Bøker av Sven Beckert

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 organise our politics. Sven Beckert situates the story of capitalism within the largest conceivable geographical and historical framework in this fascinating new book. Capitalism, argues Beckert, was born global. Emerging from merchant communities across Asia, Africa and Europe, capitalism's radical recasting of economic life rooted itself only gradually. Then it burst onto the world scene, as European states and merchants built a powerful alliance that would propel them across the oceans. This epic drama corresponded at no point to an idealised dream of free markets. All along, state-backed institutions and imperial expansions shaped its dynamics. Capitalism decentres the European perspective, highlighting agency, resistance, innovation and ruthless coercion around the world through to the present with the rise of Asian economies, particularly China. Sven Beckert doesn't merely add up capitalism's debits and credits in this monumental book, but allows us to think afresh about the past to help us re-imagine the future.

American Capitalism presents cutting-edge research that makes capitalism a subject of historical inquiry. Venturing new angles on finance, debt, and credit; women's rights; slavery and political economy; labor; the racialization of capitalism; and the production of knowledge, it demonstrates the breadth and scope of the new history of capitalism.

WINNER OF THE 2015 BANCROFT PRIZE WINNER OF THE 2015 PHILIP TAFT PRIZEFINALIST FOR THE 2015 PULITZER PRIZE FOR HISTORYSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 CUNDHILL PRIZE IN HISTORICAL LITERATUREEconomist BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015'A masterpiece of the historian's craft' The NationFor 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.