Artisans, Guilds, and Capitalist Development in Cairo, 1600–1800

Studies of capitalism have often been based on the European or, more often, the nineteenth-century English experience. Its sources were taken to be based on the European experience, the trading companies of the sixteenth century, Protestantism, and so on. From there, it was diffused to the rest of the world. To fully understand capitalism, one had to focus on the European experience and the restrictive definitions that were based on its development in Western Europe. The Eurocentric approach to this subject is now being reconsidered. Studies of regions outside Europe are now showing that the emergence of capitalism was a much more complex and diverse trend, and it could have multiple sources. The present article focuses on one of these sources.

Iranian Capitalism

Following an ‘internalist’ approach, this chapter considers some of the reasons why Iran was late in developing capitalist features, even in comparison with the adjacent Ottoman Empire and the Indian Subcontinent. These include environmental obstacles in the form of rugged terrain, a scarcity of easily exploitable mineral deposits, and poor connections to the wider world. Private ingenuity and inquisitiveness were abundantly available in the country, even if culture tended to favour speculative over applied science. A tax and toll regime imposed on Iran by Russia and Great Britain in the early Qajar period worked to the disadvantage of the country’s domestic merchants and manufacturers. Foreign involvement also stimulated trade, however. The crucial impediment, it is argued here, was internal in nature, involving the state and its institutions. Both the Safavid and the Qajar regimes were at once intrusive and uninvolved, perpetuating a traditional, venal, governing style rather than supporting entrepreneurial initiative in any systemic and sustained manner.

The First Capitalist Nation

This chapter traces the long-drawn-out development of capitalism in England, employing the conception of capitalism as a socio-economic system that goes back to Karl Marx and Max Weber. It argues that over the long period, two central factors drove the process: population growth and international/intercontinental trade. From 1086 to 1660, population growth and the wool trade (raw wool and woollen textile production for export to Europe and for the domestic market) were at the centre of the process. From 1660 to 1850, the process shifted decisively to the Atlantic world, partly, because mercantilist policies closed much of the European markets to English manufactures. England’s counties that dominated production for export to the rapidly growing Atlantic markets—Lancashire, the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the West Midlands—launched the Industrial Revolution and industrial capitalism in England.

Mysore’s Pre-colonial Potentialities for Capitalist Development and Industrialization

This paper enquires into Mysore’s potentialities for a proto-capitalist development and a sort of industrialization during the reigns of Haidar ‘Ali (r. 1761–82) and Tipu Sultan (r. 1782–99)—the first Muslim rulers of the sultanate of Mysore. During the second half of the eighteenth century, these two autocrats were not only among the most powerful modernizers of South India but also of the subcontinent and Asia as a whole. The threat posed by the growing power of the British East India Company lubricated the wheels of political, fiscal, and military reforms and fuelled profound efforts at centralization. In conjunction with the already existing advances in commerce, artisanry, and incipient capitalist relations of production, the changes that were set in motion suggest that Mysore found itself in an interim stage and historical conjuncture with multiple prospects of socio-economic developments, as well as the potential scope for a transition towards a type of industrial capitalism.

New World Slavery in the Capitalist World Economy

This chapter explores, first, how New World slavery and other forms of coerced labour appear in the volume organized by Larry Neal, The Cambridge History of Capitalism, published in 2014. The second half of the chapter offers a brief alternative interpretation of the history of slavery in the Americas as a constitutive part of historical capitalism. In this way, it tackles a central problem in The Cambridge History of Capitalism: its static representation of slavery, which, abstracted from the broader world structures of which it was part, appears as a single immutable institution throughout the modern era. The main goal of the article is to emphasize, first, how slavery changed over time and, second, how it was part of the total ensemble of global relations that formed the capitalist world economy between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. It is a history of slavery in capitalism.

Silver, Globalization, and Capitalism

Generations of scholars have attempted, without success, to link Spanish-American silver to the dawn of European capitalism. Rather, historical connections across the globe have come into clearer focus during recent decades, including awareness of the fact that American, European, and Japanese silver gravitated largely to China (and also India). Having begun during the sixteenth century, globalization has involved deep connections, including trade regimes that linked together multiple free and coerced labour systems simultaneously. Lessons from global history suggest that national ‘capitalisms’ can no longer serve as reasonable units of analysis. From the outset of sixteenth-century origins, globalization generated intertwined economic, environmental, epidemiological, demographic, and cultural accumulations that continue to reverberate across planet Earth today. Wealth creation, wealth distribution, and environmental consequences remain central features of a historical process that requires analysis at a global level.

One-Off Capitalism in Song China, 960–1279 CE

The rise of the industrial and commercial sectors in Song China was a result of historical contingency rather than an organic growth from the pre-Song past, which was marked by the physiocracy-cum-farming that China was famous for. The right amount of external pressure from China’s northern and western borders served as a catalyst while the switch to mercantilism was the key of the Song state-led growth. Without a doubt, by 1100 CE, China was on a track to a quasi-modern structure with profit-making commercialization and proto-industrialization. However, the Song capitalist model did not lead to military supremacy in East Asia. As a result, it lost its northern territory in 1127 to the Jurchens and then its southern territory in 1279 to the Mongols, whereby the capitalist experiment ended by external violence.

Capitalism’s Missing Link

Why has Southeast Asia often been left out of histories of how capitalism conquered the world? I answer this question in three parts: the first focuses on the evolution of territory vis-à-vis economic history in this part of the world. I argue that Western notions of territorial control took root slowly in Southeast Asia and in a piecemeal fashion, affecting the ways that capitalism could ultimately form. The second examines the nature of the commercially interested state itself, as state formation took place across the breadth of Southeast Asia. I argue that the nature of state formation also changed during this era vis-à-vis economic history in interesting ways. Finally, the third part has to do with the nature of the economic stimuli causing these processes (including capitalism), its various frequencies, and its provenances. I propose that more of these energies were Asian and local than have previously been supposed.

Introduction

This introduction emphasizes the importance of global conjunctures and non-European resources, labour power, goods, ideas, institutions, techno-scientific developments, consumer demands, and socio-economic dynamics in the genesis of historical capitalism(s). The contributions to the volume are summarized, highlighting both the internal socio-economic dynamics of a number of regions (that is, parts of Latin America, Eurasia, and Africa), as well as the global interconnections, entangled histories, and intertwined processes that went into the making and co-production of historical capitalism(s).

The View from Early Modern China

The porcelain production centre of Jingdezhen (southern China) produced fine ceramics both for the emperor and his court and for the market by employing large numbers of skilled and unskilled, free and unfree labour. Conventionally, the imperial kilns of the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties have been held up as examples of exploitative systems that prevented the development of capitalism. In this chapter, I explore evidence from the sixteenth-century Chinese centre of ceramics manufacture to suggest the presence of a form of capitalism in early modern China. The chapter covers a brief background of the production system in Jingdezhen and then turns to some specific issues in the central government’s management of labour force, to return to some question of capitalism towards the end of the chapter. Overall, the chapter reveals sophisticated labour-management policies, waged free labour, and production for global markets, pointing to a capitalist environment.