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History of Capitalism/ Syllabus/1/7/2014/
The Catholic University of America
Department of History
HISTORY 682B:
History of Capitalism
Professor Jerry Z. Muller
Tuesdays, 5:10-7:40pm
Shahan Hall 205
Spring, 2014
Office: Marist Hall 226
Office Hours:
T, 2:15-3:00 pm; Th 5:15-6:00pm
and by appointment.
Phone: (202) 319-5484
e-mail:
This course provides an introduction for graduate students to the ways in which historians have approached the history of capitalism. Its focus is on Europe and North America from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Topicsinclude the rise of the fiscal state; the consumer revolution of the eighteenth century; the origins and nature of the industrial revolution; the relationship of New World slavery to the international capitalist economy; and changing structures of enterprise, labor, distribution and consumption. Readings are drawn from a variety of historiographies: economic history, political history, business history, labor history, environmental history, social and cultural history, and intellectual history.
Requirements: A seminar of this type depends upon the thoughtful participation of those involved. Each student is therefore expected to read and think about the assigned readings before the relevant class, and to be prepared to discuss the theses, methods, strengths and weaknesses of the assigned works.
There are 10 possible weekly writing assignments. Students should choose four weeks for which they will write a five-page paper, which will consider both the required reading and some of the recommended reading. Each assignment is due at the beginning of the class at which the work in question is discussed. The paper should be well structured, and clearly written and argued.
In addition, each student will write a review-essay of approximately fifteen pages on a single historian, historiographical approach, or substantive historical problem, drawn either from topics covered in the course or from other topics.
Grades will be based on the assignments, and on contributions to class discussions.
A useful source:
eh.net (operated by the Economic History Association), includes a variety of useful tools, including an invaluable online encyclopedia:
that you should become acquainted with and consult in the course of the semester.
Other useful reference works available online are:
Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History ed. Joel Mokyr is available in electronic form through Aladin
Concise Encyclopedia of Economics is available online at
T 1/14Introductory Session. The background: conceptual issues; commerce and capitalism; the rise of the fiscal-military state.
Read in advance, by way of overview:
David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, chapters 1-4; 13-19.
Recommended background works:
The best current short history of capitalism is Jürgen Kocka, Geschichte des Kapitalismus (Beck, 2013). If your German is up to task, it is well worth reading.
Dasgupta, Partha Economics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2007), pp. 1-116.
Allen, Robert A. Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2011)
Rawski, Thomas, et al, Economics and the Historian (U California, 1996)
Beckert, Sven “History of Capitalism,” in American History Now, ed. Foner and McGirr (Temple University Press, 2011), pp. 314–335.
Early Modern Background
Gleeson-White, Jane, Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance (Norton)
de Vries, Jan and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500-1815 (Cambridge, 1997)
Cook, Harold, Masters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (Yale UP, 2007)
Wennerlind, Carl, Casualties of Credit: The English Financial Revolution, 1620-1720(Harvard UP, 2011)
The Fiscal State
Schumpeter, Joseph, “The Crisis of the Tax State,” in Schumpeter, The Economics and Sociology of Capitalism ed. Richard Swedberg (Princeton UP 1991)
Bonney, Richard (ed.), The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c.1200-1815 (Oxford UP)
O’Brien, Patrick (1988), “The Political Economy of British Taxation, 1660-1815,” Economic History Review 41 (1): 1-32.
McCraw, Thomas, The Founders and Finance(Harvard UP, 2012)
Edling, Max, A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State (Oxford, 2003)
Ferguson, Niall, The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000 (Basic Books, 2001)
T 1/21Jon S. Cohen, “Institutions and Economic Analysis,” in Rawski, Thomas, et al, Economics and the Historian (U California, 1996), pp. 60-84. (on Blackboard)
de Vries, Jan, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present (Cambridge UP, 2008) ch. 1-5.
Recommended:
McCloskey, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (Chicago, 2010)
T 1/28de Vries, Jan, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present (Cambridge UP, 2008) ch.6
T 2/7Mokyr, Joel, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 (Cambridge, 2009) pp. 1-83; 124-144, 156-65.
Recommended:
Landes, David, The Unbound Prometheus – chapter on Industrial Revolution
Robert C. Allen (2011), “Why the Industrial Revolution Was British: Commerce, Induced Invention and the Scientific Revolution,” Economic History Review 64, pp. 357-384.
Joel Mokyr, (2005), “The Intellectual Origins of Modern Economic Growth,” Journal of Economic History 65 (2): 285-351.
