{"title":"Sven Beckert","description":"\u003cp\u003eDiscover compelling works by Sven Beckert, delving into global capitalism, cotton's impact, and labour history. Ideal for readers seeking insightful historical analysis and a deeper understanding of economic forces.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"empire-of-cotton-book-sven-beckert-9780375713965","title":"Empire of Cotton","description":"\u003cp\u003eONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOKS OF THE YEAR \u003cbr\u003eWINER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE \u003cbr\u003ePULITZER PRIZE FINALIST \u003cbr\u003eThe epic story of the rise and fall of the empire of cotton, its centrality to the world economy, and its making and remaking of global capitalism. \u003cbr\u003eCotton is so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible, yet understanding its history is key to understanding the origins of modern capitalism. Sven Beckert s rich, fascinating book tells the story of how, in a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful statesmen recast the world s most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to change the world. Here is the story of how, beginning well before the advent of machine production in the 1780s, these men captured ancient trades and skills in Asia, and combined them with the expropriation of lands in the Americas and the enslavement of African workers to crucially reshape the disparate realms of cotton that had existed for millennia, and how industrial capitalism gave birth to an empire, and how this force transformed the world. \u003cbr\u003eThe empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners. 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. 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49564810674449,"sku":"GOR008091375","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49677674774801,"sku":"CIN0375713964VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49677717635345,"sku":"CIN0375713964G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":49760374292753,"sku":"CIN0375713964A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51001860620561,"sku":"NIN9780375713965","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53345988182289,"sku":"GOR008069262","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53362784764177,"sku":"GOR010568719","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0375713964.jpg?v=1750910564"},{"product_id":"empire-of-cotton-book-sven-beckert-9780141979984","title":"Empire of Cotton","description":"WINNER OF THE 2015 BANCROFT PRIZE  WINNER OF THE 2015 PHILIP TAFT PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE 2015 PULITZER PRIZE FOR HISTORY SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 CUNDHILL PRIZE IN HISTORICAL LITERATURE Economist BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015  'Knowledgeable and stunning' Orhan Pamuk   'A masterpiece of the historian's craft' The Nation  For about 900 years, from 1000 to 1900, cotton was the world's most important manufacturing industry. It remains a vast business - if all the cotton bales produced in 2013 had been stacked on top of each other they would have made a somewhat unstable tower 40,000 miles high.    Sven Beckert's superb new book is a history of the overwhelming role played by cotton in dictating the shape of our world. It is both a gripping narrative and a brilliant case history of how the world works.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49727631917329,"sku":"NGR9780141979984","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49793908932881,"sku":"GOR009115552","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50096925344017,"sku":"GOR011269570","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52108874645777,"sku":"GOR008090132","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52960401457425,"sku":"GOR013131840","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0141979984.jpg?v=1751004516"},{"product_id":"empire-of-cotton-book-sven-beckert-9780375414145","title":"Empire of Cotton","description":"\u003cp\u003eONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOKS OF THE YEAR \u003cbr\u003eWINER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE \u003cbr\u003ePULITZER PRIZE FINALIST \u003cbr\u003eThe epic story of the rise and fall of the empire of cotton, its centrality to the world economy, and its making and remaking of global capitalism. \u003cbr\u003eCotton is so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible, yet understanding its history is key to understanding the origins of modern capitalism. Sven Beckert s rich, fascinating book tells the story of how, in a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful statesmen recast the world s most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to change the world. Here is the story of how, beginning well before the advent of machine production in the 1780s, these men captured ancient trades and skills in Asia, and combined them with the expropriation of lands in the Americas and the enslavement of African workers to crucially reshape the disparate realms of cotton that had existed for millennia, and how industrial capitalism gave birth to an empire, and how this force transformed the world. \u003cbr\u003eThe empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners. 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. 