What do you think?
Rate this book
How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism
Mainstream historical accounts of the development of capitalism describe a process which is fundamentally European - a system that was born in the mills and factories of England or under the guillotines of the French Revolution. Against this orthodoxy, alternative non-Eurocentric theorisations of capitalism’s origins remain as timely and important as ever.
How the West Came to Rule offers a unique interdisciplinary and international historical account of the origins of capitalism. It argues that contrary to the dominant wisdom, capitalism’s origins should not be understood as a development confined to the geographically and culturally sealed borders of Europe, but the outcome of a wider array of global processes in which non-European societies played a decisive role. Through an outline of the uneven histories of Mongolian expansion, New World discoveries, Ottoman-Habsburg rivalry, the development of the Asian colonies and bourgeois revolutions, Alex Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu provide an account of how these diverse events and processes came together to produce capitalism.
Critically engaging with the concept of Eurocentrism across a variety of disciplines, How The West Came to Rule addresses some of the major debates in historical sociology, world history, political economy, postcolonial theory, and international relations and will be of interest to scholars in all these areas.
How the West Came to Rule offers a unique interdisciplinary and international historical account of the origins of capitalism. It argues that contrary to the dominant wisdom, capitalism’s origins should not be understood as a development confined to the geographically and culturally sealed borders of Europe, but the outcome of a wider array of global processes in which non-European societies played a decisive role. Through an outline of the uneven histories of Mongolian expansion, New World discoveries, Ottoman-Habsburg rivalry, the development of the Asian colonies and bourgeois revolutions, Alex Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu provide an account of how these diverse events and processes came together to produce capitalism.
Critically engaging with the concept of Eurocentrism across a variety of disciplines, How The West Came to Rule addresses some of the major debates in historical sociology, world history, political economy, postcolonial theory, and international relations and will be of interest to scholars in all these areas.
296 pages, Hardcover
First published June 20, 2015
60 people are currently reading
3004 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
May 10, 2024
How the West Came to Rule is an erudite text on geopolitics, history, and economics that reads very dense and I'm supposing, meant for the scholarly reader rather than the casual and curious reader.
I'll recommend this for anyone with an interest in these topics that would be patient enough to slog through the details in order to get to the proffered enlightenment at the end of the tunnel.
Now, with that out of the way, to the crux:
The research done here is painstakingly meticulous, as befitting a textbook on the historiography of capitalism, and it has indeed been able to shed the most light for me so far on these topics within which books like Why Nations Fail , The Economics of Inequality and others of a similar nature where attempts to expound upon world economic inequality between Nations and peoples and the origins of Capitalism inevitably fall short with the necessary in-depth details.
The book also does a remarkable but dense job in expositing the intricacies involved from the preconception to the apotheosis of Capitalism and how it came to dominate the Western hemisphere first and the rest of the world later from the theory of Uneven and Combined Devolvement within International Relations research.
N.B:
The citations in this book alone takes up over a hundred pages of small print, so, readers beware. It has been an illuminating and challenging read on history, politics, the rise of capitalism, industrialization, economics and international geopolitical interactions. It wholly encompasses the subject matter with which it was titled and subtitled.
I highly recommend.
I'll recommend this for anyone with an interest in these topics that would be patient enough to slog through the details in order to get to the proffered enlightenment at the end of the tunnel.
Now, with that out of the way, to the crux:
The research done here is painstakingly meticulous, as befitting a textbook on the historiography of capitalism, and it has indeed been able to shed the most light for me so far on these topics within which books like Why Nations Fail , The Economics of Inequality and others of a similar nature where attempts to expound upon world economic inequality between Nations and peoples and the origins of Capitalism inevitably fall short with the necessary in-depth details.
The book also does a remarkable but dense job in expositing the intricacies involved from the preconception to the apotheosis of Capitalism and how it came to dominate the Western hemisphere first and the rest of the world later from the theory of Uneven and Combined Devolvement within International Relations research.
N.B:
The citations in this book alone takes up over a hundred pages of small print, so, readers beware. It has been an illuminating and challenging read on history, politics, the rise of capitalism, industrialization, economics and international geopolitical interactions. It wholly encompasses the subject matter with which it was titled and subtitled.
I highly recommend.
October 3, 2022
بسیار غیر قابل فهم. بعد از خوندن ۲۳۰ صفحه کنار گذاشتم چون حس کردم به جز گنگ کردن، هیچ عایدی برام نداشت.
حتی اگر اطلاعات بیسیک سیاسی و اجتماعی هم داشته باشی بازم نمیشه نکته آموزنده ای ازش استخراج کرد. زبان به شدت سختی داره.
حتی اگر اطلاعات بیسیک سیاسی و اجتماعی هم داشته باشی بازم نمیشه نکته آموزنده ای ازش استخراج کرد. زبان به شدت سختی داره.
July 21, 2021
Somewhere in my mid-20s (so, several decades ago) I found myself becoming intrigued by an historiographical ‘problem’ widely labelled ‘the transition debate’. This wrangling, mainly in my engagement, in British history concerned the ‘transition’ from feudalism to capitalism, and was British-centric in that it was linked to the historical question of the ‘industrial revolution’. Despite the seeming British-ness of the issue, however, the ‘transition debate’ drew in a much wider group of analysts, with a strong but far from exclusively Marxist flavour, that attempted to unpack the global commonalities and local distinctivenesses of the emergence and growth of capitalism, and of the condition of feudalism.
The debate had been running for many years by the time I found myself drawn in, and much of the global nuance and complexity had been shunted to one side in favour of a deeply specialist exploration of the conditions of British agriculture and economic formations during the 17th and 18th centuries. A new orthodoxy had emerged, linked to work by Robert Brenner and more recently advanced by Ellen Meiksins Wood, that saw the emergence of capitalism as the consequence almost exclusively of conditions in rural England. As compelling as I found this case, there was also a big part of me that wondered about Empire and the parallel debate in European economic history about the shift from mercantilist trade to capitalist global markets, driven in my thinking also by debates in Marxist theory about things such as the ‘Asiatic Mode of Production’.
This is my background to coming to Anievas and Nişancioğlu’s exceptional analysis of global history and emerging socio-political and economic shifts in a long run view from the 13th through the early 19th centuries. Despite the self-acknowledged gaps (there is way too much global history to fit into one book) they manage to weave together the Mongol Empire, the building of the Islamic and especially Ottoman world’s effects on global trade and it’s impacts and rivalries with the Hapsburgs, especially but not only in south-east Europe, the Atlantic economy, global trading and extraction empires (focusing on the Dutch in South East Asia) and shifts in Europe’s class forces to account for the global power of Europe’s Atlantic fringe. It’s a broad sweep that manages to balance big picture shifts with detailed dives into specific, often but not always exemplar, cases to add depth and richness to breadth.
