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The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World
A concise, colorful, and convincing account of capitalism’s rise to global dominance.
Today, virtually the entire world lives under the economic system called capitalism, and most people alive have never known another. But as the economic historian Trevor Jackson argues in this powerful book, It wasn’t always capitalism, it didn’t have to be capitalism, and capitalism didn’t have to be this way. How did it happen? With a firm grasp on history and economics and a keen eye for the telling anecdote, Jackson explains the rise of capitalism from the discovery of the New World to the First World War. A fast–paced work of global history that explores the role of Chinese mulberry trees, Dutch tulips, and whale blubber—along with Spanish conquistadors, Mexican mine workers, and English bankers—The Insatiable Machine traces capitalism’s development from the accidental construction of an international monetary system to the creation of banking, the emergence of a new form of slavery, fossil–fuel industrialization, and finally the global capitalist system spread by imperialism.
Today, virtually the entire world lives under the economic system called capitalism, and most people alive have never known another. But as the economic historian Trevor Jackson argues in this powerful book, It wasn’t always capitalism, it didn’t have to be capitalism, and capitalism didn’t have to be this way. How did it happen? With a firm grasp on history and economics and a keen eye for the telling anecdote, Jackson explains the rise of capitalism from the discovery of the New World to the First World War. A fast–paced work of global history that explores the role of Chinese mulberry trees, Dutch tulips, and whale blubber—along with Spanish conquistadors, Mexican mine workers, and English bankers—The Insatiable Machine traces capitalism’s development from the accidental construction of an international monetary system to the creation of banking, the emergence of a new form of slavery, fossil–fuel industrialization, and finally the global capitalist system spread by imperialism.
320 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication March 24, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
It’s like
Connections
: Dismal Science edition.
This is a history of capitalism, which is to say that it is a global history, as told through the social and technological developments of a set of European countries, mostly England and the Netherlands. It is much more history than sociology or economics, and more material history with a (fiscal) technology chaser than social history. This alone sets it apart as a history of an idea told through stuff.
And the emphasis is frequently on the stuff, or those were the points I flagged the most in my notes as new ideas to me. When we discuss something like the gold standard, we either treat it as natural law, arising obviously, or as a sort of capital I-Idea that then was made flesh (flash?). But as much as it plays out like the Golgafrinchans, someone had to sit down and do it, and the doing of it happened out of as causal series of events that arise out of things like material conditions and immediate politics.
The author deeply irritated me in the introduction, asserting that economics could not discuss capitalism because it was too inimitable to it. This is a bit like saying that you cannot see yellow until you have the word for yellow (you have an argument but it is neither useful nor strong), and I was thoroughly expecting a much worse, or at least much more axe-grindy book. Instead, it is the author getting at one of my persisting themes. The most useful thing to study is the invisible architecture of the world. So much more is possible than we confess.
And far from polemic this book is aggressively mild in its assertions. Colonialism, slavery, and environmental exploitation are frequently positioned with respect to capitalism, either as necessary prerequisites to or as functional opposites bested by. The author’s view is looking at them as force multipliers. There is a unique set of things going on that develop on their own, but when in the context of other conditions, they develop an oversized effect.
Likewise, the book endears itself to me by its blowing up of any East/West or North/South division. The world is always connected, and the sort of way of telling history is much bound up in Nationalist or racist projects when the whole thing is a big mix always. As such, I will let slide the weird, slightly incorrect, pro tariff bit.
Contender for favorite book of the year already and rather surprised by that. It is a fun history, and even discarding all the actual theory of it, a great read on that account. I feel like it has the potential to make no one happy, but it speaks to all the things that I find interesting about scholarship in general.
My thanks to the author, Trevor Jackson, for writing the book, and to the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, for making the ARC available to me.
This is a history of capitalism, which is to say that it is a global history, as told through the social and technological developments of a set of European countries, mostly England and the Netherlands. It is much more history than sociology or economics, and more material history with a (fiscal) technology chaser than social history. This alone sets it apart as a history of an idea told through stuff.
And the emphasis is frequently on the stuff, or those were the points I flagged the most in my notes as new ideas to me. When we discuss something like the gold standard, we either treat it as natural law, arising obviously, or as a sort of capital I-Idea that then was made flesh (flash?). But as much as it plays out like the Golgafrinchans, someone had to sit down and do it, and the doing of it happened out of as causal series of events that arise out of things like material conditions and immediate politics.
The author deeply irritated me in the introduction, asserting that economics could not discuss capitalism because it was too inimitable to it. This is a bit like saying that you cannot see yellow until you have the word for yellow (you have an argument but it is neither useful nor strong), and I was thoroughly expecting a much worse, or at least much more axe-grindy book. Instead, it is the author getting at one of my persisting themes. The most useful thing to study is the invisible architecture of the world. So much more is possible than we confess.
And far from polemic this book is aggressively mild in its assertions. Colonialism, slavery, and environmental exploitation are frequently positioned with respect to capitalism, either as necessary prerequisites to or as functional opposites bested by. The author’s view is looking at them as force multipliers. There is a unique set of things going on that develop on their own, but when in the context of other conditions, they develop an oversized effect.
Likewise, the book endears itself to me by its blowing up of any East/West or North/South division. The world is always connected, and the sort of way of telling history is much bound up in Nationalist or racist projects when the whole thing is a big mix always. As such, I will let slide the weird, slightly incorrect, pro tariff bit.
Contender for favorite book of the year already and rather surprised by that. It is a fun history, and even discarding all the actual theory of it, a great read on that account. I feel like it has the potential to make no one happy, but it speaks to all the things that I find interesting about scholarship in general.
My thanks to the author, Trevor Jackson, for writing the book, and to the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, for making the ARC available to me.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
My thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy audiobook edition of this title in exchange for an honest review.
It’s almost frightening how accessible, and dare I say interesting this book is. How the author manages to transmute usually bone-dry topics like joint stock companies, interest rates, and the global silver market into fascinating reading is completely beyond me. I’ve never read any book of popular economic history even close to as engrossing as this.
The central thesis, that there’s nothing inevitable or timeless about our current economic system, is at least as worthy as the style of the writing. It offers a sort of unsentimental and realistic hope in a world that seems to get day by day darker and worse across the board.
Genuinely everyone should read this. I’m considering reading another title by this author with the much less seductive title of “Impunity and Capitalism: The Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690–1830” based solely on how much I enjoyed this book. That's how good it is.
It’s almost frightening how accessible, and dare I say interesting this book is. How the author manages to transmute usually bone-dry topics like joint stock companies, interest rates, and the global silver market into fascinating reading is completely beyond me. I’ve never read any book of popular economic history even close to as engrossing as this.
The central thesis, that there’s nothing inevitable or timeless about our current economic system, is at least as worthy as the style of the writing. It offers a sort of unsentimental and realistic hope in a world that seems to get day by day darker and worse across the board.
Genuinely everyone should read this. I’m considering reading another title by this author with the much less seductive title of “Impunity and Capitalism: The Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690–1830” based solely on how much I enjoyed this book. That's how good it is.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews