Introduction to Capitalisms: Towards a Global History (OUP, 2020) by Dilip Menon and Kaveh Yazdani (original) (raw)
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How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism
2015
Mainstream historical accounts of the development of capitalism describe a process which is fundamentally European - a system that was born in the mills and factories of England or under the guillotines of the French Revolution. In this groundbreaking book, a very different story is told. How the West Came to Rule offers a unique interdisciplinary and international historical account of the origins of capitalism. It argues that contrary to the dominant wisdom, capitalism’s origins should not be understood as a development confined to the geographically and culturally sealed borders of Europe, but the outcome of a wider array of global processes in which non-European societies played a decisive role. Through an examination of the uneven histories of Mongolian expansion, New World discoveries, Ottoman-Habsburg rivalry, the development of the Asian colonies and bourgeois revolutions, Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu provide an account of how these diverse events and processes came together to produce capitalism. Table of Contents Introduction The Problem of Eurocentrism Confronting the Problematic of Sociohistorical Difference What is Capitalism? What Is Geopolitics? Chapter 1 The Transition Debate: Theories and Critique Introduction The ‘Commercialization Model’ Revisited: World- Systems Analysis and the Transition to Capitalism The Making of the Modern World- System: The Wallerstein Thesis The Problem of Eurocentrism The Problem of Historical Specificity The Spatio-Temporal Limits of Political Marxism The Brenner Thesis: Explanation and Critique The Geopolitical in the Making of Capitalism The Political Marxist Conception of Capitalism The Problematic of Sociohistorical Difference: Postcolonial Studies Engaging Capital The Eurocentrism of Historicism The Violence of Abstraction The Lacuna of Postcolonial Theory Conclusion Chapter 2 Rethinking the Origins of Capitalism: The Theory of Uneven and Combined Development Introduction The Theory of Uneven and Combined Development: Exposition and Critiques Unevenness Combination Seeing Through a Prism Darkly? Uneven and Combined Development beyond the Eurocentric Gaze Trotsky beyond Trotsky? Uneven and Combined Development before Capitalism More Questions than Answers: Method, Abstraction, and Historicity in Marx’s Thought Modes of Production Versus Uneven and Combined Development? A False Antithesis Conclusion: Towards an ‘Internationalist Historiography’ of Capitalism Chapter 3 The Long Thirteenth Century: Structural Crisis, Conjunctural Catastrophe Introduction Pax Mongolica as a Vector of Uneven and Combined Development The Nomadic Mode of Production and Uneven and Combined Development The World-Historical Significance of the Mongol Empire Trade, Commerce, and Socio-Economic Development under the Pax Mongolica Apocalypse Then: The Black Death and the Crisis of Feudalism Class Struggle and the Changing Balance of Class Forces in Europe Peasant Differentiation in the Age of the Black Death Development of the Productive Forces Conclusion Chapter 4 The Ottoman-Habsburg Rivalry over the Long 16th Sixteenth Century Introduction Unevenness: A Clash of Social Reproduction Ottoman–European Relations The Tributary and Feudal Modes of Production: Unevenness Combined Ottoman ‘Penalties of Progressiveness’ – European ‘Privileges of Backwardness’ Combination: Pax Ottomana and European Trade The Ottoman ‘Whip of External Necessity’ The Breakdown of Christendom The Ottoman Blockade and the Emergence of the Atlantic The Ottoman Buffer and English Primitive Accumulation Conclusion: The Ottoman Empire as a Vector of Uneven and Combined Development Chapter 5 The Atlantic Sources of European Capitalism, Territorial Sovereignty and the Modern Self Introduction Imagining Europe in the Atlantic Mirror: Rethinking the Territorialised Sovereign, Self and Other Tearing Down the Ideological Walls of Christendom: From Sacred to Secular Universalism in the Construction of the European Self and non-European Other Legitimising Colonialism: The Historical Sociological Foundations of Eurocentrism Culture Wars in the Americas The Colonial Origins of the Modern Territorialised States Systems 1492 in the History of Uneven and Combined Development The Smithian Moment: American Treasures and So-Called Primitive Accumulation Sublating the Smithian Moment: From Smith to Marx via ‘the International’ Primitive Accumulation Proper: From ‘Simple’ to ‘Expanded’ Reproduction The Uneven and Combined Development of Plantation Slavery The Sociological Unevenness of the Atlantic Sociological Combination in the Plantation System New World Slavery and the Rise of Industrial Capitalism Contributions to the Sphere of Circulation Contributions to the Sphere of Production Conclusion: Colonies, Merchants and the Transition to Capitalism Chapter 6 The ‘Classical’ Bourgeois Revolutions in the History of Uneven and Combined Development Introduction The Concept of Bourgeois Revolution Reconceptualising Bourgeois Revolutions: A Consequentialist Approach Reconstructing Consequentialism through Uneven and Combined Development The Origins of Capitalism and the Bourgeois Revolution in the Low Countries The Rise of Dutch Capitalism: An International Perspective The Making of the Dutch Revolt The English Revolution in the History