With its deep roots and global scope, the capitalist system provides the framework for our lives--a framework of constant change, sometimes measured and predictable, sometimes drastic and out of control. Yet what is now ubiquitous was not always so. Capitalism took shape centuries ago, starting...

Modern economic growth, defined as a sustained rise in per capita income (Kuznets 1966C001-025), has created higher levels of prosperity for many more people on earth than was ever thought possible before it began. Moreover, it began not so very long ago, perhaps as late as the middle of the...

This book tries to decenter work on the history of capitalism by looking at the longue durée from the tenth century; at regions as diverse as Song China, South and South East Asia, Latin America and the Ottoman and Safavid Empires; and exploring the plurality of developments over this extended...