Capitalism

As a conceptual apparatus for the analysis of complex historical phenomena, “capitalism” has been a powerful tool for historians of the Atlantic World. Capitalism, used as a concept in the sense derived from the work of Karl Marx, generates analyses that integrate the processes of production, consumption, and exchange with the historical development of consciousness and social systems. It is a critique, rather than simply an alternative form, of political economy. How exactly to conduct such critical analysis has been a matter of prolific and sophisticated argument for over a century, and specific definitions of capitalism as an object of historical study vary as functions of that debate. Indeed, debates about the precise formulation and usefulness of capitalism as a concept, and about its geographical and temporal scope as a historical object, have run on similar though by no means parallel lines to debates over the “Atlantic World.” These discourses intersect most vibrantly in the study of Atlantic slavery. From the 19th to the 21st centuries, the relationship of slavery to capitalism has remained a site of intense conceptual struggle. All serious contributions to such debates, and to the study of historical capitalism generally, have relied to some extent on the evidence and analysis of scholars who were not themselves engaged in that study. This bibliography, however, will deal for the most part only with work that deploys the term “capitalism,” signifying a more or less conscious engagement with the tradition and debates that derive from Marx’s work.