Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism

This edited volume builds and expands on the groundbreaking work of Robert Brenner and EllenMeiksins Wood on the origins of capitalism. Whereas Brenner and Wood focused mostly onthe emergence of capitalism in the English countryside (agrarian capitalism), this book utilizestheir approach to offer original, theoretically sophisticated, and empirically informed accounts of transitions to capitalism - both agrarian and industrial - in a wide range of countries inorder to provide within a single volume a diverse collection of relatively brief yet detailed casestudies of the historical transition to capitalism distributed across three continents. Offering anew and highly original analysis of the global spread of capitalism, this book will be a uniquecontribution to the longstanding debate on the transition to capitalism.