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49763346710801,"sku":"CIN0375414142VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49778142871825,"sku":"CIN0375414142G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50885853380881,"sku":"GOR009209313","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0375414142.jpg?v=1750942184"},{"product_id":"monied-metropolis-book-sven-beckert-9780521524100","title":"The Monied Metropolis","description":"This book, first published in 2001, is a comprehensive history of the most powerful group in the nineteenth-century United States: New York City's economic elite. This small and diverse group of Americans accumulated unprecedented economic, social, and political power, and decisively put their mark on the age. Professor Beckert explores how capital-owning New Yorkers overcame their distinct antebellum identities to forge dense social networks, create powerful social institutions, and articulate an increasingly coherent view of the world and their place within it. Actively engaging in a rapidly changing economic, social, and political environment, these merchants, industrialists, bankers, and professionals metamorphosed into a social class. In the process, these upper-class New Yorkers put their stamp on the major political conflicts of the day - ranging from the Civil War to municipal elections. Employing the methods of social history, The Monied Metropolis explores the big issues of nineteenth-century social change.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50022892568849,"sku":"CIN0521524105G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51003133329681,"sku":"NIN9780521524100","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52103712342289,"sku":"CIN0521524105VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52479733825809,"sku":"NLS9780521524100","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0521524105.jpg?v=1751135170"},{"product_id":"slavery-s-capitalism-book-sven-beckert-9780812248418","title":"Slavery's Capitalism","description":"During the nineteenth century, the United States entered the ranks of the world's most advanced and dynamic economies. At the same time, the nation sustained an expansive and brutal system of human bondage. This was no mere coincidence. Slavery's Capitalism argues for slavery's centrality to the emergence of American capitalism in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. According to editors Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, the issue is not whether slavery itself was or was not capitalist but, rather, the impossibility of understanding the nation's spectacular pattern of economic development without situating slavery front and center. American capitalism—renowned for its celebration of market competition, private property, and the self-made man—has its origins in an American slavery predicated on the abhorrent notion that human beings could be legally owned and compelled to work under force of violence.  Drawing on the expertise of sixteen scholars who are at the forefront of rewriting the history of American economic development, Slavery's Capitalism identifies slavery as the primary force driving key innovations in entrepreneurship, finance, accounting, management, and political economy that are too often attributed to the so-called free market. Approaching the study of slavery as the originating catalyst for the Industrial Revolution and modern capitalism casts new light on American credit markets, practices of offshore investment, and understandings of human capital. Rather than seeing slavery as outside the institutional structures of capitalism, the essayists recover slavery's importance to the American economic past and prompt enduring questions about the relationship of market freedom to human freedom.  Contributors: Edward E. Baptist, Sven Beckert, Daina Ramey Berry, Kathryn Boodry, Alfred L. Brophy, Stephen Chambers, Eric Kimball, John Majewski, Bonnie Martin, Seth Rockman, Daniel B. Rood, Caitlin Rosenthal, Joshua D. Rothman, Calvin Schermerhorn, Andrew Shankman, Craig Steven Wilder.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50236804301073,"sku":"CIN0812248414VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50808032198929,"sku":"CIN0812248414A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51322006438161,"sku":"CIN0812248414G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0812248414.jpg?v=1752315885"},{"product_id":"empire-of-cotton-book-sven-beckert-9780241011713","title":"Empire of Cotton","description":"Winner of the 2015 Bancroft Prize and the 2015 Philip Taft Prize  Finalist for the 2015 Pulizter Prize for History and shortlisted for the 2015 Cundill Prize in Historical Literature   For about 900 years, from 1000 to 1900, cotton was the world's most important manufacturing industry. It remains a vast business - if all the cotton bales produced in 2013 had been stacked on top of each other they would have made a somewhat unstable tower 40,000 miles high.    Sven Beckert's superb new book is a history of the overwhelming role played by cotton in dictating the shape of our world. For centuries it was central to India's prosperity - a prosperity that was devastated by Britain's imperial takeover of the industry. It formed the core of Britain and Europe's industrial revolution. It revived and modernized slavery in the American South. Essential to billions of people and easily transported, cotton made fortunes, changed geographies and was crucial to modern capitalism and globalization. Empire of Cotton is both a gripping narrative and a brilliant case history of how the world works.