More books like these, please
April 30, 2024 8:11 AM Subscribe
Four books have really opened my eyes to the details of exactly how capitalism and imperialism transformed parts of the world for the worse: Sweetness and Power, Coffeeland, Late Victorian Holocausts, and The Making of the English Working Class. What I appreciated about them was that they told a historical story about a specific place with lots of detail, but also tied it to larger actions being taken to transform the world economy. What should I add to that part of my bookshelf?
Serfdom and Social Control in Russia wasn't trying to tell that kind of story, but it happened to add to my understanding of capitalism and imperialism inadvertently, so I'll add it to the pile. Ditto for Iroquian Women.
Debt, Civilization and Capitalism, The Barbarous Years, and The Dawn of Everything were all great, but they all covered a bigger scope than I'm looking for in this particular question.
Serfdom and Social Control in Russia wasn't trying to tell that kind of story, but it happened to add to my understanding of capitalism and imperialism inadvertently, so I'll add it to the pile. Ditto for Iroquian Women.
Debt, Civilization and Capitalism, The Barbarous Years, and The Dawn of Everything were all great, but they all covered a bigger scope than I'm looking for in this particular question.
The Slave Ship: A Human History by Marcus Rediker
Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert
posted by jocelmeow at 8:45 AM on April 30 [1 favorite]
Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert
posted by jocelmeow at 8:45 AM on April 30 [1 favorite]
Empire of Cotton tells, necessarily, a transnational story, but goes into substantial detail on the various important locations over time. So I'm not sure it fits your criteria completely, but it at least comes close, and it's an extraordinary book.
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism is focused more on the American than the world economy, but discusses the financialization of both crops and enslaved people, which inevitably (as Empire of Cotton shows!) means it's embedded in a global narrative.
posted by praemunire at 8:46 AM on April 30 [2 favorites]
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism is focused more on the American than the world economy, but discusses the financialization of both crops and enslaved people, which inevitably (as Empire of Cotton shows!) means it's embedded in a global narrative.
posted by praemunire at 8:46 AM on April 30 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: (These sound like great suggestions so far, thanks. What I'd really, really love is stuff on Southeast Asia (maybe rubber from Malaysia? timber from Papua New Guinea?), Africa (copper from Zaire? uranium from Niger?), and South America (not even sure what to look for here).)
posted by clawsoon at 9:18 AM on April 30
posted by clawsoon at 9:18 AM on April 30
Best answer: Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch does a really good job drawing parallels between the creation of the working class in Europe and the colonization of, well, pretty much the rest of the world. It is not really specific to any region but it is a fantastically insightful book about the early history of capitalism and its (still relevant) social consequences.
posted by spindle at 9:27 AM on April 30 [4 favorites]
posted by spindle at 9:27 AM on April 30 [4 favorites]
Seconding Empire of Cotton. I think it is exactly what you are asking for.
A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty. Especially Chapters 3 and 4, "The Heritage of Slavery and Colonialism" and "The Question of Reparations". It's eye-opening: the reparations he is talking about were the payments made to the slaveholders to compensate them for the loss of their "property" when the slaves were freed, in the English and French empires. The payments were huge, and some continued into the twentieth century. They formed the fortunes of some families that still inhabit the upper class, including that of John Cameron, the former British prime minister.
Eric Hobsbawm's trilogy on the "long nineteenth century" from 1789 to 1914: The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital,, and The Age of Empire. A huge reading project but very rewarding if you enjoy history. Try the beginning of the first one to see if his style appeals to you.
posted by JonJacky at 9:28 AM on April 30 [3 favorites]
A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty. Especially Chapters 3 and 4, "The Heritage of Slavery and Colonialism" and "The Question of Reparations". It's eye-opening: the reparations he is talking about were the payments made to the slaveholders to compensate them for the loss of their "property" when the slaves were freed, in the English and French empires. The payments were huge, and some continued into the twentieth century. They formed the fortunes of some families that still inhabit the upper class, including that of John Cameron, the former British prime minister.
Eric Hobsbawm's trilogy on the "long nineteenth century" from 1789 to 1914: The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital,, and The Age of Empire. A huge reading project but very rewarding if you enjoy history. Try the beginning of the first one to see if his style appeals to you.
posted by JonJacky at 9:28 AM on April 30 [3 favorites]
Before European Hegemony Nice focus on Southeast Asia.
Religion and the Decline of Magic The focus on what counts as a legitimate religion and the rise of risk management as a capitalist concept was a revelation, so to speak.
posted by effluvia at 9:31 AM on April 30 [1 favorite]
Religion and the Decline of Magic The focus on what counts as a legitimate religion and the rise of risk management as a capitalist concept was a revelation, so to speak.
posted by effluvia at 9:31 AM on April 30 [1 favorite]
I didn’t read all of it, but 1493 seemed to be relevant to this.
posted by matildaben at 9:50 AM on April 30 [3 favorites]
posted by matildaben at 9:50 AM on April 30 [3 favorites]
Best answer: I could recommend most of the readings I had when taking an Agrarian Studies course in grad school - but one of the books that stuck with me and which was a nice concrete example of how colonial policies created poverty was the book with the very memorable title, Cotton is the Mother of Poverty.
posted by jb at 10:09 AM on April 30 [2 favorites]
posted by jb at 10:09 AM on April 30 [2 favorites]
Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold
posted by Martha My Dear Prudence at 12:17 PM on April 30 [1 favorite]
posted by Martha My Dear Prudence at 12:17 PM on April 30 [1 favorite]
1493 seems extremely relevant, although there's no specific place. Of course, 1492 is also essential reading, although much less focused on economics, if I remember right.
