History of Capitalism (HEC-AS-HISCAP-23)

HEC-AS-HISCAP-23

Description

In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007-08 and the sovereign debt crisis of 2009-13, renewed debates about capitalism returned the study of economic life, ideas, actors and institutions to the forefront of historical analysis of how the modern world was made. This course will traverse these debates and diverse methodologies, sampling some of the different ways in which historians of the 16^th to 19^th centuries are asking and answering the what, the when and the how of the history of capitalism: What is capitalism? When did capitalism become the dominant mode of socio-economic organization? And how has it changed the course of the world? We will discuss key themes in new histories of capitalism including the role of Europe’s colonial expansion, the history of mass enslavement in the making of global capitalism, as well as the origins of corporations and financialisation, as well as capitalism as a means to read the world. We will do so with a broad overview over approaches employed by historians of capitalism ranging from the history of economic ideas, to institutions and actors, and on their national and transnational/global settings. The seminar will also ask how the relation between polities and markets developed across periods of increasing and decreasing global integration. The point of this course is to practice thinking and writing historically.