Prof. Dr. Sven Beckert
History
External Senior Fellow
Marie S. Curie FCFP Fellow
January - July 2019
CV
Selected Publications
- Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development. (University of Pennsylvania Press, August 2016)
- Empire of Cotton: A Global History. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014)
- The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie. Cambridge University Press (2001; paperback 2003)
FRIAS Research Project
Capitalism
A Global History analyzes the social and spatial spread of capitalism over the past 500 years. Charting one of the most impactful developments of the modern era, the book argues for a non-eurocentric and post Cold War history that makes the global South an integral story of the full sweep of capitalism's history, and leaves some of the ideological binaries of the nineteenth century behind. Combining very local with very global analysis, I will embed my narrative of economic change in accounts of politics, culture, and social structures, and will show how very dispersed actors--from merchants in India to enslaved workers in the United States, from Bochum industrialists to African peasants structured the revolution of capitalism and brought about our contemporary world.