Capitalism by Sven Beckert A Global History
What's it about? Capitalism (2025) chronicles the birth and development of our current economic system, tracing a thousand years of history across six continents. Developing from diverse trading networks spanning Asia, Africa, and Europe, capitalism explosively reshaped the world—with enslaved labor camps serving as a crucial launchpad. This work reveals that what now feels inevitable is actually a recent human creation, one that has never matched the ideal of free markets and whose reach still has limits. We live in a world forged by capitalism, yet its origins and evolution remain surprisingly mysterious. The sweeping narrative of this lesson will take you on a thousand-year journey across six continents, revealing how a once-marginal economic system exploded into the dominant force shaping everything from your morning coffee to your deepest assumptions about work, time, and value. You'll travel from eleventh-century merchant networks in Yemen to modern garment factories in...