Their theoretical framing of the approach through the notion of uneven and combined development works well, despite the approach’s problematic origins (I’ve never been all that convinced by Trotsky’s use/development of it in his account of the Russian Revolution) – but then a lot has happened to the model since 1933. Even so, the model’s implications of some kind of normative framing (unevenness suggests some form of or potential for evenness) remains problematic, although to their credit Anievas and Nişancioğlu don’t fall into that trap and manage to deploy the approach as a foil against a simplistic notion of difference that can, all too often, suggest a teleological and logical progression to where we are now as the logical and only outcome of past struggles. What’s more, and to their credit, the opening discussions of the ‘transition debate’ and theoretical exposition on ‘uneven and combined development’, while demanding, definately specialist and clearly advocating a specific case, manages to avoid the tendentiousness and dogmatism that traps many.
The evidence is judiciously deployed, and while read through a specific theoretical lens is not determined by that approach. That is to say, while the big picture of uneven and combined development is convincingly argued, Anievas and Nişancioğlualso leave space for a recognise those places where more detailed dives into cases might suggest some tweaking and nuancing of the approach, allowing for the theoretical frame to be reworked – as is so often the case in historical sociologies, that like the discipline more generally is theory driven (we historians like to see ourselves as evidence driven).
That is to say, this is a careful and essential exploration of a long standing ‘problem’ in global history, unpacking and undermining approaches (as in Brenner and Wood, for all their power and insight) that adopt an overly narrow view of capitalism that fail adequately to recognise change and historical developments. That makes this a vital contribution to and extension of discussions of capitalist modernity, enriching explorations of empire and locating the problem of how it was a small peninsula on the western limits of Asia came to be globally dominant. May it encourage more exploration of the field!
Essential, of admittedly specialist, reading.
The debate had been running for many years by the time I found myself drawn in, and much of the global nuance and complexity had been shunted to one side in favour of a deeply specialist exploration of the conditions of British agriculture and economic formations during the 17th and 18th centuries. A new orthodoxy had emerged, linked to work by Robert Brenner and more recently advanced by Ellen Meiksins Wood, that saw the emergence of capitalism as the consequence almost exclusively of conditions in rural England. As compelling as I found this case, there was also a big part of me that wondered about Empire and the parallel debate in European economic history about the shift from mercantilist trade to capitalist global markets, driven in my thinking also by debates in Marxist theory about things such as the ‘Asiatic Mode of Production’.
This is my background to coming to Anievas and Nişancioğlu’s exceptional analysis of global history and emerging socio-political and economic shifts in a long run view from the 13th through the early 19th centuries. Despite the self-acknowledged gaps (there is way too much global history to fit into one book) they manage to weave together the Mongol Empire, the building of the Islamic and especially Ottoman world’s effects on global trade and it’s impacts and rivalries with the Hapsburgs, especially but not only in south-east Europe, the Atlantic economy, global trading and extraction empires (focusing on the Dutch in South East Asia) and shifts in Europe’s class forces to account for the global power of Europe’s Atlantic fringe. It’s a broad sweep that manages to balance big picture shifts with detailed dives into specific, often but not always exemplar, cases to add depth and richness to breadth.
Their theoretical framing of the approach through the notion of uneven and combined development works well, despite the approach’s problematic origins (I’ve never been all that convinced by Trotsky’s use/development of it in his account of the Russian Revolution) – but then a lot has happened to the model since 1933. Even so, the model’s implications of some kind of normative framing (unevenness suggests some form of or potential for evenness) remains problematic, although to their credit Anievas and Nişancioğlu don’t fall into that trap and manage to deploy the approach as a foil against a simplistic notion of difference that can, all too often, suggest a teleological and logical progression to where we are now as the logical and only outcome of past struggles. What’s more, and to their credit, the opening discussions of the ‘transition debate’ and theoretical exposition on ‘uneven and combined development’, while demanding, definately specialist and clearly advocating a specific case, manages to avoid the tendentiousness and dogmatism that traps many.
The evidence is judiciously deployed, and while read through a specific theoretical lens is not determined by that approach. That is to say, while the big picture of uneven and combined development is convincingly argued, Anievas and Nişancioğlualso leave space for a recognise those places where more detailed dives into cases might suggest some tweaking and nuancing of the approach, allowing for the theoretical frame to be reworked – as is so often the case in historical sociologies, that like the discipline more generally is theory driven (we historians like to see ourselves as evidence driven).
That is to say, this is a careful and essential exploration of a long standing ‘problem’ in global history, unpacking and undermining approaches (as in Brenner and Wood, for all their power and insight) that adopt an overly narrow view of capitalism that fail adequately to recognise change and historical developments. That makes this a vital contribution to and extension of discussions of capitalist modernity, enriching explorations of empire and locating the problem of how it was a small peninsula on the western limits of Asia came to be globally dominant. May it encourage more exploration of the field!
Essential, of admittedly specialist, reading.
January 30, 2021
The classical debate about the formation of capitalism centers on two developments: The taking of the commons, embodied in feudal lords pushing their peasants off the land to clear space for commodity agricultural products or the capital accumulated from trade by merchants growing large enough to create the surpluses capable of being converted into the capital necessary to start production on a scale larger than artisan production.
I believe there is no need to choose; these two factors reinforced one another and were in turn reinforced by other factors. It is impossible to understand the rise of capitalism without slavery, colonialism and plunder. What the authors of How the West Came to Rule do effectively is to not only explicate all the above history but add in additional factors to further break down Eurocentric ideas that Europeans were somehow superior to peoples elsewhere in the world.
The book's first two chapters are abstract, and the authors spend more time than necessary criticizing other theories. But work your way through those opening pages and the rest of the book becomes most interesting. Working in the response of European societies to external threats, particularly the Mongol and Ottoman empires, provides a solid basis for understanding how what was one of the more backward places on Earth rose to dominate the globe. The book also goes beyond discussions of slavery and New World exploitation to encompass, inter alia, Dutch domination of present-day Indonesia and British control of South Asia.
The authors interestingly build on the theory of uneven and combined development, a theory ordinarily associated with Leon Trotsky's theory of why capitalist countries and pre-capitalist countries under capitalist suzerainty found themselves at such different levels of development, which was a foundation for his theory of permanent revolution. Here the theory of uneven and combined development is extended to provide an explanation for how a country or region less developed than a nearby, expanding empire can use its initially disadvantageous position to leapfrog its rivals because of the need to meet a physical and social threat and to take advantage of technology and techniques developed elsewhere.
What makes this book useful is that the authors don't spare the bloody and horrific details of how capitalism came to dominate the world and continues to need mass violence and exploitation to sustain itself. In the conclusion, the authors write:
"The conquest, ecological ruin, slavery, state terrorism, patriarchal subjugation, racism, mass exploitation and immiseration upon which capitalism was built continue unabated today. The violent past explicated in this book was therefore not merely a historical contingency, external to the 'pure' operation of capital, or a phase of 'incompleteness' out of which capitalism has emerged or will emerge. Rather, these practices and processes are 'constitutive' in the sense that they remain crucial to capitalism's ongoing reproduction as a historical social structure. This should remind us that capitalism is neither natural nor eternal."
