Amit's Blog

The Empire of Cotton: How War Capitalism Forged Modern Industrial Capitalism Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Global History revolutionizes our understanding of capitalism by revealing cotton not as a mere commodity but as the central thread weaving together the violent birth of the modern global economy. Beckert argues that modern capitalism did not emerge from peaceful market exchanges or spontaneous technological innovation alone. Instead, it was forged through what he terms “war capitalism”—a brutal system of state-backed expropriation, imperial conquest, and racialized labor exploitation that predated and enabled the Industrial Revolution. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, European states leveraged military power to seize land in the Americas, enslave millions of Africans, and dismantle thriving textile industries in India and China, all to secure a cheap, relentless supply of raw cotton for nascent factories in Manchester and beyond. Slavery was not peripheral but foundati...

France’s Stumbling Quest for Supremacy and Britain’s Meteoric Rise   In the grand tapestry of history, France and Britain wove parallel yet divergent threads, their economies remarkably similar over three centuries despite France’s turbulent path. France’s dreams of European hegemony were thwarted by industrial delays, colonial mismanagement, revolutionary chaos, and systemic flaws in finance and naval power. Britain, harnessing early industrialization, robust institutions, and naval supremacy, ascended to global dominance. France’s resilience—rooted in its vast population and agricultural wealth—kept it economically competitive, even after setbacks like World War II. This essay explores these dynamics, weaving a philosophical narrative of ambition, structure, and fate shaping empires.   A Philosophical Odyssey Through France’s Faltering Ambitions and Britain’s Ascendant Triumph History unfolds as a grand waltz, where empires sway to the rhythms of ambition, resource...

The Forge of Industry: Capitalism’s Industrial and Imperial Ascendancy (c. 1750–1914) Part 2 of 4 From the smoky mid-18th century to the dawn of the 20th, capitalism didn’t just evolve—it exploded, with all the grace of a runaway steam engine. Between 1750 and 1914, the Industrial Revolution and imperial ambition conspired to transform sleepy agrarian societies into roaring industrial beasts, while empires stretched their greedy fingers across the globe. Britain, with its knack for inventing things and subjugating people, stood at the helm, wielding steam engines and stock markets like a sorcerer with a particularly lucrative spellbook. This era, as Eric Hobsbawm so aptly put it, was when “the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution together created the modern world, shattering tradition and unleashing capitalism’s relentless dynamism” (Hobsbawm 1962, 45). But for every gleaming railway or bustling factory, there was a darker tale—of workers ground down by machines, colon...

German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg is credited with inventing the printing press around 1436, although he was far from the first to automate the book-printing process. Woodblock printing in China dates back to the 9th century and Korean bookmakers were printing with moveable metal type a century before Gutenberg. But most historians believe Gutenberg’s adaptation, which employed a screw-type wine press to squeeze down evenly on the inked metal type, was the key to unlocking the modern age. With the newfound ability to inexpensively mass-produce books on every imaginable topic, revolutionary ideas and priceless ancient knowledge were placed in the hands of every literate European, whose numbers doubled every century. How was printing done before the invention of the printing press? Before the printing press became widespread across Europe, books were produced as manuscripts. These were hand-written books, mostly produced by scribes, monks and other church officials, and were valuable p...