Open Veins of Latin America
I enjoyed Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors.
posted by polecat at 12:59 PM on April 30 [1 favorite]
Open Veins of Latin America
I enjoyed Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors.
posted by polecat at 12:59 PM on April 30 [1 favorite]
What I'd really, really love is stuff on Southeast Asia (maybe rubber from Malaysia? timber from Papua New Guinea?)
I wonder if cendawanita might have some suggestions? maybe worth a DM
this is not within your stated sphere of interest but "The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding" kept me captive. I didn't mean to be cute there, it really did capture me for a period of a few weeks, I was impatient to return to it and was reluctant to leave it for anything.
bonus: Sir John Franklin figures in the history
as quoted in Wikipedia: In a 2013 Quadrant article, historian Keith Windschuttle argued that The Fatal Shore "remains the most widely read representation of the old anti-British historical paradigm created from the 1940s to the 1970s by Marxists and other leftists in university history departments." Windschuttle wrote that "Hughes’s gift for the dramatic phrase led him to go further than his sources and argue that nineteenth-century New South Wales was actually a precursor to Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago."
posted by elkevelvet at 2:05 PM on April 30 [1 favorite]
I wonder if cendawanita might have some suggestions? maybe worth a DM
this is not within your stated sphere of interest but "The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding" kept me captive. I didn't mean to be cute there, it really did capture me for a period of a few weeks, I was impatient to return to it and was reluctant to leave it for anything.
bonus: Sir John Franklin figures in the history
as quoted in Wikipedia: In a 2013 Quadrant article, historian Keith Windschuttle argued that The Fatal Shore "remains the most widely read representation of the old anti-British historical paradigm created from the 1940s to the 1970s by Marxists and other leftists in university history departments." Windschuttle wrote that "Hughes’s gift for the dramatic phrase led him to go further than his sources and argue that nineteenth-century New South Wales was actually a precursor to Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago."
posted by elkevelvet at 2:05 PM on April 30 [1 favorite]
^ I make this recommendation also due to your inclusion of E. P. Thompson on the list of titles you really enjoyed. I think that Marxist lens might work for you again? I did not find the Marxism to be obtrusive in Fatal Shore
posted by elkevelvet at 2:46 PM on April 30
posted by elkevelvet at 2:46 PM on April 30
+1 for Empire of Cotton.
For (mostly) southern Africa, check out James Ferguson. He is an academic but his writing is very good - not overly dense or dry. I haven't read everything by him, but The Anti-Politics Machine is a classic, and Expectations of Modernity will get you Zambian (not Zairian) copper workers.
Jane Guyer is an economic anthropologist - Marginal Gains is really dense but fascinating. The Generation of Plays: Yoruba Popular Life in Theater by Karin Barber looks at how changes in the global economy (and it's impact on Nigeria) surface in Yoruba-language popular theater. I could go on, feel free to MeMail me.
posted by coffeecat at 3:17 PM on April 30 [2 favorites]
For (mostly) southern Africa, check out James Ferguson. He is an academic but his writing is very good - not overly dense or dry. I haven't read everything by him, but The Anti-Politics Machine is a classic, and Expectations of Modernity will get you Zambian (not Zairian) copper workers.
Jane Guyer is an economic anthropologist - Marginal Gains is really dense but fascinating. The Generation of Plays: Yoruba Popular Life in Theater by Karin Barber looks at how changes in the global economy (and it's impact on Nigeria) surface in Yoruba-language popular theater. I could go on, feel free to MeMail me.
posted by coffeecat at 3:17 PM on April 30 [2 favorites]
Donald Wright's The World and a Very Small Place in Africa is considered one of the classic texts on globalization in a very definite local context—albeit perhaps less explicitly economic than you'd like.
In the wider vein that you said you weren't as interested in, Nick Cullather's The Hungry World is a great look at the Green Revolution as a vehicle for Cold War-era American imperialism. (And each of the individual chapters IS focused on a specific case in a specific place!)
posted by the tartare yolk at 8:14 PM on April 30 [2 favorites]
In the wider vein that you said you weren't as interested in, Nick Cullather's The Hungry World is a great look at the Green Revolution as a vehicle for Cold War-era American imperialism. (And each of the individual chapters IS focused on a specific case in a specific place!)
posted by the tartare yolk at 8:14 PM on April 30 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Thanks for all the great suggestions! I've marked the two that caught my eye first, but I'm sure I'll be coming back to this thread in the future to use more of your suggestions!
(I'm about a third of the way into Caliban and the Witch, and I agree that it's fantastic. It's already adding entire new dimensions in my mind to a post I made a while ago about what the hell happened in Europe in 1550. Turns out that's also the time that witch trials numbers started to explode, and Federici is doing a great job of tying it to enclosures of commons and the older women who depended the most on them, the recruiting of lower-class men away from egalitarian movements and into sexualized violence, the opening of massive wage gaps between men and women, etc. And that's all in the first 100 pages.)
posted by clawsoon at 6:35 AM on May 1 [4 favorites]
(I'm about a third of the way into Caliban and the Witch, and I agree that it's fantastic. It's already adding entire new dimensions in my mind to a post I made a while ago about what the hell happened in Europe in 1550. Turns out that's also the time that witch trials numbers started to explode, and Federici is doing a great job of tying it to enclosures of commons and the older women who depended the most on them, the recruiting of lower-class men away from egalitarian movements and into sexualized violence, the opening of massive wage gaps between men and women, etc. And that's all in the first 100 pages.)
posted by clawsoon at 6:35 AM on May 1 [4 favorites]
Based on a comment in the Silicon Valley Technofascists thread from a few days ago I've started reading Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris and so far I'm finding it completely enthralling. Strong recommend.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 11:41 AM on May 1
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 11:41 AM on May 1
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posted by xueexueg at 8:44 AM on April 30 [1 favorite]