Capitalism in the age of revolution

Seminars: 1 session / week, 3 hours / session

There are no prerequisites for this course.

The decades leading up to the Atlantic revolutions of the late eighteenth century were formative moments in the rise of capitalism. The novel instruments of credit, debt, and investment fashioned during this period proved to be enduring sources of financial innovation, but they also generated a great deal of political conflict, particularly during the revolutionary era itself. We will examine the debates surrounding large-scale financial and trading corporations and consider the eighteenth century as a period of recurring financial crisis in which corporate power came into sustained and direct contact with emerging republican norms. The seminar ends with a look at the relationship between slavery and the rise of “modern” or “industrial” capitalism in the nineteenth century, as well as some of the critiques of capitalism that emerged out of that experience.

There is one required text for this course.

Beckert, Sven, and Seth Rockman, eds. Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. ISBN: 9780812248418. [Preview with Google Books]

Although no background knowledge is assumed or required, it will be useful to have some familiarity with the events and issues of eighteenth-century North Atlantic history. For this purpose I have indicated, at various points in the semester, some selections from the following textbook:

Palmer, R. R., Joel Colton, and Lloyd Kramer. A History of the Modern World. 9th ed. Knopf, 2002. ISBN: 9780375413988.

This reading is strictly optional and we will not discuss it directly in seminar.

All readings are detailed in the Readings section.

This seminar meets once a week for three hours for close readings of texts that must be studied carefully and critically in advance in order for the class to work. Because we meet only once a week and cover a good deal of ground in each seminar meeting, students who miss more than two sessions of the seminar will not be able to receive a passing grade for the course barring an unusual medical or personal emergency.

For detail on the activities mentioned in the above table, see the Assignments section.

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