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50258823643409,"sku":"GOR006410967","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/B01BIT9EYO.jpg?v=1751389351"},{"product_id":"american-capitalism-book-sven-beckert-9780231185240","title":"American Capitalism","description":"The United States has long epitomized capitalism. From its enterprising shopkeepers, wildcat banks, violent slave plantations, 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 shaped political economy for two centuries and more. But an understanding of \"capitalism\" is as elusive as it is urgent. What does it mean to make capitalism a subject of historical inquiry? What is its potential across multiple disciplines, alongside different methodologies, and in a range of geographic and chronological settings? And how does a focus on capitalism change our understanding of American history?  American Capitalism collects cutting-edge research from prominent scholars, sampling the latest work in the field. Rather than a monolithic perspective, these broad-minded and rigorous essays venture new angles on finance and debt, women's rights, slavery and political economy, labor, and regulation, among other topics. Together, the essays suggest emerging themes in the field: a fascination with capitalism as it is made by public authority, how it is experienced in the detail of daily life, how it spreads across the globe, and how it can be reconceptualized as a discrete and quantified object. A major statement for a wide-open field, this book demonstrates the breadth and scope of the work the history of capitalism can provoke.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50347070947601,"sku":"CIN0231185243G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231185243.jpg?v=1751037017"},{"product_id":"monied-metropolis-book-sven-beckert-9780521790390","title":"The Monied Metropolis","description":"This book, first published in 2001, is a comprehensive history of the most powerful group in the nineteenth-century United States: New York City's economic elite. This small and diverse group of Americans accumulated unprecedented economic, social, and political power, and decisively put their mark on the age. Professor Beckert explores how capital-owning New Yorkers overcame their distinct antebellum identities to forge dense social networks, create powerful social institutions, and articulate an increasingly coherent view of the world and their place within it. Actively engaging in a rapidly changing economic, social, and political environment, these merchants, industrialists, bankers, and professionals metamorphosed into a social class. In the process, these upper-class New Yorkers put their stamp on the major political conflicts of the day - ranging from the Civil War to municipal elections. Employing the methods of social history, The Monied Metropolis explores the big issues of nineteenth-century social change.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50423773135121,"sku":"CIN0521790395G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50973765075217,"sku":"GOR006404083","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52592754852113,"sku":"NLS9780521790390","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52735590170897,"sku":"NIN9780521790390","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0521790395.jpg?v=1751433536"},{"product_id":"slavery-s-capitalism-book-sven-beckert-9780812224177","title":"Slavery's Capitalism","description":"During the nineteenth century, the United States entered the ranks of the world's most advanced and dynamic economies. At the same time, the nation sustained an expansive and brutal system of human bondage. This was no mere coincidence. Slavery's Capitalism argues for slavery's centrality to the emergence of American capitalism in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. According to editors Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, the issue is not whether slavery itself was or was not capitalist but, rather, the impossibility of understanding the nation's spectacular pattern of economic development without situating slavery front and center. American capitalism—renowned for its celebration of market competition, private property, and the self-made man—has its origins in an American slavery predicated on the abhorrent notion that human beings could be legally owned and compelled to work under force of violence.  Drawing on the expertise of sixteen scholars who are at the forefront of rewriting the history of American economic development, Slavery's Capitalism identifies slavery as the primary force driving key innovations in entrepreneurship, finance, accounting, management, and political economy that are too often attributed to the so-called free market. Approaching the study of slavery as the originating catalyst for the Industrial Revolution and modern capitalism casts new light on American credit markets, practices of offshore investment, and understandings of human capital. Rather than seeing slavery as outside the institutional structures of capitalism, the essayists recover slavery's importance to the American economic past and prompt enduring questions about the relationship of market freedom to human freedom.  Contributors: Edward E. Baptist, Sven Beckert, Daina Ramey Berry, Kathryn Boodry, Alfred L. Brophy, Stephen Chambers, Eric Kimball, John Majewski, Bonnie Martin, Seth Rockman, Daniel B. Rood, Caitlin Rosenthal, Joshua D. Rothman, Calvin Schermerhorn, Andrew Shankman, Craig Steven Wilder.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50468898472209,"sku":"CIN0812224175VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50970879492369,"sku":"CIN0812224175A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008044630289,"sku":"NIN9780812224177","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51830194340113,"sku":"CIN0812224175G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52979320652049,"sku":"GOR011102040","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0812224175.jpg?v=1763483700"},{"product_id":"global-history-globally-book-sven-beckert-9781350036345","title":"Global History, Globally","description":"In recent years historians in many different parts of the world have sought to transnationalize and globalize their perspectives on the past. Despite all these efforts to gain new global historical visions, however, the debates surrounding this movement have remained rather provincial in scope. Global History, Globally addresses this lacuna by surveying the state of global history in different world regions.   