of Uneven and Combined Development Rediscovering the British Revolution Social Forces in the Making of the British Revolution 1789 in the History of Uneven and Combined Development Peculiarities of the French Revolution? Capitalism and the Absolutist State in France The Origins of the Capitalist Revolution in France Capitalist Consequences of the French Revolution Conclusion Chapter 7 Combined Encounters: Dutch Colonisation in South-East Asia and the Contradictions of ‘Free Labour’ Introduction The Specificity and Limits of Dutch Capitalism Dutch Institutional Innovations The Limits of Dutch ‘Domestic’ Capitalism Unevenness and Combination in the Pre-Colonial Indian Ocean Littoral The Intersocietal System of the Indian Ocean South Asia beyond the Eurocentric Gaze The Dutch Encounter: A Policy of Combination The Specificities and ‘Success’ of Dutch Strategies of Integration and Domination in South-East Asia The Moluccas The Banda Islands Indian Textiles Conclusion Chapter 8 Origins of the Great Divergence over the Longue Durée: Rethinking the ‘Rise of the West’ Introduction Rethinking the ‘Rise of the West’: Advances and Impasses in the Revisionist Challenge Points of Agreement: European ‘Backwardness’ and the Role of the Colonies Late and Lucky: Contingences, the Eurasian Homogeneity Thesis, and the Great Divergence Structure and Conjuncture in the ‘Rise of the West’ The Geopolitical Competition Model and Its Limits Feudalism, Merchants, and the European States System in the Transition to Capitalism Unevenness Combined: North-South Interactions in the ‘Rise of the West’ The Conjunctural Moment of ‘Overtaking’: Britain’s Colonisation of India The Significance of India’s Colonisation to the ‘Rise of the West’ The Mughal Empire and the Tributary Mode of Production The Imperial Revenue System and Agricultural Decline in the Mughal Empire European Trade and Colonial Conquest: Towards 1757 Conclusion Conclusion Notes Index
The purpose of this article is first to contextualize the concept of the "Global South." Then, we offer an overview of classical and new historiographies of capitalism(s) of the "Global South." We focus on works that examine the period between roughly the 10th and 19th centuries, and further explain how we understand and periodize capitalism. Lastly, we introduce the contributions to this special issue. Methodology: This review is based on a holistic and non-Eurocentric Marxian approach, emphasizing the importance of both internal and external factors, global entanglements and uneven development when studying regional dynamics. We also underline the relevance of both connections and comparisons in understanding and analyzing the genesis and rise of global capitalism(s). In other words, we highlight multifaceted forces at work that may be conceived of in terms of a global dialectical conjuncture. Originality: This is one of the few existing articles that pulls together and briefly outlines the different existing trends in writing the histories of capitalism(s) in the "Global South" before the advent of the 20th century. We discuss developments in China, India, the "Islamicate" world, Latin America, the relationship between modern plantation slavery and capitalism as well the "Great Divergence" debate. In doing so, we identify a "global turn" in recent historiographies of capitalism(s). Conclusions: We suggest that the prevalent binary narratives-either embracing or rejecting the (pre-)capitalist nature of societies, commercial practices and production sites in the "Global South"-do not do justice to the complexity of historical dynamics. Furthermore, many studies lack nuances and do not adequately consider multilinear processes, entanglements between the local and global and shifting multipolar centers of development. More often than not, academics also neglect spatio-temporal specificities, transitional periods between-or the hybrid coexistence of-different modes of production, that is, developments which should neither be reduced to predominantly capitalist nor pre-capitalist relations, processes and structures. We also argue that a return to the concept of totality helps to transcend the oversimplified assumptions and analyses of dominant historical accounts.
Uneven and Combined Confusion: On the Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism and the Rise of the West
This article offers a critique of Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nişancioğlu’s How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism. We argue that while all historiography features a number of silences, shortcomings or omissions, the omissions in How the West Came to Rule lead to a mistaken view of the emergence of capitalism. There are two main issues to be confronted. First, we argue that Anievas and Nişancioğlu have an inadequate and misleading understanding of ‘capital’ and ‘capitalism’ that tilts them towards a theoretical stance that comes very close to arguing that everything caused capitalism while at the same time having no clear and convincing definition of ‘capital’ or ‘capitalism’. Second, there are at least three omissions -particular to England/Britain within a geopolitical context – that should be discussed in any attempt to explain the development of capitalism: the financial revolution and the Bank of England, the transition to coal energy and the capitalization of state power as it relates to war, colonialism and slavery. We conclude by calling for a connected histories approach within the framework of capital as power.