Capitalism: A Global History

 
　　在人類的歷史中，沒有其他現象的影響力可與「資本主義」相比，它深刻地形塑了我們的世界，影響人們的生活與工作、看待自己和他人的方式，而且與政治緊密連結。作者斯溫‧貝克特（Sven Beckert）是哈佛大學的歷史學教授，擁有哥倫比亞大學博士學位，其作品《棉花帝國：資本主義全球化的過去與未來》（Empire of Cotton）榮登《紐約時報》年度十大好書、普立茲獎決選名單。這部宏觀的新作，將資本主義置於最宏大的地理與歷史框架，梳理它在全球演進歷程中，橫跨千年的發展脈絡。
 
　　作者主張，資本主義自誕生之初即具有全球性。它源自亞洲、非洲與歐洲的貿易，當歐洲國家與商人結成強大的聯盟，把這套經濟邏輯與勢力擴展至全球，資本主義的力量便如宇宙大爆炸般震撼世界。這套系統孕育了持續至今的階級制度和不平等結構，也為工業革命的轉型提供了推進力。受到煤炭與石油帶來的生產力提升所驅動，資本主義推翻了舊有的生活方式，成為主導現代世界的力量。
 
　　然而，這場宏大的歷史劇並非自由市場的浪漫願景，而是由國家力量與帝國擴張共同推動而來。書中描繪了全球各地的行動、抵抗、創新與殘酷剝削，從國家領袖到鄉村農民，從企業家到被迫勞動者，無一缺席。儘管人們常說，想像「世界的終結」比想像「資本主義的終結」還要容易，但這本書將穿透其表象，帶來重要啟示——資本主義，其實只是人類歷史上相當晚近的發明。人們可以嘗試超越這種限制性的想法，開拓一個截然不同、更寬廣的世界。(文/博客來編譯)

媒體盛讚：
 
　　「氣勢磅礡……兼具學術深度與可讀性，不僅是學術上無與倫比的成就，也是閱讀上極大享受。」——出版人週刊（Publishers Weekly）
 
　　「連馬克思都夢寐以求的犀利洞見......貝克特以靈活的筆法梳理了重商主義的興起、複式簿記的發明，並一路寫到被奴役的農工、殖民主義與後殖民主義、管理者與官僚體制的黃金時代......是一部內容全面且觀點新穎的歷史著作，極具重要性。」——柯克斯書評（Kirkus Reviews）

A New York Times Notable Book - A Financial Times Best Book of the Year

＂A learned, formidable and vivid story... Readers around the world will study and ponder this monumental work of history, agreeing and arguing with it, all the while affirming its generational importance, for decades to come.＂ -- Marcus Rediker, The New York Times

＂Epic... Read this book and you will learn innumerable things you did not previously know culled from places you have never been... [Readers], including me, will be genuinely grateful for exposure to this breadth of scholarship and be glad to have a valuable tool of reference on their shelves.＂ -John Kay, Financial Times

A landmark event years in the making, a brilliant global narrative that unravels the defining story of the past thousand years of human history

No other phenomenon has shaped human history as decisively as capitalism. It structures how we live and work, how we think about ourselves and others, how we organize our politics. Sven Beckert, author of the Bancroft Prize-winning Empire of Cotton, places the story of capitalism within the largest conceivable geographical and historical framework, tracing its history during the past millennium and across the world. An epic achievement, his book takes us into merchant businesses in Aden and car factories in Turin, onto the terrifyingly violent sugar plantations in Barbados, and within the world of women workers in textile factories in today’s Cambodia.

Capitalism, argues Beckert, was born global. Emerging from trading communities across Asia, Africa, and Europe, capitalism’s radical recasting of economic life rooted itself only gradually. But then it burst onto the world scene, as a powerful alliance between European states and merchants propelled them, and their economic logic, across the oceans. This, Beckert shows, was modern capitalism’s big bang, and one of its epicenters was the slave labor camps of the Caribbean. This system, with its hierarchies that haunt us still, provided the liftoff for the radical transformations of the Industrial Revolution. Fueled by vast productivity increases along with coal and oil, capitalism pulled down old ways of life to crown itself the defining force of the modern world. This epic drama, shaped by state-backed institutions and imperial expansion, corresponded at no point to an idealized dream of free markets.

Drawing on archives on six continents, Capitalism locates important modes of agency, resistance, innovation, and ruthless coercion everywhere in the world, opening the aperture from heads of state to rural cultivators. Beckert shows that despite the dependence on expansion, there always have been, and are still, areas of human life that the capitalist revolution has yet to reach.

By chronicling capitalism’s global history, Beckert exposes the reality of the system that now seems simply ＂natural.＂ It is said that people can more easily imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. If there is one ultimate lesson in this extraordinary book, it’s how to leave that behind. Though cloaked in a false timelessness and universality, capitalism is, in reality, a recent human invention. Sven Beckert doesn’t merely tote up capitalism’s debits and credits. He shows us how to look through and beyond it to imagine a different and larger world.

Sven Beckert is the Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University. Holding a PhD from Columbia University, he has written widely on the economic, social, and political history of capitalism. His book Empire of Cotton won the Bancroft Prize, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and was named one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including from Harvard Business School, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.