Divided into three distinct but tightly interweaved sections, the book’s chapters provide regional surveys of the practice of global history on all continents, review some of the research in four core fields of global history and consider a number of problems that global historians have contended with in their work. The authors hail from various world regions and are themselves leading global historians. Collectively, they provide an unprecedented survey of what today is the most dynamic field in the discipline of history.   As one of the first books to systematically discuss the international dimensions of global historical scholarship and address a wealth of questions emanating from them, Global History, Globally is a must-read book for all students and scholars of global history.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51320645550353,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51320646041873,"sku":"NGR9781350036345","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52120559091985,"sku":"NLS9781350036345","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/135003634X.jpg?v=1751460658"},{"product_id":"history-of-american-capitalism-book-sven-beckert-9780872291942","title":"History of American Capitalism","description":"For better or for worse, capitalism is the philosophy that has come to define the United States. In this intriguing essay, Beckert takes a look at the historiography of American capitalism, which has been, according to Beckert, ironically neglected by historians until recently.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51646877827345,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51646878089489,"sku":"NIN9780872291942","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0872291944.jpg?v=1750850933"},{"product_id":"global-history-globally-book-sven-beckert-9781350036352","title":"Global History, Globally","description":"In recent years historians in many different parts of the world have sought to transnationalize and globalize their perspectives on the past. Despite all these efforts to gain new global historical visions, however, the debates surrounding this movement have remained rather provincial in scope. Global History, Globally addresses this lacuna by surveying the state of global history in different world regions.   Divided into three distinct but tightly interweaved sections, the book’s chapters provide regional surveys of the practice of global history on all continents, review some of the research in four core fields of global history and consider a number of problems that global historians have contended with in their work. The authors hail from various world regions and are themselves leading global historians. Collectively, they provide an unprecedented survey of what today is the most dynamic field in the discipline of history.   As one of the first books to systematically discuss the international dimensions of global historical scholarship and address a wealth of questions emanating from them, Global History, Globally is a must-read book for all students and scholars of global history.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52120555389201,"sku":"NLS9781350036352","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350036352.jpg?v=1757426227"},{"product_id":"capitalism-book-sven-beckert-9780735220836","title":"Capitalism","description":"\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Notable Book * A \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e Best Book of the Year\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e\"\u003c\/i\u003eA learned, formidable and vivid story... Readers around the world will study and ponder this monumental work of history, agreeing and arguing with it, all the while affirming its generational importance, for decades to come.\" -- Marcus Rediker, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Epic... Read this book and you will learn innumerable things you did not previously know culled from places you have never been... [Readers], including me, will be genuinely grateful for exposure to this breadth of scholarship and be glad to have a valuable tool of reference on their shelves.\" -John Kay, \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A landmark event years in the making, a brilliant global narrative that unravels the defining story of the past thousand years of human history\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 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 \u003ci\u003eEmpire of Cotton\u003c\/i\u003e, 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Drawing on archives on six continents, \u003ci\u003eCapitalism\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 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.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52627719717137,"sku":"NIN9780735220836","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53039595716881,"sku":"CIN0735220832G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":53115939979537,"sku":"CIN0735220832A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53271013196049,"sku":"CIN0735220832VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780735220836.jpg?v=1766657711"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-sven-beckert.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}