A dose of reality that is a needed corrective to the bombardment of propaganda we are forced to absorb. We really do need to master the past if we are to be equipped to prepare our future.
I believe there is no need to choose; these two factors reinforced one another and were in turn reinforced by other factors. It is impossible to understand the rise of capitalism without slavery, colonialism and plunder. What the authors of How the West Came to Rule do effectively is to not only explicate all the above history but add in additional factors to further break down Eurocentric ideas that Europeans were somehow superior to peoples elsewhere in the world.
The book's first two chapters are abstract, and the authors spend more time than necessary criticizing other theories. But work your way through those opening pages and the rest of the book becomes most interesting. Working in the response of European societies to external threats, particularly the Mongol and Ottoman empires, provides a solid basis for understanding how what was one of the more backward places on Earth rose to dominate the globe. The book also goes beyond discussions of slavery and New World exploitation to encompass, inter alia, Dutch domination of present-day Indonesia and British control of South Asia.
The authors interestingly build on the theory of uneven and combined development, a theory ordinarily associated with Leon Trotsky's theory of why capitalist countries and pre-capitalist countries under capitalist suzerainty found themselves at such different levels of development, which was a foundation for his theory of permanent revolution. Here the theory of uneven and combined development is extended to provide an explanation for how a country or region less developed than a nearby, expanding empire can use its initially disadvantageous position to leapfrog its rivals because of the need to meet a physical and social threat and to take advantage of technology and techniques developed elsewhere.
What makes this book useful is that the authors don't spare the bloody and horrific details of how capitalism came to dominate the world and continues to need mass violence and exploitation to sustain itself. In the conclusion, the authors write:
"The conquest, ecological ruin, slavery, state terrorism, patriarchal subjugation, racism, mass exploitation and immiseration upon which capitalism was built continue unabated today. The violent past explicated in this book was therefore not merely a historical contingency, external to the 'pure' operation of capital, or a phase of 'incompleteness' out of which capitalism has emerged or will emerge. Rather, these practices and processes are 'constitutive' in the sense that they remain crucial to capitalism's ongoing reproduction as a historical social structure. This should remind us that capitalism is neither natural nor eternal."
A dose of reality that is a needed corrective to the bombardment of propaganda we are forced to absorb. We really do need to master the past if we are to be equipped to prepare our future.
July 18, 2016
Good in parts, though somewhat inaccessible, this book examines the factors underpinning the capitalist system. It primarily looks at 3 specific cases and relates them to how they interact to allow the build up of a capitalist system; the rise of the Mongolian Empire, the Ottoman and Hapsburg rivalry, and the rise of the Dutch Empire. The book also looks in slightly less detail about the collapse of the Mughal Empire and 3 European revolutions; the Dutch liberation, English Glorious revolution and the French Revolution.
Whilst the book is impressive in its analysis, the primary issues in the book lies in its inaccessibility. The first 2 chapters in particular seem very focused on niche aspects of Marxist analysis with very little explanation of them. This is before the book even really gets into the meat of his assessment of the above mentioned historical cases. The book also throws a lot of jargon around and lacks a dedicated glossary to explain the terms. The book also seems to assume at least a reasonable understanding of the countries discussed, again without really contextualising events for the reader.
Overall, the book is good if you're able to follow it, but will easily confuse those that are not.
Whilst the book is impressive in its analysis, the primary issues in the book lies in its inaccessibility. The first 2 chapters in particular seem very focused on niche aspects of Marxist analysis with very little explanation of them. This is before the book even really gets into the meat of his assessment of the above mentioned historical cases. The book also throws a lot of jargon around and lacks a dedicated glossary to explain the terms. The book also seems to assume at least a reasonable understanding of the countries discussed, again without really contextualising events for the reader.
Overall, the book is good if you're able to follow it, but will easily confuse those that are not.
May 4, 2025
This book is not about how the west came to rule - well, it is, but it does not engage (or barely) with the Great Divergence debate it allures to. It is a book that engages with the origins of capitalism debate, which then ends in arguing that it was capitalism which made the West rise. So the title can be misleading, but since the origins of capitalism debate is way much informative and important anyway, and is indeed the real question we should be answering when explaining the rise of the West, this has been a pleasant read. Moreover, this book has been one of the best contributions to the origins of capitalism-debate in a while.
In a nutshell, this book uses Trotsky's concept of "uneven and combined development" to overcome the trenches of Political Marxists versus World System Theorists in the debate on the origins of capitalism. The latter only focuses on the world system where capitalism originated, caused by the mere quantitative expansion of trade. The former focuses on the qualitative changes occuring on the British countryside in the 16-17th century, locking landlords and peasants into market *compulsion* of investment and wage-labour. From there, these social relations spread outwards. Through uneven and combined development, the authors offer a new concept in which the opposition between the 'internal' and 'external' are overcome. It is the international that creates the circumstances for local developments, which then feed back into the international.
I like to look at it as if we're analysing the origin of a wildfire. What Political Marxists focus on, is the ignition, the place where power in the form of heat, the right breeze, and the necessary combustible created a qualitative shift into a 'spark' (the social relation of capital), from where the fire - inherently expansive - started to spread. However, World System Theorists focus on the environment that allowed for this qualitative shift, as well as for its easy transmission from spark into wildfire. Indeed, as the authors say, there were quite a lot of 'antediluvian' "sparks" of capital (where the wage-labour - capital relation found fertile ground, such as 14th century Venetian Arsenal workers building the ships for mercantile capitalists) that fade away before it could turn into a wildfire. Moreover, in order to have a "spark", the right breeze, combustile etc. needs to be in place. This was Britain in the 16th century, but that begs the question why precisely that context. This can only be analysed by looking at the external, and even the international world system. True, World System Theory only analyses the right circumstances, assuming it will necessarily turn into a spark (the neo-smithian fallacy that Brenner pointed out), but it brings valuable insights to the table, too easily dismissed by Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood. Uneven and Combined Development overcomes this.
Now, this is all good and talk, but we have to outline the transition in a real historical analysis as well. To do this, they start in chapter 3 with the Pax Mongolica and its influence on backward Europe. Connections with this new empire laid the foundations for the demise of European feudalism. First, it opened the way for Meditteranean trade interests to engage with the East, and make feudal lords more depended on mercantile intersts either for financing their rule, or even their reproduction in general (for example in Genoa). Moreover, the Mongolian empire accidantely brought the Black Death to Europe, which exacerbated the feudal crisis of incapability of the lords to extract the peasants more.
In chapter 4, they turn their analysis towards the Ottoman Empire, with an even more simple and intellegent analysis. The expansionary tendencies of the Ottoman Empire into Europe kept the Habsburgian empire occupied, channeling most of their mobilisation power into battling the Ottomans. As this meant the decaying of the Spanish empire, it did have some important effects for Europe. First, it made the feudal bastions of papacy, Habsburg etc. even more weaker. Second, it turned the gaze for expansionary push of European lords from the Meditteranean to the Atlantic. Third, and most importantly, the Habsburg-Ottoman rivalries created an opportunity of 'isolation' for the Dutch and British. As their main competitor - Habsburg- was occupied, they could consolidate themselves. They were even helped by the divide and rule strategy of the Ottomans, who give access to their trade routes to these anti-hegemonic forces within Europe. In the Dutch Republic, they apparently said "Liever Turks dan Paaps", which summarizes it well.
