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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, a vast majority of us live under the economic system called capitalism—it touches almost every aspect of our lives, and most people alive have never known another. Yet, a cursory look at the world around us reveals that things can’t stay this way an economy built on infinite amassing and consumption of resources is at odds with a finite planet. How did this happen? 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.
With a firm grasp on history and economics and a keen eye for the telling anecdote, Jackson explains where capitalism came from, how it spread across the globe, and how it came to be the dominant way of organizing life. He 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 in the eighteenth century, fossil-fuel industrialization, and finally the global capitalist system spread by imperialism in the nineteenth century. Along the way, readers learn about the surprising role of Chinese mulberry trees, Dutch cheese, whale blubber, imperial gin and tonics, Spanish conquistadors, Mexican mine workers, and English bankers in the history and development of capitalism.
Full of memorable characters and lively vignettes as well as sweeping quantitative analysis and historical synthesis, The Insatiable Machine makes clear that capitalism is neither a natural, permanent, nor inevitable feature of human life but rather an economic system that has a history. And just as it was made by people, it can also be unmade by them.
Today, a vast majority of us live under the economic system called capitalism—it touches almost every aspect of our lives, and most people alive have never known another. Yet, a cursory look at the world around us reveals that things can’t stay this way an economy built on infinite amassing and consumption of resources is at odds with a finite planet. How did this happen? 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.
With a firm grasp on history and economics and a keen eye for the telling anecdote, Jackson explains where capitalism came from, how it spread across the globe, and how it came to be the dominant way of organizing life. He 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 in the eighteenth century, fossil-fuel industrialization, and finally the global capitalist system spread by imperialism in the nineteenth century. Along the way, readers learn about the surprising role of Chinese mulberry trees, Dutch cheese, whale blubber, imperial gin and tonics, Spanish conquistadors, Mexican mine workers, and English bankers in the history and development of capitalism.
Full of memorable characters and lively vignettes as well as sweeping quantitative analysis and historical synthesis, The Insatiable Machine makes clear that capitalism is neither a natural, permanent, nor inevitable feature of human life but rather an economic system that has a history. And just as it was made by people, it can also be unmade by them.
320 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 24, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 19, 2026
Like many of you who read this book, I learned a lot about the early days of capitalism and connections between economic zones that remained obscure until now.
This book is one of the few whose title -- "the insatiable machine" -- really conveys the author's intent.
In his interpretation -- and I tend to agree whim -- capitalism IS an insatiable machine that threatens destroy the habitable planet for humans and many, many other species. And I remain unconvinced that technological progress will ultimately lead to a resolution of the climate dilemma posed by unfettered growth.
His opening statement is ominous: "the world I live in will be destroyed within my lifetime."
That's pretty strong medicine, and he's not the only one saying this. Recently Eliezer Yudkowsky said much the same thing in discussing the progress of artificial intelligence. Our systems and feedback loops just don't have the ability to reverse direction.
There are here remarkable discussions on slavery, the role of money, railroads, the global division of labour, industrial pollution, the Industrial Revolution, the wastefulness of the Industrial revolution, the "Industrious revolution" (a term I hadn't heard before), migration, the role of violence, consumer aspirations, guns, and many more topics in this slim volume.
I had to stop, though, and reflect on his discussion of "possessive individualism."
"The policy of colonial land ownership and the spread of enclosure in England both proceeded from the same political philosophy, which scholars today call "possessive individualism." John Locke, who among other things was an investor in the slave-trading Royal African Company, was the key theorist of this idea.
"In brief, it proceeds from the assumption that all people naturally own themselves, so ownership and property are at the core of all social relations. People who retained independent ownership of themselves could be full participants in civil society, but people who did not (or could not, either because of their own mistakes or misfortunes or because of some inherent inferiority) were dependents and did not have full access to political and civil rights.
