Tracing the accounts of capitalism across worldwide revolutions, a new book titled Capitalism: Towards a Global History, explores various aspects of development. As per the editors Kaveh Yazdani and Dilip M Menon, who have also contributed to this volume, the book contends with clichés of Western exceptionalism to argue about non-Western and inter-connected economic development across the globe, prior to the era of colonialism.
“It argues that the multiple histories of capitalism can be better understood from a global perspective,” say the editors. Featuring major debates and case studies from all over the world, the book includes voices from scholars like Anne Gerristen, Henry Heller, David Washbrook and Rudi Matthee among others. Many chapters talk about historical conjunctures, flow of commodities, circulation of knowledge and personnel, and stress on the need to think beyond present day national boundaries.
In an interesting case study from Cairo within the time period 1600-1800 titled Artisans, Guilds, and Capitalist Development in Cairo by Nelly Hanna, a professor specialising in Ottoman Egypt (1500-1800), the reader gets a fair idea of the people working out of an establishment.
Book:
Capitalisms: Towards a Global History
Edited by: Kaveh Yazdani and Dilip M. Menon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Pages: 412, Price: I1,495