Where is Asia in global histories of early modern capitalism?

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dc.contributor.authorO'SULLIVAN, Michael
dc.contributor.authorRIELLO, Giorgio
dc.date.accessioned2023-12-20T10:49:54Z
dc.date.available2023-12-20T10:49:54Z
dc.date.issued2023
dc.description.abstractThe concept of capitalism has enjoyed a resurgence in historical research over the past two decades, but scholarship has focused inordinately on North America, the Atlantic and Europe. This paper asks why this is the case, most especially for the early modern period once the core of Eurasian narratives of economic divergence. We argue that if narratives of capitalist transformation aspire to be global, early modern Asia offers at least three important topics for debate: 1) a new emphasis on environmental variables in histories of capitalism, rather than just on land as a factor of production; 2) a focus on human capital, skills and work rather than simply the labour of unskilled and coerced populations; and 3) a broader reconceptualization of capital, a factor that surprisingly has not been fully addressed by recent histories of capitalism. We also reckon with the reluctance of historians of Asia to embrace the term capitalism. Indeed, since the late 1990s, economic historians of Asia have been united in criticizing the application to Asia of paradigms formulated in reference to early modern European capitalism. The danger of this opposition in this is twofold: in roundabout fashion, it enshrines European exceptionalism and it marginalizes the substantial advances in the study of economic life in early modern Asia over the past generation.en
dc.description.sponsorshipThis programme has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 101054345).en
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.issn1725-6720
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1814/76207
dc.language.isoenen
dc.orcid.putcode1814/78639:149095197
dc.orcid.uploadtrue*
dc.publisherEuropean University Instituteen
dc.relationThe Asian Origins of Global Capitalism: European Factories in the Indian Ocean, 1500-1800
dc.relation.ispartofseriesEUIen
dc.relation.ispartofseriesHECen
dc.relation.ispartofseriesWorking Paperen
dc.relation.ispartofseries2023/03en
dc.relation.ispartofseriesCAPASIAen
dc.rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessen
dc.rights.licenseAttribution 4.0 International*
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/*
dc.subjectCapitalismen
dc.subjectEconomic historyen
dc.subjectProductionen
dc.subjectGreat Divergenceen
dc.subjectEnvironmenten
dc.titleWhere is Asia in global histories of early modern capitalism?en
dc.typeWorking Paperen
dspace.entity.typePublication
person.identifier.orcid0000-0002-0044-3595
person.identifier.other48327
person.identifier.other34771
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relation.isAuthorOfPublicationde52e5c8-66f0-4c8f-931d-ac0e73df7237
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relation.isProjectOfPublication.latestForDiscoverye209fddc-39f4-4041-bc22-fa4cf5c8fde6
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