"Anything that is property and can be owned can also be bought and sold, or lost through legal means. Thus, as David Eltis, the historian of Atlantic slavery, puts it: "If, in the Western world, possessive individualism meant a recognition that one owns full rights in oneself and that one has the right in a market society to bargain away such rights, it might also mean the accumulation of rights in others in the hands of a few, as indeed happened in the slave societies of the European Atlantic."
In this reading of Locke -- an investor in slavery ventures -- the people who own or have a right to the land are the ones who do something with it, or improve it. That is why the early settlers of North America felt free to dispossess aboriginal peoples. In their mind, the aboriginals did nothing productive with the land so the land was free to take by homesteaders.
This is what capitalism did to things: land was converted into an asset. The same could said of slaves and wage laborers.
Something in this discussion rang so current that I had to stop reading and indulge my TDS -- "Trump Derangement Syndrome."
At a gut level, it seems so wrong for Trump to put gold appliqués all over the Oval Office, to demolish the East Wing, and to plan an Arc de Trump" next to the Jefferson Memorial.
But Trump is really telling us something about his relation to Washington: in his mind of course he has to "improve" it. He is the occupant of the White House.
This is so American and so capitalist.
This book is one of the few whose title -- "the insatiable machine" -- really conveys the author's intent.
In his interpretation -- and I tend to agree whim -- capitalism IS an insatiable machine that threatens destroy the habitable planet for humans and many, many other species. And I remain unconvinced that technological progress will ultimately lead to a resolution of the climate dilemma posed by unfettered growth.
His opening statement is ominous: "the world I live in will be destroyed within my lifetime."
That's pretty strong medicine, and he's not the only one saying this. Recently Eliezer Yudkowsky said much the same thing in discussing the progress of artificial intelligence. Our systems and feedback loops just don't have the ability to reverse direction.
There are here remarkable discussions on slavery, the role of money, railroads, the global division of labour, industrial pollution, the Industrial Revolution, the wastefulness of the Industrial revolution, the "Industrious revolution" (a term I hadn't heard before), migration, the role of violence, consumer aspirations, guns, and many more topics in this slim volume.
I had to stop, though, and reflect on his discussion of "possessive individualism."
"The policy of colonial land ownership and the spread of enclosure in England both proceeded from the same political philosophy, which scholars today call "possessive individualism." John Locke, who among other things was an investor in the slave-trading Royal African Company, was the key theorist of this idea.
"In brief, it proceeds from the assumption that all people naturally own themselves, so ownership and property are at the core of all social relations. People who retained independent ownership of themselves could be full participants in civil society, but people who did not (or could not, either because of their own mistakes or misfortunes or because of some inherent inferiority) were dependents and did not have full access to political and civil rights.
"Anything that is property and can be owned can also be bought and sold, or lost through legal means. Thus, as David Eltis, the historian of Atlantic slavery, puts it: "If, in the Western world, possessive individualism meant a recognition that one owns full rights in oneself and that one has the right in a market society to bargain away such rights, it might also mean the accumulation of rights in others in the hands of a few, as indeed happened in the slave societies of the European Atlantic."
In this reading of Locke -- an investor in slavery ventures -- the people who own or have a right to the land are the ones who do something with it, or improve it. That is why the early settlers of North America felt free to dispossess aboriginal peoples. In their mind, the aboriginals did nothing productive with the land so the land was free to take by homesteaders.
This is what capitalism did to things: land was converted into an asset. The same could said of slaves and wage laborers.
Something in this discussion rang so current that I had to stop reading and indulge my TDS -- "Trump Derangement Syndrome."
At a gut level, it seems so wrong for Trump to put gold appliqués all over the Oval Office, to demolish the East Wing, and to plan an Arc de Trump" next to the Jefferson Memorial.
But Trump is really telling us something about his relation to Washington: in his mind of course he has to "improve" it. He is the occupant of the White House.
This is so American and so capitalist.
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.
May 6, 2026
The Insatiable Machine is a sweeping and accessible account of capitalism’s emergence as the dominant global economic system. Trevor Jackson presents capitalism not as an inevitable or natural endpoint of history, but as a contingent and historically constructed system shaped by political power, trade networks, and imperial expansion.
One of the book’s strongest contributions is its global and narrative-driven approach. Rather than focusing narrowly on economic theory, Jackson traces capitalism’s development through vivid historical episodes spanning continents and centuries. Examples ranging from commodity booms to colonial extraction and early financial systems help illustrate how interconnected events shaped the modern economic order.
The book emphasizes the unpredictability of capitalism’s rise, highlighting how systems such as banking, global trade, and industrial resource extraction evolved through a combination of experimentation, exploitation, and institutional development. This perspective challenges simplified explanations and encourages readers to reconsider assumptions about economic inevitability.
Another notable feature is its balance between scholarly insight and engaging storytelling. Historical anecdotes and concrete case studies are used to anchor broader structural arguments, making the material approachable without losing analytical depth.
Overall, The Insatiable Machine is a compelling work of global economic history that will appeal to readers interested in capitalism, world systems, and historical change. It succeeds in presenting a complex topic in a way that is both informative and readable, while encouraging deeper reflection on how modern economic systems came to be.
One of the book’s strongest contributions is its global and narrative-driven approach. Rather than focusing narrowly on economic theory, Jackson traces capitalism’s development through vivid historical episodes spanning continents and centuries. Examples ranging from commodity booms to colonial extraction and early financial systems help illustrate how interconnected events shaped the modern economic order.
The book emphasizes the unpredictability of capitalism’s rise, highlighting how systems such as banking, global trade, and industrial resource extraction evolved through a combination of experimentation, exploitation, and institutional development. This perspective challenges simplified explanations and encourages readers to reconsider assumptions about economic inevitability.
Another notable feature is its balance between scholarly insight and engaging storytelling. Historical anecdotes and concrete case studies are used to anchor broader structural arguments, making the material approachable without losing analytical depth.
Overall, The Insatiable Machine is a compelling work of global economic history that will appeal to readers interested in capitalism, world systems, and historical change. It succeeds in presenting a complex topic in a way that is both informative and readable, while encouraging deeper reflection on how modern economic systems came to be.
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.
April 30, 2026
The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World by Trevor Jackson offers a clear and compelling historical account of capitalism’s global rise and transformation.
The book traces key economic developments across centuries, connecting trade, empire, industry, and finance into a cohesive narrative of how modern capitalism emerged and spread worldwide.
Overall, it’s an accessible yet insightful read for anyone interested in economic history, global systems, and political economy.
The book traces key economic developments across centuries, connecting trade, empire, industry, and finance into a cohesive narrative of how modern capitalism emerged and spread worldwide.
Overall, it’s an accessible yet insightful read for anyone interested in economic history, global systems, and political economy.
May 14, 2026
A bit dry at times but overall great storytelling and so helpful in understanding how we got to our present economic moment. I like how he pushes back gently on people who try to read history too much through the lens of Marx or race.
May 15, 2026
Review in more depth to follow. This is the latest in a growing literature of long and deep critical histories of capitalism. Especially good are the sections on how oppressive financial capitalism/imperialism (à la Hobson) actually worked in detail.
April 19, 2026
Narrated by EDDIE LOPEZ
April 21, 2026
Very interesting with quite enjoyed the book
May 4, 2026
Excellent, lucid survey of capitalism from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution through the 20th century. Fascinating information is to be found on nearly every page. While retaining a fact-based approach displaying little or no idealogical tonality, those facts still pile up to form an indictment of a system that has victimized great masses of people, whether by arbitrary appropriation, outright slavery, wage slavery, or various flavors of bonded labor -- also entailing, as we now see, the despoliaton and probable destruction of the entire planet. It's our story, gripping, sad, and violent.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews