Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism

This edited volume builds and expands on the groundbreaking work of Robert Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood on the origins of capitalism. Whereas Brenner and Wood focused mostly on the emergence of capitalism in the English countryside (agrarian capitalism), this book utilizes their approach to offer original, theoretically sophisticated, and empirically informed accounts of transitions to capitalism both agrarian and industrial in a wide range of countries in order to provide within a single volume a diverse collection of relatively brief yet detailed case studies of the historical transition to capitalism distributed across three continents. Offering a new and highly original analysis of the global spread of capitalism, this book will be a unique contribution to the longstanding debate on the transition to capitalism.

Represents an original contribution to the on-going debate on the origins of capitalism that significantly expands and renews the major contributions of Robert Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood. Provides readers with high quality empirical studies guided byand contributing toa sophisticated theoretical definition of capitalism. Offers a multidisciplinary perspective on the transition to capitalismthe collaborative product of historians, political scientists and sociologists.

Autorentext

Xavier Lafrance ****is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Québec in Montréal, Canada

Charles Post ****is Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center and Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York, USA

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. Expropriation and the Political Origins of Agrarian Capitalism in England.- 3. 'Compelled to sell all': Proletarianization, Agrarian Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution.- 4. Peasant Farming in Eighteenth-and-Nineteenth-Century France and the Transition to Capitalism under Charles de Gaulle.- 5. The Transition to Industrial Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century France.- 6. The Transition to Capitalism in Catalonia.- 7. The American Road to Capitalism.- 8. Colonialism, Racism, and the Transition to Capitalism in Canada.- 9. The Peasantry and Tenancy-Market Dependence: Rural Capitalism in Meiji-Era Japan.- 10. Rural Property Relations and the Regional Dynamics of Brazilian Capitalism.- 11. The Political Economy of the Transition to Capitalism in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey: Towards a New Interpretation.- 12. Uncertainty, Contingency, and Late Development in Taiwan.- 13. Rethinking the Rules of Reproduction and the Transition to Capitalism: Reading Federici and Brenner Together.- 14. Conclusion.