Mainstream historical accounts of the development of capitalism describe a profess which is fundamentally European--a system that was born in the mills and factories of English and under the guillotines of the French Revolution. This groundbreaking book tells a very difference story.
How the West Came to Rule offers a unique interdisciplinary and international historical account of the origins of capitalism. It argues that, contrary to dominant wisdom, capitalism's origins should not be understood as a development confined to the geographically and culturally sealed borders of Europe, but the outcome of a wider array of global processes in which non-European societies played a decisive role.
Here is a provocative, incisive explanation of how capitalism emerged in England and Europe through a dialectical intersocietal and geopolitical process. The authors' aim to undermine a Eurocentric bias that has been prominent in the debate about capitalisms rise to supremacy, and their case is remarkably convincing. They provide a fundamental rethinking. Anievas and Nisancioglu contend that often cited assumptions are neither theoretically nor empirically tenable and deny the agency of non-Western societies to the emergence of capitalism.