In chapter 5, they turn to the Atlantic and its effects on Europe. The most important argument here seems to be that the gold and silver discoveries of Portuguese and Spanish empires flooded the European markets, deindustrialising the hegemonic centres while giving large profits to new upcoming trading partners such as Holland. However, the exploitation of the Atlantic also generated a concept of "territorialisation" which was then redeployed in Europe. At last, the Atlantic empire also gave lots of opportunities to British capitalists for trade expansion, where eventually the new factory system was developed on the agricultural estates where slaves were, for the first time, subsumed to capitalist production systems.
Chapter 6 is somewhat an outlier, because it focuses on the concept of bourgeois revolution. it defends the notion that we shouldn't be looking at bourgeois revolutions from the point of view whether they were actually pursued by a 'bourgeois' class. This has failed. But from a 'consequantialist' point of view, we might redeploy the term. It's not about *who* did the revolution, but if its effects were to install the institutions for a capitalist economy. Used for the French Revolution, for example, the argument goes as follow. Yes, the revolutionaries were not specifically bourgeois. They were just looking to make the feudal system - to which they had some discriminating effects - more fair. However, confronted with counter-revolutionary agression and working class radicalism, they had to smash the feudal order all together. What came in its place was a bourgeois state, even though it was now in the period of the 'reconstruction'.
Chapter 7 then turns to the Dutch capitalist and colonial system. For a long time, it seemed as if they were just one of those other 'antedeluvian' examples of capital, which would be reabsorbed by the feudal order soon (capital sinked into feudal estate, workers going back to feudal ties), especially as the Dutch order had a lack of free labour to prosper from (as it was still 'stuck' in feudal ties). The spark was there, but it would soon fade again. However, through the VOC, the Dutch managed to incorporate production for a first time in their trading patterns. From there, it could exploit unwaged labour, bringing the goods back home and allowing Amsterdam to become the new hegemon. It gave 'capitalist' breathing space to the Dutch spark, allowing it to turn into a bigger fire. Funny was that the VOC's intentions were part of uneven and combined development framework as well: they wanted to counterpose Portuguese empire of a "closed sea" with a "mare librum" in the East, where they would bring heat to the old empires through efficient exploitation. They did!
Chapter 8 then brings these together in a compelling origin story of capitalism in which the international is put central in the framework of uneven and combined development, allowing the international to trickle down in the local and feeding back into the international. They end with positing that the rise of the west started somewhere between 1757 and 1763. In 1757, the British took Bengal and solidified their crown jewel of the Empire, which enabled them to turn the spark into a wildfire. In 1763, a weakened, absolutist feudal France signed a peace treaty and retreated from obstructing the new capitalist power in Europe.
In a nutshell, this book uses Trotsky's concept of "uneven and combined development" to overcome the trenches of Political Marxists versus World System Theorists in the debate on the origins of capitalism. The latter only focuses on the world system where capitalism originated, caused by the mere quantitative expansion of trade. The former focuses on the qualitative changes occuring on the British countryside in the 16-17th century, locking landlords and peasants into market *compulsion* of investment and wage-labour. From there, these social relations spread outwards. Through uneven and combined development, the authors offer a new concept in which the opposition between the 'internal' and 'external' are overcome. It is the international that creates the circumstances for local developments, which then feed back into the international.
I like to look at it as if we're analysing the origin of a wildfire. What Political Marxists focus on, is the ignition, the place where power in the form of heat, the right breeze, and the necessary combustible created a qualitative shift into a 'spark' (the social relation of capital), from where the fire - inherently expansive - started to spread. However, World System Theorists focus on the environment that allowed for this qualitative shift, as well as for its easy transmission from spark into wildfire. Indeed, as the authors say, there were quite a lot of 'antediluvian' "sparks" of capital (where the wage-labour - capital relation found fertile ground, such as 14th century Venetian Arsenal workers building the ships for mercantile capitalists) that fade away before it could turn into a wildfire. Moreover, in order to have a "spark", the right breeze, combustile etc. needs to be in place. This was Britain in the 16th century, but that begs the question why precisely that context. This can only be analysed by looking at the external, and even the international world system. True, World System Theory only analyses the right circumstances, assuming it will necessarily turn into a spark (the neo-smithian fallacy that Brenner pointed out), but it brings valuable insights to the table, too easily dismissed by Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood. Uneven and Combined Development overcomes this.
Now, this is all good and talk, but we have to outline the transition in a real historical analysis as well. To do this, they start in chapter 3 with the Pax Mongolica and its influence on backward Europe. Connections with this new empire laid the foundations for the demise of European feudalism. First, it opened the way for Meditteranean trade interests to engage with the East, and make feudal lords more depended on mercantile intersts either for financing their rule, or even their reproduction in general (for example in Genoa). Moreover, the Mongolian empire accidantely brought the Black Death to Europe, which exacerbated the feudal crisis of incapability of the lords to extract the peasants more.
In chapter 4, they turn their analysis towards the Ottoman Empire, with an even more simple and intellegent analysis. The expansionary tendencies of the Ottoman Empire into Europe kept the Habsburgian empire occupied, channeling most of their mobilisation power into battling the Ottomans. As this meant the decaying of the Spanish empire, it did have some important effects for Europe. First, it made the feudal bastions of papacy, Habsburg etc. even more weaker. Second, it turned the gaze for expansionary push of European lords from the Meditteranean to the Atlantic. Third, and most importantly, the Habsburg-Ottoman rivalries created an opportunity of 'isolation' for the Dutch and British. As their main competitor - Habsburg- was occupied, they could consolidate themselves. They were even helped by the divide and rule strategy of the Ottomans, who give access to their trade routes to these anti-hegemonic forces within Europe. In the Dutch Republic, they apparently said "Liever Turks dan Paaps", which summarizes it well.
In chapter 5, they turn to the Atlantic and its effects on Europe. The most important argument here seems to be that the gold and silver discoveries of Portuguese and Spanish empires flooded the European markets, deindustrialising the hegemonic centres while giving large profits to new upcoming trading partners such as Holland. However, the exploitation of the Atlantic also generated a concept of "territorialisation" which was then redeployed in Europe. At last, the Atlantic empire also gave lots of opportunities to British capitalists for trade expansion, where eventually the new factory system was developed on the agricultural estates where slaves were, for the first time, subsumed to capitalist production systems.
Chapter 6 is somewhat an outlier, because it focuses on the concept of bourgeois revolution. it defends the notion that we shouldn't be looking at bourgeois revolutions from the point of view whether they were actually pursued by a 'bourgeois' class. This has failed. But from a 'consequantialist' point of view, we might redeploy the term. It's not about *who* did the revolution, but if its effects were to install the institutions for a capitalist economy. Used for the French Revolution, for example, the argument goes as follow. Yes, the revolutionaries were not specifically bourgeois. They were just looking to make the feudal system - to which they had some discriminating effects - more fair. However, confronted with counter-revolutionary agression and working class radicalism, they had to smash the feudal order all together. What came in its place was a bourgeois state, even though it was now in the period of the 'reconstruction'.
Chapter 7 then turns to the Dutch capitalist and colonial system. For a long time, it seemed as if they were just one of those other 'antedeluvian' examples of capital, which would be reabsorbed by the feudal order soon (capital sinked into feudal estate, workers going back to feudal ties), especially as the Dutch order had a lack of free labour to prosper from (as it was still 'stuck' in feudal ties). The spark was there, but it would soon fade again. However, through the VOC, the Dutch managed to incorporate production for a first time in their trading patterns. From there, it could exploit unwaged labour, bringing the goods back home and allowing Amsterdam to become the new hegemon. It gave 'capitalist' breathing space to the Dutch spark, allowing it to turn into a bigger fire. Funny was that the VOC's intentions were part of uneven and combined development framework as well: they wanted to counterpose Portuguese empire of a "closed sea" with a "mare librum" in the East, where they would bring heat to the old empires through efficient exploitation. They did!
Chapter 8 then brings these together in a compelling origin story of capitalism in which the international is put central in the framework of uneven and combined development, allowing the international to trickle down in the local and feeding back into the international. They end with positing that the rise of the west started somewhere between 1757 and 1763. In 1757, the British took Bengal and solidified their crown jewel of the Empire, which enabled them to turn the spark into a wildfire. In 1763, a weakened, absolutist feudal France signed a peace treaty and retreated from obstructing the new capitalist power in Europe.
April 14, 2024
En tiiä voiko akateemista teosta rakastaa, mutta nyt osui ja upposi!
Tää kirja valjasti käyttöönsä aivan uudenlaisen tavan ajatella ja se vei sen loppuun saakka onnistuneesti! Useaan otteeseen tän kirjan aikana on vaan pitäny pysähtyä ajattelemaan ja oon saanut siten kokea useita oivaltavia hetkiä!
Kirjassa käsitellyt historialliset tapahtumat ovat suurin osa itselleni kyllä tuttuja, mutta tarkoituksena olikin käyttää niitä nimenomaan uuden näkökulman valjastamiseen. Oli myös hienoa huomata, että nykyinen historiankirjoitus esim. lukiossa on jo kääntynyt tän kirjan viitoittamalle tielle, vaikka paljon on vielä tehtävää eurosentrisyyden ja sisäsyntyisen kyvykkyyden -näkökulman poistamiseksi…
Kirja osoitti onnistuneesti niin konkreettisella tasolla kuin teoreettisestikin, kuinka syvälle kapitalismi on juurtunut yhteiskunnassa ja kuinka taitavasti se on selviytynyt alistamalla ja ottamalla vaikutteita muista järjestelmistä, ja siten muuttanut muotoaan valliten tähän päivään saakka. Erityisen hyytävää on kirjan osoitukset ja todisteet väkivallan perustavanlaatuisuudesta kapitalismille ja siten lännen nousulle.
Lopuksi suora lainaus:
”We must therefore come face to face with the distinct possibility that no matter how great and wide the collective rage and struggles against the existing order may reach, no matter how barbaric the system may become, the sign on the wall might just one day read in bright blinding red colours: ’THIS IS NOT THE EXIT’.”
Tää kirja valjasti käyttöönsä aivan uudenlaisen tavan ajatella ja se vei sen loppuun saakka onnistuneesti! Useaan otteeseen tän kirjan aikana on vaan pitäny pysähtyä ajattelemaan ja oon saanut siten kokea useita oivaltavia hetkiä!
Kirjassa käsitellyt historialliset tapahtumat ovat suurin osa itselleni kyllä tuttuja, mutta tarkoituksena olikin käyttää niitä nimenomaan uuden näkökulman valjastamiseen. Oli myös hienoa huomata, että nykyinen historiankirjoitus esim. lukiossa on jo kääntynyt tän kirjan viitoittamalle tielle, vaikka paljon on vielä tehtävää eurosentrisyyden ja sisäsyntyisen kyvykkyyden -näkökulman poistamiseksi…
Kirja osoitti onnistuneesti niin konkreettisella tasolla kuin teoreettisestikin, kuinka syvälle kapitalismi on juurtunut yhteiskunnassa ja kuinka taitavasti se on selviytynyt alistamalla ja ottamalla vaikutteita muista järjestelmistä, ja siten muuttanut muotoaan valliten tähän päivään saakka. Erityisen hyytävää on kirjan osoitukset ja todisteet väkivallan perustavanlaatuisuudesta kapitalismille ja siten lännen nousulle.
Lopuksi suora lainaus:
”We must therefore come face to face with the distinct possibility that no matter how great and wide the collective rage and struggles against the existing order may reach, no matter how barbaric the system may become, the sign on the wall might just one day read in bright blinding red colours: ’THIS IS NOT THE EXIT’.”
August 2, 2022
How the West Came to Rule challenges the Eurocentric assumptions of the origins of capitalism and that it should not be defined geographically to Europe. Explains that it all came about by an interdependent world and that non-European actors played an important role.
Also uses Trotsky's theory of uneven and combined development which I found interesting
Overall I found the book overly wordy, academic and confusing and didn't enjoy reading it but I respect the theory enough to not give it a bad review but I walk away feeling like I learnt nothing.
Also uses Trotsky's theory of uneven and combined development which I found interesting
Overall I found the book overly wordy, academic and confusing and didn't enjoy reading it but I respect the theory enough to not give it a bad review but I walk away feeling like I learnt nothing.
July 26, 2022
Don't waste your time, better to read Ellen meinkiens wood or Robert Brenner.
September 29, 2017
Well-researched and cited. The book uses a pretty dense vocabulary and is not recommended for beginners; this is a purely academic book with all the positives and negatives that that entails (i.e. it offers incisive analyses but their "solutions" to exiting capitalism are vague and seem like an afterthought). Their thesis is grounded upon the Trotskyist idea of "uneven and combined development" and to a lesser extent the "whip of external necessity". I was admittedly averse to these concepts but they seem to be relatively uncontroversial and seem pretty helpful to understand the conditions of world history during the time frame in which the West rose to global hegemony. The conclusion was pretty garbage in my opinion though. They criticize socialist revolutions, revolutionary parties, and actually-existing (existed) socialism through pretty weak strawman arguments. The conclusion is almost painfully Trotskyist as they offer vaguely abstract "solutions" to the admittedly complex solution of exiting capitalism. Still, even with these complaints, it wasn't a bad read and I'd suggest the book to anyone well-versed in Marxist theory and acquainted with 13th-18th century history.
