How capitalism took over the world

Any book about capitalism that begins almost 900 years ago in the port city of Aden, in what is now Yemen, promises a new story.

- MARCUS REDIKER

Any book about capitalism that begins almost 900 years ago in the port city of Aden, in what is now Yemen, promises a new story. In Capitalism, the Harvard historian Sven Beckert delivers on that promise with an epic 1,300-page account of the global leviathan that created the world in which we live.

During the Cold War, capitalism was the global force that dared not speak its name. To this day, most of Beckert's fellow historians rarely link their local, regional or even national histories to the larger system of which they are a part. Beckert has now proved once and for all the necessity of naming the global beast in order to reveal its vast power, past and present.

Never before has so much qualitative and quantitative evidence been brought to bear on so broad a reinterpretation of this story. Previous histories have usually treated capitalism as a European invention, but Beckert, as ambitious as he is erudite, shows how capitalism arose as a global phenomenon, the peculiar behaviour of a few merchants in places as far apart as Cairo and Changzhou.

By mapping the diverse origins of capitalism, Beckert reveals its protean and resilient character. Over hundreds of years, merchants created small enclaves of capital within port cities and elaborate networks of trust that stretched over long distances.