, and the State, 1950s-1970s.” The American Historical Review, 122, 5, Pp. 1431-1458.Abstract
Sven Beckert. 2015. Empire of Cotton: A Global History. Available from the publisherAbstract
Christine Desan. 2014. Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism. Oxford University Press. Available from the publisherAbstract
Louis Hyman. 2011. Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Available from AmazonAbstract
William J. Rankin. 2010. “The Epistemology of the Suburbs: Knowledge, Production, and Corporate Laboratory Design.” Critical Inquiry, 36, 4, Pp. 771-806.
==
HOME / RESOURCES /
Teaching The Study of Capitalism
The history of capitalism first appeared as a framework for teaching. Much of the field’s strength and vitality thus far has been drawn from the enthusiastic reception it received from undergraduate and graduate students. The demand for courses that use historical methods to engage issues of political economy in innovative ways has often been overwhelming. Lectures, seminars, and tutorials on the topic are currently offered at a wide range of schools, including Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Brown, the University of Chicago, the New School for Social Research, the University of Georgia, the University of Florida, and Vanderbilt. Indeed, the success of the history of capitalism as a field will be determined in classrooms and lecture halls, not merely in the archives and on the pages of scholarly journals. As students on campuses around the world increasingly interrogate the foundations of the current economic system, our success will depend on what we can offer to complement, enhance, and challenge the ways students think about the world around them.
We have collected resources on this page that we hope practioners in the field will find useful.
Conference Report: Teaching the History of Capitalism
In November 2011, the conference on Teaching the History of Capitalism gathered a small group of scholars in the field at Harvard University to reflect on their own teaching, learn from the wisdom and experience of our colleagues, and develop a clearer sense of the field’s pedagogical aims. The conversation focused on how the history of capitalism might enhance college curriculums. Several scholars who could not attend in person also sent their syllabi and suggestions.
You can download and read the full text of the resulting pedagogical report here.
Past Syllabi
2018 Syllabus
2018 syllabus - History of American Capitalism
2017 Syllabus
2017 syllabus - The Political Economy of Modern Capitalism Research Seminar
2015 Syllabus
2015 syllabus - The History of American Capitalism Research Seminar
2014 Syllabus
2014 syllabus - The Political Economy of Modern Capitalism Seminar
2013 Syllabus
2013 Syllabus - The Political Economy of Modern Capitalism Research Seminar
2009 Syllabus
2009 Syllabus - The Political Economy of Modern Capitalism Research Seminar
2008 Syllabus
2008 syllabus - The Political Economy of Modern Capitalism Research Seminar
2007 Syllabus
==
==
History of Capitalism Reading List
Blog Post published by Kent Peacock on Thursday, September 3, 2015
2 Replies
There is no question that trying to compile a comprehensive list about the history of capitalism is a daunting, if not impossible, task. Thus, take what follows as a very small sliver of what is available. Admittedly, this list is skewed heavily towards North and South America (with a bit of Great Britain thrown in) as those are the areas I am most familiar with. One will also notice how studies of capitalism often go beyond state borders and are becoming increasingly global in scope. I and the editors at H-Grad welcome any additions you wish to leave in the comments.
Foundations/Theory/ Overviews
Appleby, Joyce. The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.
Baucom, Ian. Specters of the Atlantic. Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
Beckert, Sven “History of Capitalism,” in American History Now, ed. Foner and McGirr Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2011, pp. 314–335.
Bowles, Paul. Capitalism: A Short History of a Big Idea. Harlow, England: Pearson/Longman, 2007.
Buck-Morss, Susan. “Envisioning Capital: Political Economy on Display.” Critical Inquiry 21 (Winter 1995): 434-67.
Duggan, Lisa. The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberals, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2003.
Federici, Sylvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Autonomedia, 2004.
Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1963.
Fulcher, James. Capitalism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Graeber, David. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2012.
Graeber, David. Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Graeber, David. "Turning Modes of Production Inside Out: Or, Why Capitalism is a Transformation of Slavery." Critique of Anthropology 26 (2006): 61-85.
Harvey, David. A Companion to Marx’s Capital. And A Companion to Marx’s Capital, Volume 2.
Harvey, David. The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010.
“Interchange: The History of Capitalism.” Journal of American History 101.2 (September 2014): 503-536.
Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.
Kocka, Jürgen. "Writing the History of Capitalism." Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 47 (Fall 2010): 7-24.
Lenin, Vladimir Illich. “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.”
Lipartito, Kenneth. “Connecting the Cultural and the Material in Business History.” Enterprise & Society 14 (December 2013): 686-704.
Marglin, Stephen. “What Do Bosses Do? The Origins and Functions of Hierarchy in Capitalist Production.” Review of Radical Political Economics6, no. 2 (July 1974): 60-112.
Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volumes 1-3.
Muller, Jerry Z. The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought. New York: Anchor Books, 2002.
Neal, Larry and Jeffrey Williamson, eds. The Cambridge History of Capitalism. 2 Volumes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
- Note: There are many other “Cambridge History” volumes on specific areas of the world or thematic topics within capitalism. These, if not too out of date, are always a good place to start if you are unfamiliar with a topic.
Nkrumah, Kwame. Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1965.
Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty First Century. Cambridge: MA, Belknap Press, 2014.
Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time.
Rockman, Seth. “Review Essay: What Makes the History of Capitalism Newsworthy?” Journal of the Early Republic 34 (Fall 2014): 439-66.
Schumpeter, Joseph. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: HarperPerennial, 1975.
Sklansky, Jeffrey. “The Elusive Sovereign: New Intellectual and Social Histories of Capitalism.” Modern Intellectual History 9 (April 2012): 233-48.
Sklansky, Jeffrey. “Labor, Money, and the Financial Turn in the History of Capitalism.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 11 (Spring 2014): 23-46.
Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. Historical Capitalism with Capitalist Civilization. London: Verso, 1995.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. World Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Sprit of Capitalism.
Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Oxford University Press, 1983.
There are also a few useful reading groups or Institutes on the history of capitalism available on the web:
Dunlavy, Colleen A. “History of Capitalism.” http://www.historyofcapitalism.net/index.html
“History of Capitalism Initiative.” http://hoc.ilr.cornell.edu
“The History of Capitalism at the University of Georgia.” http://capitalism.uga.edu
“Program on The Study of Capitalism at Harvard University.” http://studyofcapitalism.harvard.edu/home
“Readings in Capitalism and History.” http://readingsincapitalismandhistory.tumblr.com (although this site has not been updated since March 2015)
Europe
Agnew, Jean Christophe. Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theater in Anglo-American Thought, 1550-1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Braudel, Fernand. Civilization and Capitalism: 15th-18th Century. Siân Reynolds, trans. London: Collins, 1981.
de Vries, Jan. “The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution.” Journal of Economic History 54 (June 1994): 249-270.
de Vries, Jan and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500-1815. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Duplessis, Robert S. Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Hobsbawn, Eric. The Age of Capital: 1848-1875. New York: Vintage Books, 1975.
Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Extremes, A History of the World: 1914-1991. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
Landes, David S. The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
McKendrick, Neil, John Brewer, J.H. Plumb, eds. The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England. London: Europa Publications, 1982.
Poovey, Mary. Genres of the Credit Economy: Mediating Value in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. Harmondsworth, UK: Pelican, 1968.
Thompson, E. P. “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present 38 (Dec., 1967), pp. 56-97.
Wennerlind, Carl, Casualties of Credit: The English Financial Revolution, 1620-1720. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
Global/Non-West
Abu-Lughod, Janet. Before European Hegemony: The World System AD 1250-1350. London: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Braudel, Fernand. Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.
Chaudhuri, K.N. Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Eichengreen, Barry. Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Fichter, James, So Great a Proffit: How the East Indies Trade Transformed Anglo-American Capitalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
Goldstone, Jack. “Efflorescences and Economic Growth in World History: Rethinking the "Rise of the West" and the Industrial Revolution.” Journal of World History 13 (2002): 323-379.
Grandin, Greg. Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2014.
Inikori, Joseph. Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Picador, 2007.
McCraw, Thomas K., ed. Creating Modern Capitalism. How Entrepreneurs, Companies, and Countries Triumphed in Three Industrial Revolutions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
McNally, David. Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires, and Global Capitalism. Boston, MA: Brill, 2011.
Mintz, Sydney. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Viking, 1985.
Mitman, Gregg and Paul Erickson. “Latex and Blood: Science, Markets, and American Empire,” Radical History Review 107 (Spring 2010): 45-73.
O'Brien, Patrick. "European Economic Development: The Contribution of the Periphery." The Economic History Review. 35, no. 1 (February 1982): 1-16.
Overton, Mark. Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy, 1500-1850. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Parthasarathi, Prasannan. Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600-1850. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Pomeranz, Kenneth. “Political Economy and Ecology on the Eve of Industrialization: Europe, China, and the Global Conjecture.” American Historical Review 107 (April 2002): 425-446.
Smallwood, Stephanie. Saltwater Slavery. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Solow, Barbara L. and Stanley L. Engerman, eds. British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery: The Legacy of Eric Williams. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Soluri, John. Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2006.
Vilches, Elvira. New World Gold: Cultural Anxiety and Monetary Disorder in Early Modern Spain. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
White, Louise. “Cars Out of Place: Vampires, Technology, and Labor in East and Central Africa.” In Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, eds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997. 436-60.
Williams, Eric. Capitalism and Slavery.
Wong, R. Bin. “The Search for European Difference and Domination in the Early Modern World: A View from Asia,” American Historical Review 107 (April 2002): 447-469.
Woods, Ngaire. The Globalizers: The IMF, the World Bank, and their Borrowers. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007.
Latin America
Adelman, Jeremy. Republic of Capital: Buenos Aires and the Legal Transformation of the Atlantic World. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.
Assadourian, Carlos Sempta. “The Colonial Economy: The Transfer of the European System of Production to New Spain and Peru.” Journal of Latin American Studies 24, (1992): 55-68.
Bakewell, P.J. Silver and Entrepreneurship in Seventeenth-Century Potosí: The Life and Times of Anthony López de Quiroga. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1988.
Bauer, Arnold J. Goods, power, history: Latin America's material culture. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Block, Kristen. Ordinary Lives in the Early Caribbean: Religion, Colonial Competition, and the Politics of Profit. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2012.
Cardoso, Fernando Henrique and Enzo Faletto. Dependency and Development in Latin America. Marjory Mattingly Urguidi, trans. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1979.
Grandin, Greg. Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (Picador, 2009.
Green, Duncan. Silent Revolution: The Rise and Crisis of Market Economics in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2003.
Gunder Frank, Andre. Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969.
Kicza, John E. Colonial Entrepreneurs: Families and Business in Bourbon Mexico City. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1983.
O'Brien, Tom. The Century of U.S. Capitalism in Latin America. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1999.
Orlove, Benjamin, ed. The Allure of the Foreign: Imported Goods in Postcolonial Latin America. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997.
Ortiz, Fernando. Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995.
Robinson, William. Latin America and Global Capitalism: A Critical Globalization Perspective. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
Sabato, Hilda. Agrarian Capitalism and the World Market: Buenos Aires in the Pastoral Age, 1840-1890. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1990.
Saldaña-Portillo, María Josefina. The Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the Age of Development. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.
Stern, Steve. “Feudalism, Capitalism, and the World-System in the Perspective of Latin America and the Caribbean.” The American Historical Review 93, no. 4 (October 1988): 829-872.
Striffler, Steve and Mark Moberg, eds. Banana Wars: Power, Production, and History in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.
Taussig, Michael. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
Topik, Steven, Carlos Marichan, Zepher Frank, eds, From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building to the World Economy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
Tutino, John. Making a New World: Founding Capitalism in the Bajío and Spanish North America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
United States
Appleby, Joyce. Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s. New York: New York University Press, 1984.
Appleby, Joyce. “The Vexed Story of Capitalism Told by American Historians,” Journal of the Early Republic 21 (2001): 1-18.
Balleisen, Edward. Navigating Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Baptist, Edward. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. New York: Basic Books, 2014.
Beckert, Sven. The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Boydston, Jeanne. Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Brands, H.W. American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900. New York, NY: Doubleday, 2010.
Breen, T. H., The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence. London: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Burgin, Angus. The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.
Bushman, Richard L. The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. New York: Knopf, 1992.
Chandler, Jr., Alfred. Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1994.
Chandler, Alfred D. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1977.
Clark, Christopher. The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780-1860. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.
Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Post War America. New York: Knopf, 2003.
Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991.
Dublin, Thomas. Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.
Egerton, Douglas. “Markets Without a Market Revolution, Southern Planters and Capitalism.” The Journal of the Early Republic 16 (Summer, 1996): 207-221.
Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth and Eugene D. Genovese. Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Gilje, Paul. "The Rise of Capitalism in the Early Republic." Journal of the Early Republic 16 (Summer 1996): 159–81.
Gutman, Herbert, “Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America, 1815-1919,” American Historical Review 78, No. 3 (June, 1973), pp. 531-88.
Henretta, James A. The Origins of American Capitalism: Collected Essays. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991.
Hoganson, Kristin. Consumers’ Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 1865-1920. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
Huston, James L. Securing the Fruits of Labor: The American Concept of Wealth Distribution, 1765-1900. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University, 1998.
Hyman, Louis. Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.
Hyman, Louis and Edward E. Baptist. American Capitalism: A Reader. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.
Johnson, Walter. “‘The Pedestal and the Veil: Rethinking the Capitalism/Slavery Question’.” Journal of the Early Republic 24 (Summer 2004): 299-308.
Johnson, Walter. River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.
Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Kulikoff , Allan. The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1992.
Lamoreaux, Naomi. “Rethinking the Transition to Capitalism in the Early American Northeast,” Journal of American History 90 (2003): 437-61.
Larson, John Lauritz. The Market Revolution in America: Liberty, Ambition, and the Eclipse of the Common Good. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Leach, William. Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.
Levy, Jonathan. Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.
Merrill, Michael. “The Anticapitalist Origins of the United States,” Review: Fernand Braudel Center, 13 (Fall 1990), 465-97.
Mihm, Stephen. A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Moreton, Bethany. To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
Ott, Julia. When Wall Street Met Main Street: The Quest for an Investors’ Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
Phillips-Fein, Kim. Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade against the New Deal. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009.
Rockman, Seth. “The Future of Civil War Era Studies: Slavery and Capitalism.” http://journalofthecivilwarera.org/forum-the-future-of-civil-war-era-studies/the-future-of...
Rockman, Seth. Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
Rockman, Seth. “The Unfree Origins of American Capitalism.” In The Economy of Early America; Historical Perspectives and New Directions, Cathy Matson, ed. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.
Rosenberg, Emily. Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890-1945. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982.
Rothenberg, Winifred B. From Market Places to a Market Economy: The Transformation of Rural Massachusetts, 1750-1850. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Sellers, Charles E. The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Sklar, Martin J. The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916: The Market, the Law, and Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Taylor, Timothy. The Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Wilentz, Sean. Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Zakim, Michael and Gary J. Kornblith, ed. Capitalism takes Command: The Social Transformation of Nineteenth Century America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Zunz, Olivier. Making America Corporate, 1870-1920. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Posted in:
Resource Blog
Categories: resource blog, Reading List
Keywords: reading lists, History of Capitalism, Capitalism
2 RepliesSubscribe to this Network to Reply
Jon G. Malek
Saturday, September 5, 2015
This is great, thank you for sharing.
Kent Peacock
Thursday, September 10, 2015
After posting the initial blog, I found two additional resources that could be quite useful to those interested in the history of capitalism. The first is part of the "Program on the Study of Capitalism at Harvard University" that the original post already links to. Of particular use on the site is its "Teaching the History of Capitalism" section, which includes over 20 syllabi that professors have used at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. The second is an annotated bibliography Brown University graduate students compiled in 2012. While not all the works listed in the document have remarks, the list includes many readings not included on my original list and might be helpful for those just looking into the field. If you are interested in seeing the list, please e-mail Dr. Seth Rockman (seth_rockman at brown dot edu).
Glad to hear that people have found this list useful.
Kent
No comments:
Post a Comment