October 11, 2016
Not what i expected. How the West Came to Rule is a good recap of many of the factors that intensifies the origins of Capitalism, but it doesn't consolidate those ideas with facts and data about it. Furthermore the final chapter also destroys any good reputation of the above lines, showing their inclinations towards a transition to Communism, this time worldwide, as one of the factors of his decline was the isolation in only few countries.
February 2, 2018
Overly focused on theory to the point of distraction, and too much needless jargon. Which is a shame because the historical-sociological arguments they make are important and strong and deserve a wide audience.
June 20, 2021
An incredibly important topic, unfortunately written in inexcusable conformity with the worst tendencies for inaccesibility of academic writing. This is the kind of writing that threatens to make academia irrelevant to progressive thought and action.
April 23, 2016
The best book on capitalism.
August 25, 2024
This book is a provocative and brilliant theoretical and historical explanation of how capitalism emerged in England and Europe through a dialectical inter-societal and geo-political process.
The target is to undermine a Eurocentric bias that has been prominent in the transition debate – the idea that capitalism emerged within Europe as a closed space, and depicts the system developing in a linear process throughout the rest of the world. Anievas & Nisancioglu contend that these assumptions are neither theoretically nor empirically tenable and deny the agency and contribution of non-Western societies to the emergence of capitalism.
They argue that previous theories suffer from erroneously seeing capitalism and commerce as the same thing and so see capitalist development in other societies, eg China or Mughal India, where it wasn’t really present and that other theories are Euro, or Anglo, centric in terms of seeing capitalist development as something unique to either Europe or England without taking into account international processes of trade, geopolitical competition between European feudal states and the Ottoman Empire, primitive accumulation in the Americas, and colonialism, all of which were decisive in establishing the conditions allowing for the capitalist breakthrough in Holland as well as England.
The authors use Trotsky’s concept of ‘combined and uneven development’ to break out of these problems. They use the concept as a methodology to show how capitalism came into being through an international, inter-societal process. They demonstrate how more developed tributary modes of production in societies like China and the Ottoman empire suffered the “penalty of progressiveness;” their more advanced economic systems and stable states stifled the development of capitalism within their societies. This contrasts with the economic and geopolitical interaction between them and less-developed feudal Europe, in particular Holland and England, granting them the “privilege of historical backwardness,” as they incorporated more advanced productive forces from elsewhere. Moreover, under “the whip of external necessity,” Europe was forced to compete geopolitically with their more advanced rivals, a dynamic that provided the condition for the development of capitalism in Holland and England.
The process of capitalist development was, thus, the result of the inter-societal interaction between European feudalism and the Mongol Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the conquest of the Americas, the establishment of the slave trade and plantations, and the colonization of Asia.
It’s a brilliant and innovative work. It comes very close to cracking the conundrum of accounting for the multiplicity of factors, internal and external, enabling the rise of capitalism in England and Holland initially and then giving rise to ‘how the West cam to rule’. Alas Anievas & Nisancioglu are Left-wing academics and the language they use is frequently that inaccessible language beloved of that milieu – and that is the only criticism that can reasonably be made.
The target is to undermine a Eurocentric bias that has been prominent in the transition debate – the idea that capitalism emerged within Europe as a closed space, and depicts the system developing in a linear process throughout the rest of the world. Anievas & Nisancioglu contend that these assumptions are neither theoretically nor empirically tenable and deny the agency and contribution of non-Western societies to the emergence of capitalism.
They argue that previous theories suffer from erroneously seeing capitalism and commerce as the same thing and so see capitalist development in other societies, eg China or Mughal India, where it wasn’t really present and that other theories are Euro, or Anglo, centric in terms of seeing capitalist development as something unique to either Europe or England without taking into account international processes of trade, geopolitical competition between European feudal states and the Ottoman Empire, primitive accumulation in the Americas, and colonialism, all of which were decisive in establishing the conditions allowing for the capitalist breakthrough in Holland as well as England.
The authors use Trotsky’s concept of ‘combined and uneven development’ to break out of these problems. They use the concept as a methodology to show how capitalism came into being through an international, inter-societal process. They demonstrate how more developed tributary modes of production in societies like China and the Ottoman empire suffered the “penalty of progressiveness;” their more advanced economic systems and stable states stifled the development of capitalism within their societies. This contrasts with the economic and geopolitical interaction between them and less-developed feudal Europe, in particular Holland and England, granting them the “privilege of historical backwardness,” as they incorporated more advanced productive forces from elsewhere. Moreover, under “the whip of external necessity,” Europe was forced to compete geopolitically with their more advanced rivals, a dynamic that provided the condition for the development of capitalism in Holland and England.
The process of capitalist development was, thus, the result of the inter-societal interaction between European feudalism and the Mongol Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the conquest of the Americas, the establishment of the slave trade and plantations, and the colonization of Asia.
It’s a brilliant and innovative work. It comes very close to cracking the conundrum of accounting for the multiplicity of factors, internal and external, enabling the rise of capitalism in England and Holland initially and then giving rise to ‘how the West cam to rule’. Alas Anievas & Nisancioglu are Left-wing academics and the language they use is frequently that inaccessible language beloved of that milieu – and that is the only criticism that can reasonably be made.
July 14, 2022
"How the West Came to Rule" is an excellent book on the origins of capitalism and how what had been a peripheral backwater of Eurasia, Western Europe, came gradually to dominate the world system in the 17th and 18th centuries. As opposed to the Political Marxists' "internalist" accounts of the agrarian roots of capitalism in rural England, this book highlights the geopolitical origins of capitalism and and the central role of the "international" dimension. The book's sweep is awesome: the Mongolian Empire, Habsburg-Ottoman geopolitical rivalry, the conquest of the Americas and the creation of the plantation system within the Atlantic system, the bourgeois revolutions, and the rise of capitalist empires in South and Southeast Asia. The analysis is informed by Trotsky's notion of combined and uneven development, which provides for a theoretically-rich discussion of capitalism, state formation, and colonial expansion.
The book engages with a lot of the competing analysis of the origins of capitalism and the rise of the West. As mentioned above, there is extensive discussion and critique of the Political Marxism, as well as World-Systems Theory (WST) and the Neo-Weberians. I tend to agree with the authors that combined and uneven development provides a more nuanced theoretical grounding for explaining the dynamic processes that were taking place as the capitalist mode of production became generalized and European powers violently colonized, enslaved, and exploited populations across the globe.
The discussion of the bourgeois revolutions was excellent for the Netherlands, England, and France. The authors' take a "consequentialist" position that these revolutions qualify as "bourgeois" not in the sense of the bourgeois class revolting and seizing political power from the old regimes, but in how the transformations brought about by the revolutions in a longer temporal scale led to politico-economic systems more conducive to the accumulation of capital. This was especially true for the Dutch Republic and the British.
A final point - the authors' succeed in really going beyond Eurocentric narratives that usually accompany "the rise of the West." A large reason for this is the attention to the "international" in combined and uneven development. More than that is the authors' focus on the longue duree and attention to states often ignored in discussions of the origins of capitalism, such as the Ottoman Empire and the Mongolian Empire. All of which makes for a unique and fascinating contribution to the debates on capitalism and modernity.