T 2/14Mokyr, Joel, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 (Cambridge UP, 2009) pp. 220-241; 309-378.
Recommended:
Humphries, Jane, Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution (Cambridge Studies in Economic History - Second Series)
Prasannan Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600-1850 (Cambridge UP, 2011)
Landes, David, et al, The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times (Princeton UP, 2010)
T 2/21Johnson, Walter, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Harvard UP, 2013), pp.1-45, 73-125, 176-208, 244-289.
Recommended:
Breen, T. H., The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (Oxford UP, 2005)
Robert Dalzell, Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made (Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 1–112.
Fichter, James, So Great a Proffit: How the East Indies Trade Transformed Anglo-American Capitalism, (Harvard UP, 2010)
Blackburn, Robin, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (Verso, 1997)
Blackburn, Robin, The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights (Verso, 2011)
Steven Topik et al, From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500-2000 (Duke UP, 2006)
Steven Topik and Allen Wells, “Commodity Chains in a Global Economy,” in Emily Rosenberg et al (ed.), A World Connecting, 1870-1945 (Belknap, 2012)
T 2/28- Administrative Monday – no class
T 3/4 Chandler, Alfred, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Harvard UP, 1977) (note that you have two weeks to read this)
Recommended:
Stern, Philip, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in IndiaOxford UP
Chandler, Alfred, Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Harvard UP, 1994)
Chandler, Alfred et al, Big Business and the Wealth of Nations (Cambridge UP, 1997)
McCraw, Thomas, American Business Since 1920: How it Worked (2nd ed., Harlan Davidson, 2009)
Zakim, Michael (ed), Capitalism takes Command: The Social Transformation of Nineteenth Century America UChicago, 978-0-226-45110-7)
Michael Zakim, Ready-Made Democracy: A History of Men’s Dress in the American Republic, 1760–1860 (University of Chicago Press, 2003).
Constructing Corporate America: History, Politics, Culture, eds. Kenneth Lipartito and David B. Sicilia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
Clarke, Sally et al, The Challenge of Remaining Innovative: Insights from Twentieth-Century American Business (Stanford UP, 2009)
Rowena Olegario, A Culture of Credit: Embedding Trust and Transparency in American Business (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006),
Levy, Jonathan, Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America Harvard UP, 2012
Ott, Julia, When Wall Street Met Main Street Harvard UP
T 3/18 Richard R. John, “Elaborations, Revisions, Dissents: Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.’s, The Visible Hand After Twenty Years,” Business History Review 71 (Summer 1997): 151–200
Richard R. John, “Business Historians and the Challenge of Innovation,” Business HistoryReview 85 (Spring 2011): 185–201.
Recommended:
McCraw, Thomas, American Business Since 1920: How it Worked (2nd ed., Harlan Davidson, 2009)
T 3/25Cronon, William, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (Norton, 1991)
T 4/1Thompson, E. P., “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present Vol. 38 (Dec., 1967), pp. 56-97.
Rudolf Braun, “The ‘Docile’ Body as an Economic-Industrial Growth Factor,” in Patrice Higonnet, et al (ed.) Favorites of Fortune: Technology, Growth, and Economic Development Since the Industrial Revolution (Harvard UP, 1991), pp. 120-141;
Herbert Gutman, “Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America, 1815-1919,” American Historical Review 78, No. 3 (June, 1973), pp. 531-88. reprinted in his Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America;
Recommended:
Rabinbach, Anson, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (Basic, 1990)
Landes, David S. "What Do Bosses Really Do?" Journal of Economic History 46, no. 3 (September 1986): 585-623.
T 4/8Muller, The Mind and the Market, Introduction, ch. 1-8
Recommended:
Hirschman, Albert, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton UP, 1977; 1997)
Hirschman, Albert, Rival Views of Market Society and Other Recent Essays (Viking, 1986) – title essay
Backhouse and Bateman, Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes (Harvard UP, 2011)
T 4/15 – class timeto be rescheduled
Muller, The Mind and the Market, ch. 9-13.
T 4/22 Jerry Muller, “Capitalism and Inequality: What the Right and the Left Get Wrong,” Foreign Affairs (March-April, 2013). (on Blackboard)
T 4/29 – Brynjolfsson, Erik and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (Norton, 2014), ch. 1-11.
Recommended:
Ward, Alison, The XX Factor: How the Rise of Working Women has Created a Far Less Equal World (Crown, 2013)