scholarly journals Capital as Process and the History of Capitalism

2017 ◽  
Vol 91 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Levy
Keyword(s):  
Physical Factor ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
American Capitalism ◽  
Core Dynamics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Many Core

In the wake of the Great Recession, a new cycle of scholarship opened on the history of American capitalism. This occurred, however, without much specification of the subject at hand. In this essay, I offer a conceptualization of capitalism, by focusing on its root—capital. Much historical writing has treated capital as a physical factor of production. Against such a “materialist” capital concept, I define capital as a pecuniary process of forward-looking valuation, associated with investment. Engaging recent work across literatures, I try to show how this conceptualization of capital and capitalism helps illuminate many core dynamics of modern economic life.

scholarly journals Manufacturing Germans: Singer Manufacturing Company and American Capitalism in the Russian Imagination during World War I

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
BENJAMIN SAWYER
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Business Model ◽  
International Business ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
American Capitalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Affiliation ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
The Russian Empire

Just months after the outbreak of World War I, rumors spread throughout the Russian Empire that Singer Manufacturing Company’s wholly owned Russian subsidiary, Kompaniia Zinger, was a German company that was actively engaged in espionage on behalf of the German military. Even though these rumors were untrue, they unleashed a wave of actions against the company that Singer’s officials were unable to stop, ultimately leading to tremendous losses for the firm. The central argument of this article is that the power of the accusations of Singer’s German ties rested far more on the nature of the company’s business model than on the national affiliation of its personnel or evidence of espionage. In the context of World War I–era Russia, many Russians took Singer’s operations not as those of an international capitalist enterprise, but rather as evidence of the company’s questionable foreign character. This perspective helps us to understand why Singer’s management had such difficulty shaking the accusations of its German ties; if what was suspicious about the company was the very foundation of its business model, then its continued operation meant that it necessarily exhibited characteristics that reinforced the basis for said suspicion. These findings have implications for international business history, the history of late-Tsarist Russia, and the history of capitalism.

Saving and Spending

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lendol Calder
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Core Competencies ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Business Success ◽  
Money Management ◽  
Not Given ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Rich

Monetization, which describes the process whereby money became the dominant means of exchange in developing commercial societies, is an economic development whose profound social, political, and cultural consequences are not yet well understood. The monetization of household economic life elevated practices that once affected only the wealthy – Fan Li's ‘golden rules for business success’ – to core competencies of living, mandatory for everyone. Reflecting on the scholarship that has examined saving and spending, this article examines consumption and why historians of consumer culture have not given the financial affairs of consumers the attention the subject deserves. The historical work that has been done, though sparse, amply demonstrates the rich potential of the financial arts for generating significant problem areas for research. Few other subjects in the glittering universe of consumption lead more directly to the largest questions we can ask about desire, virtue, and the construction of the modern self. The article also considers the history of thrift, money management, and financialization.

EMBEDDING CAPITAL: POLITICAL-ECONOMIC HISTORY, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE WORLD

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Kramer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Economic History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
The People ◽  
American Capitalism ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Economic

One of the chief promises of the emerging history of capitalism is its capacity to problematize and historicize relationships between economic inequality and capital's social, political, and ecological domain. At their best, the new works creatively integrate multiple historiographic approaches. Scholars are bringing the insights of social and cultural history to business history's traditional actors and topics, providing thick descriptions of the complex social worlds of firms, investors, and bankers, while resisting rationalist, functionalist, and economistic analyses. They are also proceeding from the assumption that capitalism is not reducible to the people that historians have typically designated as capitalists. As they've shown, the fact that slaves, women, sharecroppers, clerks, and industrial laborers were, to different degrees, denied power in the building of American capitalism did not mean that they were absent from its web, or that their actions did not decisively shape its particular contours.

scholarly journals Teaching Problems and Countermeasures Analysis of the Course of Chinese Modern Economic History in History Major

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 110
Author(s):  
Boli Ding
Keyword(s):  
Vocational Education ◽  
Education System ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Higher Vocational Education ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Set Up

Chinese Modern Economic History is an interdisciplinary subject closely related to history and economics. The course of “Chinese Modern Economic History” set up by the history major of higher vocational education has an irreplaceable role in improving the subjectivity and independence of the subject, and is conducive to promoting the employment of students. However, with the in-depth reform of China’s vocational education system, there are still many problems in the course that need to be resolved. This article focuses on the problems and countermeasures related to the teaching of the history of Chinese Modern Economic History.

scholarly journals Tashkent by the Interpretation of Russian Researchers

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 409
Author(s):  
Ergashev Bahtiyar Ergashevich ◽  
Amirkulov Zhasur Bahtiyorovich ◽  
Mamatkulova Farangiz Orzukulovna ◽  
Asatullaev Mirzhalolhon Isahonovich
Keyword(s):  
Stages Of Change ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Central State ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The City ◽  
Official Records

The article is devoted to the history of Turkestan in the second half of XIX – beginning of XX centuries. The main object of research is the book by A.I.Dobrosmyslov "Tashkent in the past and present" which was published in 1912. The subject is the study of historical facts stated in the book. The article provides a historical retrospective of the history of Tashkent in the early XX century. The author of the book, being a veteran by profession on the instructions of the administration of the Turkestan General-Governorate, collected a wealth of material on the history of Tashkent. The book, which consists of 15 chapters, covers questions on the history of the city before the conquest, historical facts related to the conquest and the subsequent stages of change and formation of the social and economic life of Tashkent. The authors in the article explore the issues of irrigation in the context of improvement of water supply to the city. The biography of A.I.Dobromyslov is studied separately from the source side. The authors widely used the materials of the Central State Archive of the Republic of Uzbekistan to reveal this problem. They mainly use the official records of the Turkestan General-Governorate Office.

