World Accumulation 1492-1789

by André Gunder Frank

This book studies the effects of cyclical fluctuations in the process of capital accumulation - the sixteenth-century expansion, the seventeenth-century depression, the cyclical swings between the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688 and the Peace of Paris in 1763, the Depression and the American, French, and Industrial Revolutions between 1762 and 1789. Frank connects the downswings or crises in accumulation to the changing leadership positions as they shifted from Italy to Spain and Portugal and then to Holland and Britain. He devotes particular attention to the successive incorporation into the single world system of Asia, Africa, and the Americas, whose economies and societies were transformed to contribute to the accumulation of capital in Western Europe and later in North America through exploitation, dependence, and unequal exchange.

Genres: History, Economics, Sociology, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1978

About the author

André Gunder Frank was Professor of Development Economics and Director of the Institute for Socioeconomic Studies at the University of Amsterdam. His publications include Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (1967) and Reflections on the World Economic Crisis (1981).

Reviews

[Aung Sett Kyaw Min · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you want to get a good grasp of the main theses advanced in this admittedly synthetic study skim through the concluding chapter on Primitive/Primary Accumulation.The author's own views come to the fore in this chapter and for this reason it warrants a close attention. Tackling the knotty problem of precapitalist (and what clearly seems to be noncapitalist also) accumulation which functions as the condition of possibility of capitalist accumulation proper, the author suggests that noncapitalist relations of production are actively integrated into the process of capitalist accumulation and the former are therefore still ongoing (i.e. primary accumulation). Primitive accumulation is then, in a sense, an ongoing episode rather than constituting a strictly quasi transcedental quasi empirical prehistory of capitalism. The author also endorses the thesis that the world has been experiencing, as early as five or six centuries ago, numerically one albeit uneven process of capital accumulation. This is the third way between the internalist camp who argue that the mode and relations of production of a given spatio temporal region determines the transition from feudalism to capitalism proper and the externalists who contend that it is the exchange relations with the outside external to both feudalism and capitalism and to Europe. A question is also raised as to the possibility of long cycles predating capitalist accumulation and perhaps even determining the transition from feudal mode of production to capitalist mode of production in some places at a certain times.

[Sinan Öner]

Professor André Gunder Frank's "World Accumulation 1492-1789" is a useful guide for understanding the history of the world - during "a global crisis". Professor André Gunder Frank writes pages in his books about his study for Latin America. "Capital accumulation" in Latin America since 1492, Professor André Gunder Frank's question for Latin America, he uses Marx's views to describe the developments in Latin America. Professor André Gunder Frank writes the necessity to understand the history of Latin America for more exactly comprehension of "the world accumulation". Professor André Gunder Frank's "World Accumulation 1492-1789" can help to think about the roots of current crisis in the world.