I listened to a cushvlog recently where Matt was talking about capitalism emerging pretty concretely from England out of the puritanical revolution (?) and then spreading through the world via colonialism. Anyone have any book recs talking about this subject? Would love if it took it even further into areas of how capitalism started shaping social relations/institutions once becoming a real global force
English capitalism was exported by colonialism but I would point to the Italian city states and the “free cities” of the Holy Roman Empire and the Hanseatic league, probably also the merchants of Amsterdam, as the birthplace of modern capitalism more than England.
England had fully embraced capitalism by the 17th century and its totally correct to point to their colonial empire as once of the major exporters of capitalism globally but it feels like some mastabatory triumphalist anglo shit to claim it began in England.
Like, if you’re someone who thinks capitalism is fucking great and you’re a WASPy American, then you’re going to claim “it’s thanks to my anglo genes and judeochristian values that we civilized you shits”, that’s the vibe I get.
But really they were relatively late adopters in Northern Europe. It was well established in the cities of Europe for hundreds of years before England really embraced it. England was something of a cultural and economic backwater until around the reign of Elizabeth I. It didn’t take off economically until global commerce shifted to the Atlantic Ocean (instead of the Mediterranean and Baltic seas) and this is when the geographic situation of England became an advantage.
Mercantilist trade networks aren't the bourgeois mode of production
What about the use of military power to enforce trade network dominance and colonial monopolies isn’t the bourgeois mode of production?
I feel like you’re defining that term in a specific way. Mercantilism is a form capitalism takes. Capitalism is historically inseparable from imperialism so the distinction is false. Mercantilism is simply the term for the early era of capitalist imperialism.
Whenever I hear mercantalism, I immediately think of modern liberals wanting to clean their hands of Imperialism by saying it wasn't real capitalism.