Capitalism—few topics have been more exhaustively discussed. The term appears in 55 of the just over 360 book reviews published by the SPE to date and headlines the titles of 20. Furthermore, any scholar of capitalism must climb the shoulders of some of the biggest intellectual giants. It is, therefore, no small task for Sven Beckert to find a fresh angle from which to study this well-trodden subject.

Yet “Capitalism: A Global History” does not disappoint. It is an amazingly rich and colourful tour de force through the historical episodes that define the capitalist era. Starting at the turn of the first millennium, Beckert traces the nodes of global capitalist dynamics: from early capital accumulation by Arab and South Asian merchants, through the Industrial Revolution, to the 21st-century spread of capitalist logic into nearly every aspect of human life.

Two main insights stand out as particularly important, if not entirely new, contributions to the field:

Capitalism as an inherently global phenomenon: As Beckert aptly puts it, “Workers may have sung ‘The Internationale,’ but capital owners practiced it.” From the medieval merchants onwards, the reproduction of capitalism relied on global trade linkages, production networks, and flows of labour and capital. Beckert adopts a wide-angle lens, emphasising the age-old connections between centres of capitalist activity in the Global South and Global North that facilitated the capitalist revolution.

The recency of the capitalist era: the book illustrates the historical “unusualness” of our current way to organise society. It was not until the 19th century that the commodification of labour became widespread, and only at the dawn of the 21st century did it come to define almost every human life.

Beckert is able to draw these insights by using a broad definition of capitalism: the reproduction of conditions that allow for the continuous accumulation of private capital. Notably, this encompasses various forms of commodified labour, including both wage labour and slavery.

A third insight addresses the symbiosis of capital and the state: While unsurprising, though often de-emphasised, the book vividly drives home the message that capitalists have always relied on the state to enforce property rights, assign monopolies, build infrastructure, or provide military support for private endeavours. Conversely, capitalism only truly took off once rulers became reliant on the resources that early capitalists secured for them.

Beckert is careful to avoid being drawn into ideological battles. The result is a study that assembles an extraordinary wealth of historical facts and anecdotes. However, this largely historical account comes at a cost: it stops short of explaining why capitalism came to dominate human life over the last few hundred years. For example, why did Adeni and Gujarati merchants in 1000 AD seek profit from long-distance trade in a way that sparked an ever-increasing global accumulation of capital?

Answering this would require a deeper theoretical framework than the book offers. Karl Polanyi famously hypothesised in ‘The Great Transformation’ that:

“Man’s economy, as a rule, is submerged in his social relationships. He … acts so as to safeguard his social standing, his social claims, his social assets. He values material goods only in so far as they serve this end.”

To make predictions about the future of humanity—and to shape it—we need to understand why capitalism became the dominant way to organise human life. While Beckert provides a masterclass in the how, the why remains an open question for the reader.