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.The Insatiable Machine
A concise, colorful, and convincing account of capitalism’s rise to global dominance.