The Cambridge History of Capitalism

Capitalisms ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 128-151
Author(s):  
David Washbrook
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
Modern Economic Growth ◽  
Strategic Role ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The concept of capitalism has always been subject to multiple meanings. The definition adopted in The Cambridge History of Capitalism is particularly broad. It makes ‘capitalism’ difficult to distinguish from sustained economic growth and/or progress towards modern economic growth. It also obscures the relationship of labour to capital and promotes the national economy as the natural arena in which discrete histories of capitalism should be written. However, in the case of India, there are other angles to consider. If labour were given a central role in the definition of ‘capitalism’, a very different set of issues becomes apparent. Moreover, if capitalism were understood, from the first, as a transnational set of forces, India’s supposed marginality in its genesis becomes illusory. India played a key strategic role in the evolution of the global capitalist system enmeshed in the British Empire. This essay explores these other sides of capitalism’s history in India.

Historia magistra vitae – ad acta oder ad nauseam?

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 651-714
Author(s):  
Philipp Robinson Rössner
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
Economic Divergence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
The Right

Summary Historia magistra vitae – ad acta or ad nauseam? Early Modern Research and Economic History in the Age of Neoliberalism und Trump (1973 – 2018) Recent decades have seen the rise of neoliberal interpretations in the economic history of capitalism, development and economic growth. Free trade and free markets are said to have been the epitome of good economic development, whilst protectionism and mercantilism are seen as the antinomy of economic modernity. The economic history of early modern Europe, including processes of global economic divergence have often been written accordingly. The present paper, whilst not laying any judgemental claims to the right or wrongs of neoliberalism, wishes to trace the influence of neoliberal philosophy on writing early modern economic histories and the history of capitalism. It studies some of its most obvious implications, including Eurocentrism, economic determinism and the new historical materialism inherent in cliometrics and the New Economic History as it emerged in the 1960 s and 1970 s in the West.

Bede's Ecclesiastical History and the Material Conditions of Anglo-Saxon Life

1979 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Joel T. Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The West ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Do So

The author of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People was the greatest historian writing in the West between the later Roman Empire and the twelfth century, when we come to William of Malmesbury, Otto of Freising, and William of Tyre. Bede's qualities as a historian are well known and widely appreciated, and they need no further exposition here. Instead, we propose to be perverse and to attempt to read Bede's text as though he had been a sociologist or an economic anthropologist: What can we learn from him about the “material conditions” of life in post-Roman and early Anglo-Saxon England, especially about life in the sixth and seventh centuries. This is surely a strange purpose for which to use the Ecclesiastical History. We do so both to show that Bede is so rich and so multifaceted that he is immensely valuable for many purposes besides those of greatest obvious interest to him, and because the sources for social and economic life in those years are so poor that everything available is legitimate grist for the mills of our analysis.Actually there are two reasons why Bede might have furnished us with the kind of information we are seeking. One is that among classical and early medieval historians there was a considerable tradition of describing the barbarian world, of paying particular attention to the institutions, mores, and customs of the Germanic people or whoever might be the subject of the tale.

Beyond the Dual Revolution: Revisiting Capitalism in Modern France

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexia Yates ◽  
Erika Vause
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
Modern France ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Nineteenth Century France ◽  
History Of

Abstract— What communication has there been—and should there be—between the history of modern France and the new history of capitalism? In this introduction to a special issue, the authors trace the recent development of a new scholarly interest in the history of capitalism, outlining the ways that this field intersects with existing research on the history of economic life in nineteenth-century France and suggesting how historians of France can push this scholarship into new directions. In particular, French history’s global turn, the strength of historiography on consumerism and marketization, the place of (revolutionary) property in law and culture and the significance of cultural history represent particular vectors through which the history of nineteenth-century France and the new history of capitalism can develop.

scholarly journals Anthropocene, the challenge for "Homo sapiens" to set its own limits

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
F. Valladares ◽  
S. Magro ◽  
I. Martín-Forés
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Anthropogenic Activity ◽  
Greenhouse Gases Emissions ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Exponential Population Growth ◽  
Planetary Processes ◽  
Many Core

The Anthropocene as a distinct geological era has been the subject of active discussion within the scientific community. This era includes the notion that Homo sapiens has had a large impact on global planetary processes. Here, we aim at connecting the notion and nature of the Anthropocene with the social-economic success and the unexpected or unplanned environmental impacts of the anthropogenic activity. Some of the main achievements along the history of humankind have been important developmental steps for many human civilisations but they have also had undesired results that we could not foresee, including the rise of greenhouse gases emissions, the shifts in the area of species distributions or the affection of all major biogeochemical cycles. Increasing human life expectancy and health has promoted an exponential population growth, which together with the increased environmental footprint per capita has pushed many core variables for Earth functioning (e.g. biodiversity, nitrogen cycle, climate change) out of their safety limits. We illustrate examples of many ecosystems that have collapsed around the world because we have crossed the limits of their sustainable exploitation. Paradoxically, it is humanity itself who is pushing the Planet to conditions in which our own survival will unlikely be possible. The reason behind such a strong ecological and functional impact on the Planet within a relatively short space of time is an unsustainable economic system based on the assumption that a perpetual economic growth is not only possible but also desirable. Our awakening should lie on a global framework aimed at changing our relationship with the Planet.

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