Even before Max Weber penned his famous Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus in the form of two essays that appeared in November 1904 and June 1905, historians, economists, philosophers, and even theologians were arguing about the nature of capitalism. Karl Marx had much to say on the topic, but so too did figures like the French socialist Louis Blanc, the English philosopher Herbert Spencer, and Pope Leo XIII. 

These debates continue in our own time. Some of these discussions revolve around issues of cause-and-effect. What was the decisive force in the rise of market economies? Was it technology, ideas, capital-accumulation, historical accidents, or some varying combination of these and other things? There are also ongoing arguments about the moment when modern capitalism first emerged. Is it late eighteenth-century England? Or were the basic institutions in place by the late Middle Ages? Other conversations focus squarely on normative issues. Has capitalism been essentially a liberator or an oppressor? Does the market economy lead to a more just society? Or is it basically a system that feeds off systematic injustices?

Until recently, debates about capitalism were primarily conducted against the background of modern capitalism’s emergence in Western Europe and North America. That owes much to the fact that modern economic growth first occurred in these parts of the world and constituted the economic basis for the West’s political dominance of the globe. In a now (still) globalized world, however, that paradigm reached its limits long ago.

History, Theory, and the West

An exploration of the rise of capitalism across the globe is one of several foci of a new book of essays, Capitalism: Histories (2025), edited by Robert G. Ingram of the University of Florida and James M. Vaughn of the University of Chicago. The contributors’ assessments of the dynamics driving the forms taken by capitalism in parts of the world as different as Africa and Japan vary significantly. Yet the contributions do have a shared approach, in that all are shaped by a commitment both to theory and to history. That allows readers to draw comparisons in their minds about the significance of cultural differences for the economy, as well as how the subject matter is studied from an empirical standpoint.

Books that combine economic history and economic theory can be risky exercises. Historical analysis can quickly gravitate towards the highly specific. Theory is, by definition, about the universal, which makes it prone to slipping into excessive abstractness. Capitalisms, however, maintains an admirable balance between history and theory, and illustrates how the two can inform each other in expanding understanding of a furiously debated topic.

While most chapters are concerned with how recognizably capitalist economic systems manifested themselves outside Western Europe, they also demonstrate that there is little question that the West was the ultimate fulcrum for the emergence of markets. In states as distant as Tsarist Russia and pre-colonial Bengal, it’s clear that a key factor in the development of capitalist-like arrangements is the encounter with Western traders and colonialism.

In this context, several commentators reflect upon the place of slavery in the rise of capitalism. Here it is difficult not to notice the subtle critiques articulated in many of these essays of the “New History of Capitalism” (NHC) school. Broadly speaking, NHC scholars maintain that slavery in North America was the pivotal factor in the development of American capitalism and therefore, eventually, global capitalism.

Those essays in this volume that address the slavery issue do not deny that slavery was part of the picture. But precisely by looking in detail at the histories of different “capitalisms,” the authors illustrate that NHC scholars’ claims about slavery and capitalism should not, at a minimum, be taken as axiomatic. They show that the causes of the development of capitalism are simply far too many and too complicated to sustain the “slavery is at the root of modern capitalism” thesis. 

Neglected Worlds

Following an introductory chapter by Ingram, Capitalisms begins with two chapters on North America by the American economic historians Peter Coclanis and Johan Majewski, respectively. This is where most of the engagement with NHC thought occurs. As Coclanis and Majewski explore differences between the economies of the North and the South of the United States, they look carefully at the nature of trans-Atlantic business cycles as well as the roles played by creativity and institutions in shaping the form taken by American capitalism. Taken together, these two chapters amount to a more empirically informed story about the development of capitalism in the United States than the standard NHC narrative.

From there, Capitalisms turns to the rest of the world: a world obviously shaped, sometimes profoundly, by the impact of Western powers from the late fifteenth century onwards. The role played by violence is addressed squarely by the late Ralph Austen of the University of Chicago as he surveys differences between British, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese expansionism. He concludes that “violence is not a necessary condition or outcome of capitalist development … so we should not assume its existence without evidence nor be shocked or indifferent when it does appear.”

Several subsequent chapters stress how different variants of capitalism have manifested themselves in the same part of the world, sometimes during the same time period. On other occasions, there have been notable overlaps as one form of capitalism slowly gave way to a different expression of markets. Then there is how, for instance, the growth of British and American capitalism intersected with the gradual development of markets in the wider global economy, especially in those countries with large populations like India and China. Again, the effect is to suggest that the NHC narrative relies on an excessively narrow scope of analysis.

Uniformity amidst Difference

Capitalisms’ last six chapters examine the emergence and workings of capitalism in specific settings; respectively, Russia, Southeast Asia, India, China, Manchuria, and Japan. Here we see forms of capitalism intersecting with phenomena as varied as serfdom, ethnicity, caste, organizational structure, the dominance of particular crops, and property law.

Taken together, these chapters demonstrate how particular cultures and regionally specific events ensure that the form taken by capitalist ideas and institutions differs significantly in time and place. Even at an institutional level, how something like property rights has functioned is never precisely the same.

Nonetheless, it is also the case that considerable “sameness” prevails across these dissimilar settings. Capitalism in Japan, for example, may manifest itself differently from the version it takes on in India, but there is still considerable convergence at an institutional level. Japan may have made a radical political choice to adopt many key elements of capitalism in the mid-nineteenth century, while the economies of the Indian subcontinent were gradually transformed by the British. But the adoption of devices like Western-style contracts and some expression of individual property rights is part of both transformations. As Ingram stresses, “Institutions are not an explanation for everything. But they do help to explain something—and something important—not just about the timing and geography of capitalism’s origins but also about the nature of capitalism itself.”

Hovering over the entire book, however, is a question that is central to any discussion of capitalism. How does one define capitalism? Is it even possible to arrive at an agreed upon definition that will satisfy economists and economic historians studying capitalism from a variety of disciplinary and philosophical perspectives?

Qualified Precision Amidst Inexactitudes

The NHC, Ingram points out, “steadfastly refuses a single definition of capitalism.” This approach, he observes, differs significantly from “most scholarly studies of capitalism.” These usually offer some technical definition or one that has a certain degree of precision. By contrast, Ingram notes that the NHC has “made a virtue of not having a rigorous definition of capitalism.” To which it might be added that the problem with the lack of rigor in definitions is that it enables the non-definers to engage in obfuscation in the face of critique by saying, “Well, it all depends on what you mean by ‘capitalism’.”

The authors in Capitalisms do not offer the same definition of capitalism in their respective essays. But this lack of uniformity does not stem from an effort to seek maximum inexactitude in order to advance covertly specific ideological claims. Rather, it reflects their conviction that capitalism needs to be situated in its different historical contexts.

This does not, it should be noted, mean that the authors consider it possible to have a form of capitalism with zero property rights or a complete absence of economic freedom. Modern capitalism does have features that decisively mark it off from, say, feudal economic arrangements or communist command economies.

That said, Capitalisms draws relentless attention to the fact that capitalism in Western societies has travelled somewhat different paths than it has followed in other parts of the world. Even within Western countries, one can make distinctions between, for example, post-1948 German capitalism and American capitalism. The strong presence of corporatist dynamics in the former compared to their weaker impact upon much of the US economy goes back to cultural disparities and, in many cases, different political choices.

Resolution of these definitional matters is not to be expected anytime soon—if ever. The great strength of Capitalisms, however, is that it balances historical specificity with theoretical insight, thereby challenging oversimplified narratives. In an age of increasingly heated debate about capitalism and even its very legitimacy, more analyses of this type have become a necessity rather than an academic luxury option.