The book engages with a lot of the competing analysis of the origins of capitalism and the rise of the West. As mentioned above, there is extensive discussion and critique of the Political Marxism, as well as World-Systems Theory (WST) and the Neo-Weberians. I tend to agree with the authors that combined and uneven development provides a more nuanced theoretical grounding for explaining the dynamic processes that were taking place as the capitalist mode of production became generalized and European powers violently colonized, enslaved, and exploited populations across the globe.
The discussion of the bourgeois revolutions was excellent for the Netherlands, England, and France. The authors' take a "consequentialist" position that these revolutions qualify as "bourgeois" not in the sense of the bourgeois class revolting and seizing political power from the old regimes, but in how the transformations brought about by the revolutions in a longer temporal scale led to politico-economic systems more conducive to the accumulation of capital. This was especially true for the Dutch Republic and the British.
A final point - the authors' succeed in really going beyond Eurocentric narratives that usually accompany "the rise of the West." A large reason for this is the attention to the "international" in combined and uneven development. More than that is the authors' focus on the longue duree and attention to states often ignored in discussions of the origins of capitalism, such as the Ottoman Empire and the Mongolian Empire. All of which makes for a unique and fascinating contribution to the debates on capitalism and modernity.
July 12, 2018
This book's sweeping scope is both its strength and frustrating weakness.
As a survey that attempts to disentangle notions of Eurocentrism from the development of capitalism, it mostly succeeds.
However, as an academic attempt to introduce a radically altering discourse based on the theory of combined and uneven development, it doesn't quite cut it. This is frustrating as it cherry picks quite a lot of theories to fit this goal. As other reviewers have mentioned, its a dizzying academic exercise that necessarily is reductionist.
I enjoyed this more than anything else from a historical materialism basis than anything else. Be warned though, this isn't light reading. In fact, the book is clearly written as an academic contribution to existing theoretical debates. If you aren't familiar with basic Marxist theories about the relations between capital and wage labor you'd do well to brush up beforehand. That hampers the books overall impact and made it quite a chore to sludge through certain sections.
Does it succeed? Debatable. It works to dispel some institutional norms that underpin the recent works on the development of capitalism including Acemoglu's liberal institutionalist *Why Nations Fail* and David Graeber's anthropological *Debt*.
However, many of its conclusions actually seem too obvious. Namely that capitalism's origins can be traced back to an exploitative mix of slave labor and wage labor that unleashed the productive potential of capital. For me this appears to be nothing new. And I find it surprising that Political Marxists have spent so much time arguing that the disenfranchisement of the English rural class was the sole accelerator for capitalism in England. The authors actually use a lot of Political Marxist arguments to substantiate their main claims.
Anywho, great survey involving a lot of different theories. Unnecessarily esoteric with the vocabluary, though.
As a survey that attempts to disentangle notions of Eurocentrism from the development of capitalism, it mostly succeeds.
However, as an academic attempt to introduce a radically altering discourse based on the theory of combined and uneven development, it doesn't quite cut it. This is frustrating as it cherry picks quite a lot of theories to fit this goal. As other reviewers have mentioned, its a dizzying academic exercise that necessarily is reductionist.
I enjoyed this more than anything else from a historical materialism basis than anything else. Be warned though, this isn't light reading. In fact, the book is clearly written as an academic contribution to existing theoretical debates. If you aren't familiar with basic Marxist theories about the relations between capital and wage labor you'd do well to brush up beforehand. That hampers the books overall impact and made it quite a chore to sludge through certain sections.
Does it succeed? Debatable. It works to dispel some institutional norms that underpin the recent works on the development of capitalism including Acemoglu's liberal institutionalist *Why Nations Fail* and David Graeber's anthropological *Debt*.
However, many of its conclusions actually seem too obvious. Namely that capitalism's origins can be traced back to an exploitative mix of slave labor and wage labor that unleashed the productive potential of capital. For me this appears to be nothing new. And I find it surprising that Political Marxists have spent so much time arguing that the disenfranchisement of the English rural class was the sole accelerator for capitalism in England. The authors actually use a lot of Political Marxist arguments to substantiate their main claims.
Anywho, great survey involving a lot of different theories. Unnecessarily esoteric with the vocabluary, though.
May 17, 2025
این اثر پیشگامانه با ارائه چارچوب نظری نوینی، تحولی اساسی در درک ما از خاستگاههای سرمایهداری ایجاد میکند. نویسندگان با نقد دوگانهای هم به "تئوریهای درونزا" (موریس داب، رابرتبرنر، آلن میکسینز وود) و هم "تئوریهای نظام جهانی" ( پل سوئیزی، امانوئل والرشتاین)، رویکردی بدیل پیشنهاد میکنند که توسعه نامتوازن را در بستر ژئوپلیتیک جهانی تحلیل میکند. نویسندگان با پژوهشی عمیق و بینارشتهای نشان میدهند که برخلاف تصور رایج، سرمایهداری نه محصول "نبوغ ذاتی" غرب، بلکه نتیجه تعاملات پیچیده ژئوپلیتیک، رقابتهای امپراتوریها و شبکههای تجاری جهانی بوده است. آنچه این اثر را متمایز میکند، تمرکز آن بر نقش تعیینکننده شرق در شکلگیری نظام سرمایهداری است.
اثر حاضر بهطرز متقاعدکنندهای نشان میدهند که تحولات درونی اروپا به تنهایی برای توضیح ظهور سرمایهداری کافی نیست. آنها با بررسی دقیق روابط متقابل امپراتوری عثمانی، ایران صفوی و هند مغول، الگویی از "رقابت و تقلید نهادی" را ترسیم میکنند که چگونه فشارهای خارجی، تحولات نهادی در اروپا را شتاب بخشید. تحلیل آنها از نظام تیمار عثمانی در مقایسه با فئودالیسم اروپایی بهویژه روشنگر است.
یکی از نقاط قوت کتاب، تحلیل چندلایه از نقش جنگهاست. نویسندگان نه تنها به تأثیر مستقیم جنگها بر شکلگیری دولت-ملتها میپردازند، بلکه نشان میدهند چگونه نیاز به تأمین مالی جنگهای طولانیمدت، هم سیستمهای مالیاتی و هم بازارهای سرمایه را متحول کرد. بررسی آنها از بحرانهای مالی قرن هجدهم و ارتباط آن با رقابتهای استعماری، بینشهای ارزشمندی ارائه میدهد.
این اثر با ترکیب تاریخ اقتصادی، تحلیل ژئوپلیتیک و مطالعات تطبیقی تمدنها، الگویی جدید برای فهم گذار به سرمایهداری ارائه میدهد که هم از اروپامحوری پرهیز میکند و هم از جبرگرایی اقتصادی. کتاب با وجود پیچیدگی موضوع، بهطرز استادانهای نوشته شده و برای هر محقق تاریخ اقتصادی و توسعه ضروری است.
