How the West Came to Rule

Title: How the West Came to Rule

Traditional historical accounts of the development of capitalism describe a profession that is fundamentally European – a system that was born in English mills and factories and under the guillotines of the French Revolution. This groundbreaking book tells a very different story.

How the West Came to Rule offers a unique interdisciplinary and international historical account of the origins of capitalism. He argues that, contrary to mainstream wisdom, the origins of capitalism should not be understood as a development confined to the geographically and culturally closed borders of Europe, but as the result of a wider range of global processes in which non-European companies played a decisive role.

Here is a provocative and incisive explanation of how capitalism emerged in England and Europe through a dialectical intersocietal and geopolitical process. The authors’ aim is to undermine a Eurocentric bias that has been prominent in the debate over the rise of capitalisms to supremacy, and their argument is remarkably convincing. They propose a fundamental overhaul. Anievas and Nisancioglu argue that the oft-cited assumptions are neither theoretically nor empirically tenable and deny the agency of non-Western societies to the emergence of capitalism. Topics covered include:

* The problem of Eurocentrism * The problem of historical specificity * The Brenner thesis: explanation and critique * Geopolitics in the making of capitalism * The Marxist political conception of capitalism *Rethinking the origins of capitalism *And much more!

Through insight into the uneven histories of Mongol expansion, New World discoveries, Ottoman-Habsburg rivalry, colonial development, and bourgeois revolutions, Alex Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu offer a narrative of the origins of capitalism that argues for convincingly against mainstream Eurocentric narratives. It will change mentalities and open the eyes of historians, economists and political thinkers.