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Capitalism

A Global History

Author Sven Beckert
Hardcover
$49.00 US
Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Press
On sale Nov 25, 2025 | 1344 Pages | 9780735220836
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A landmark event years in the making, a brilliant global narrative that unravels the defining story of the past thousand years of human history

No other phenomenon has shaped human history as decisively as capitalism. It structures how we live and work, how we think about ourselves and others, how we organize our politics. Sven Beckert, author of the Bancroft Prize–winning Empire of Cotton, places the story of capitalism within the largest conceivable geographical and historical framework, tracing its history during the past millennium and across the world. An epic achievement, his book takes us into merchant businesses in Aden and car factories in Turin, onto the terrifyingly violent sugar plantations in Barbados, and within the world of women workers in textile factories in today’s Cambodia.

Capitalism, argues Beckert, was born global. Emerging from trading communities across Asia, Africa, and Europe, capitalism’s radical recasting of economic life rooted itself only gradually. But then it burst onto the world scene, as a powerful alliance between European states and merchants propelled them, and their economic logic, across the oceans. This, Beckert shows, was modern capitalism’s big bang, and one of its epicenters was the slave labor camps of the Caribbean. This system, with its hierarchies that haunt us still, provided the liftoff for the radical transformations of the Industrial Revolution. Fueled by vast productivity increases along with coal and oil, capitalism pulled down old ways of life to crown itself the defining force of the modern world. This epic drama, shaped by state-backed institutions and imperial expansion, corresponded at no point to an idealized dream of free markets.

Drawing on archives on six continents, Capitalism locates important modes of agency, resistance, innovation, and ruthless coercion everywhere in the world, opening the aperture from heads of state to rural cultivators. Beckert shows that despite the dependence on expansion, there always have been, and are still, areas of human life that the capitalist revolution has yet to reach. 

By chronicling capitalism’s global history, Beckert exposes the reality of the system that now seems simply “natural.” It is said that people can more easily imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. If there is one ultimate lesson in this extraordinary book, it’s how to leave that behind. Though cloaked in a false timelessness and universality, capitalism is, in reality, a recent human invention. Sven Beckert doesn’t merely tote up capitalism’s debits and credits. He shows us how to look through and beyond it to imagine a different and larger world.
Preface xi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1. Islands of Capital 29
Chapter 2. Capitalists Without Capitalism 73

Part I
BUILDING CAPITALISM
Chapter 3. The Great Connecting, 1450–1650 107
Chapter 4. Transforming the Countryside, 1550–1750 177
Chapter 5. Intensifying Industry, 1600–1750 245
Chapter 6. The Perfect Storm 283

Part II
THE GREAT LEAP
Chapter 7. The Rise of Industrial Capitalism, 1760–1850 327
Chapter 8. Capturing the Hinterland, 1780–1860 377
Chapter 9. A Capitalist Civilization, 1830–1880 445
Chapter 10. Rebellions: The Crisis of Old-Regime Capitalism, 1830–1870 509

Part III
GLOBAL RECONSTRUCTIONS
Chapter 11. Reconstructing Capital, 1870–1914 565
Chapter 12. Reconstructing Labor, 1870–1920 609
Chapter 13. Enclosures 681
Chapter 14. A Time of Monsters: Industrial Capitalism, 1918–1945 737
Chapter 15. Insurgents 815
Chapter 16. Taming Industrial Capitalism, 1945–1973 879

Part IV
THE FUTURE OF CAPITALISM?
Chapter 17. Riding the Tiger: A Neoliberal Age, 1973–2008 963
Epilogue: The Possibilities of an Island and
the Future of Capitalism 1047

Acknowledgments 1089
Notes 1099
Illustration Credits 1255
Index 1267
© Maurice Weiss
Sven Beckert is the Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University. Holding a PhD from Columbia University, he has written widely on the economic, social, and political history of capitalism. His book Empire of Cotton won the Bancroft Prize, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and was named one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including from Harvard Business School, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. View titles by Sven Beckert

About

A landmark event years in the making, a brilliant global narrative that unravels the defining story of the past thousand years of human history

No other phenomenon has shaped human history as decisively as capitalism. It structures how we live and work, how we think about ourselves and others, how we organize our politics. Sven Beckert, author of the Bancroft Prize–winning Empire of Cotton, places the story of capitalism within the largest conceivable geographical and historical framework, tracing its history during the past millennium and across the world. An epic achievement, his book takes us into merchant businesses in Aden and car factories in Turin, onto the terrifyingly violent sugar plantations in Barbados, and within the world of women workers in textile factories in today’s Cambodia.

Capitalism, argues Beckert, was born global. Emerging from trading communities across Asia, Africa, and Europe, capitalism’s radical recasting of economic life rooted itself only gradually. But then it burst onto the world scene, as a powerful alliance between European states and merchants propelled them, and their economic logic, across the oceans. This, Beckert shows, was modern capitalism’s big bang, and one of its epicenters was the slave labor camps of the Caribbean. This system, with its hierarchies that haunt us still, provided the liftoff for the radical transformations of the Industrial Revolution. Fueled by vast productivity increases along with coal and oil, capitalism pulled down old ways of life to crown itself the defining force of the modern world. This epic drama, shaped by state-backed institutions and imperial expansion, corresponded at no point to an idealized dream of free markets.

Drawing on archives on six continents, Capitalism locates important modes of agency, resistance, innovation, and ruthless coercion everywhere in the world, opening the aperture from heads of state to rural cultivators. Beckert shows that despite the dependence on expansion, there always have been, and are still, areas of human life that the capitalist revolution has yet to reach. 

By chronicling capitalism’s global history, Beckert exposes the reality of the system that now seems simply “natural.” It is said that people can more easily imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. If there is one ultimate lesson in this extraordinary book, it’s how to leave that behind. Though cloaked in a false timelessness and universality, capitalism is, in reality, a recent human invention. Sven Beckert doesn’t merely tote up capitalism’s debits and credits. He shows us how to look through and beyond it to imagine a different and larger world.

Table of Contents

Preface xi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1. Islands of Capital 29
Chapter 2. Capitalists Without Capitalism 73

Part I
BUILDING CAPITALISM
Chapter 3. The Great Connecting, 1450–1650 107
Chapter 4. Transforming the Countryside, 1550–1750 177
Chapter 5. Intensifying Industry, 1600–1750 245
Chapter 6. The Perfect Storm 283

Part II
THE GREAT LEAP
Chapter 7. The Rise of Industrial Capitalism, 1760–1850 327
Chapter 8. Capturing the Hinterland, 1780–1860 377
Chapter 9. A Capitalist Civilization, 1830–1880 445
Chapter 10. Rebellions: The Crisis of Old-Regime Capitalism, 1830–1870 509

Part III
GLOBAL RECONSTRUCTIONS
Chapter 11. Reconstructing Capital, 1870–1914 565
Chapter 12. Reconstructing Labor, 1870–1920 609
Chapter 13. Enclosures 681
Chapter 14. A Time of Monsters: Industrial Capitalism, 1918–1945 737
Chapter 15. Insurgents 815
Chapter 16. Taming Industrial Capitalism, 1945–1973 879

Part IV
THE FUTURE OF CAPITALISM?
Chapter 17. Riding the Tiger: A Neoliberal Age, 1973–2008 963
Epilogue: The Possibilities of an Island and
the Future of Capitalism 1047

Acknowledgments 1089
Notes 1099
Illustration Credits 1255
Index 1267

Author

© Maurice Weiss
Sven Beckert is the Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University. Holding a PhD from Columbia University, he has written widely on the economic, social, and political history of capitalism. His book Empire of Cotton won the Bancroft Prize, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and was named one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including from Harvard Business School, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. View titles by Sven Beckert

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