کتاب بسیار سخت خوانی است و نیازمند به مطالعه برخی از نظریهها را دارد
اثر حاضر بهطرز متقاعدکنندهای نشان میدهند که تحولات درونی اروپا به تنهایی برای توضیح ظهور سرمایهداری کافی نیست. آنها با بررسی دقیق روابط متقابل امپراتوری عثمانی، ایران صفوی و هند مغول، الگویی از "رقابت و تقلید نهادی" را ترسیم میکنند که چگونه فشارهای خارجی، تحولات نهادی در اروپا را شتاب بخشید. تحلیل آنها از نظام تیمار عثمانی در مقایسه با فئودالیسم اروپایی بهویژه روشنگر است.
یکی از نقاط قوت کتاب، تحلیل چندلایه از نقش جنگهاست. نویسندگان نه تنها به تأثیر مستقیم جنگها بر شکلگیری دولت-ملتها میپردازند، بلکه نشان میدهند چگونه نیاز به تأمین مالی جنگهای طولانیمدت، هم سیستمهای مالیاتی و هم بازارهای سرمایه را متحول کرد. بررسی آنها از بحرانهای مالی قرن هجدهم و ارتباط آن با رقابتهای استعماری، بینشهای ارزشمندی ارائه میدهد.
این اثر با ترکیب تاریخ اقتصادی، تحلیل ژئوپلیتیک و مطالعات تطبیقی تمدنها، الگویی جدید برای فهم گذار به سرمایهداری ارائه میدهد که هم از اروپامحوری پرهیز میکند و هم از جبرگرایی اقتصادی. کتاب با وجود پیچیدگی موضوع، بهطرز استادانهای نوشته شده و برای هر محقق تاریخ اقتصادی و توسعه ضروری است.
کتاب بسیار سخت خوانی است و نیازمند به مطالعه برخی از نظریهها را دارد
December 4, 2024
Through the use of Trotsky's concept of "uneven and combined development," this book provides an engaging account of the emergence of capitalism in Northwestern Europe through a series of intersocietal processes in the early modern world. The book is largely situated in historiographical debates between (a) Political Marxism (e.g., Brenner, Wood), and (b) World-Systems Theory (e.g., Wallerstein, Arrighi), and while the conceptual use of "uneven and combined development" is counterposed against these two sociological approaches, it ultimately takes the best from each: PM's focus on the balance of class relations in 16th century Europe (and the English countryside more specifically) as the wheels were coming off of feudalism, and WST's focus on the embeddedness of European development within a global economic system where core exploits periphery.
Fusing these approaches means that we can acknowledge England and the Low Countries' unique positioning for the transition to capitalism, while recognizing that this transition was dependent on conjunctural and intersocietal factors such the Ottoman-Hapsburg rivalry, the Atlantic slave trade, and the colonization of the Americas and Southeast Asia. In short, Northwestern Europe did not transition from feudalism to capitalism due to some enlightened European characteristic, but if anything due to a certain privilege of backwardness vis-a-vis non-European societies that positioned the region for a capitalist breakthrough.
Unfortunately, at times the book suffers from some really terribly-written sentences which tempt disengagement, but the content more than makes up for this flaw if you can push through.
Fusing these approaches means that we can acknowledge England and the Low Countries' unique positioning for the transition to capitalism, while recognizing that this transition was dependent on conjunctural and intersocietal factors such the Ottoman-Hapsburg rivalry, the Atlantic slave trade, and the colonization of the Americas and Southeast Asia. In short, Northwestern Europe did not transition from feudalism to capitalism due to some enlightened European characteristic, but if anything due to a certain privilege of backwardness vis-a-vis non-European societies that positioned the region for a capitalist breakthrough.
Unfortunately, at times the book suffers from some really terribly-written sentences which tempt disengagement, but the content more than makes up for this flaw if you can push through.
May 19, 2018
‘How the West Cam to Rule...’ is a poignant and well-researched enquiry into the rise of capitalism and the connection this has with the unifying of a dominant ontology as a paradigm through which the world is understood.
The book cannot be said to remain in one category of academia, but attempts a whirlwind combination of critical and subaltern political economy. Such a whirlwind, and the connected intent, is ultimately the books downfall. By attempting to spin off in so many different directions, the book looses clarity of communication, referencing numerous thinkers and schools.
Ultimately, the task itself makes anything else difficult and potentially un-attainable. What would be required is clarity of writing, detailed explanations, and razor focus that is not really in keeping with the overall intent of the task.
Worth reading and struggling through, but often not pleasant to do so.
The book cannot be said to remain in one category of academia, but attempts a whirlwind combination of critical and subaltern political economy. Such a whirlwind, and the connected intent, is ultimately the books downfall. By attempting to spin off in so many different directions, the book looses clarity of communication, referencing numerous thinkers and schools.
Ultimately, the task itself makes anything else difficult and potentially un-attainable. What would be required is clarity of writing, detailed explanations, and razor focus that is not really in keeping with the overall intent of the task.
Worth reading and struggling through, but often not pleasant to do so.
April 2, 2019
Good academic book that presents a theory that the rise of Western super powers was a result of wast geopolitical shifts in the Asian continent and not because Europeans where smarter and more free. It is a little bit thick on theory so it is quite boring for a lay person.
Of course this book is a little bias because it uses Marxist theory as it base and straight admits that its purpose is to help anti-capitalists to learn about international relations before they start a national revolution.
Of course this book is a little bias because it uses Marxist theory as it base and straight admits that its purpose is to help anti-capitalists to learn about international relations before they start a national revolution.
September 25, 2022
A somewhat tedious and dry read sadly. The idea that the emergence and rise of capitalism was also a product of international pressures along with developments within Europe and England is a good addition to the theory around the transition to capitalism and feudalism. But the authors seemed to overplay the importance of this contribution a little bit. Not a bad read, but a bit of a slog.
March 3, 2023
Absolutely phenomenal at times but gets bogged down in theory a bit too much for my taste. Still, I think the authors achieve their goal of charting a genuinely non-eurocentric history of the rise of capitalism & the west to global dominance
April 1, 2023
یکی از پرسشهایی که همواره به ذهن ما میآید این است که «غرب» چگونه «غرب» شد؟ و این کتاب به زیبایی میتواند این سوال را پاسخ گوید. حتما بخوانید و لذت ببرید.
لینک طاقچه
https://taaghche.com/book/112984/%D8%...
لینک طاقچه
https://taaghche.com/book/112984/%D8%...
June 21, 2020
A good, broad if somewhat inaccessible history tracking the origins and uneven development of capitalism and its global interconnectedness
November 13, 2020
Read this when it was published and found it very helpful in orienting my historical analysis
Read
August 3, 2021really fascinating arguments
February 27, 2023
Thought provoking
December 26, 2023
Review coming later once I’ve finished processing.
February 16, 2024
Probably one of the more interesting and original contributions to the transition debate in recent years.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews