Blood and Money


Book Description

The history of money and its violent and oppressive origins from slavery to war—by the author of Global Slump. In most accounts of the origins of money we are offered pleasant tales in which it arises to the mutual benefit of all parties as a result of barter. But in this groundbreaking study, David McNally reveals the true story of money’s origins and development as one of violence and human bondage. Money’s emergence and its transformation are shown to be intimately connected to the buying and selling of slaves and the waging of war. Blood and Money demonstrates the ways that money has “internalized” its violent origins, making clear that it has become a concentrated force of social power and domination. Where Adam Smith observed that monetary wealth represents “command over labor,” this paradigm shifting book amends his view to define money as comprising the command over persons and their bodies. “This fascinating and informative study, rich in novel insights, treats money not as an abstraction from its social base but as deeply embedded in its essential functions and origins in brutal violence and harsh oppression.” —Noam Chomsky “A fine-grained historical analysis of the interconnection between war, enslavement, finance, and money from classical times to present.” —Jeff Noonan, author of The Troubles of Democracy “McNally casts an unsparing light on the origins of money—and capitalism itself—in this scathing, Marxist-informed account . . . . McNally builds a powerful, richly documented argument that unchecked capitalism prioritizes greed and violence over compassion . . . . [T]his searing academic treatise makes a convincing case.” —Publishers Weekly




Bankers and Empire


Book Description

From the end of the nineteenth century until the onset of the Great Depression, Wall Street embarked on a stunning, unprecedented, and often bloody period of international expansion in the Caribbean. A host of financial entities sought to control banking, trade, and finance in the region. In the process, they not only trampled local sovereignty, grappled with domestic banking regulation, and backed US imperialism—but they also set the model for bad behavior by banks, visible still today. In Bankers and Empire, Peter James Hudson tells the provocative story of this period, taking a close look at both the institutions and individuals who defined this era of American capitalism in the West Indies. Whether in Wall Street minstrel shows or in dubious practices across the Caribbean, the behavior of the banks was deeply conditioned by bankers’ racial views and prejudices. Drawing deeply on a broad range of sources, Hudson reveals that the banks’ experimental practices and projects in the Caribbean often led to embarrassing failure, and, eventually, literal erasure from the archives.




Money and Empire


Book Description

Charles Kindleberger ranks as one of the twentieth century's best known and most influential international economists. This book traces the evolution of his thinking in the context of a 'key-currency' approach to the rise of the dollar system, here revealed as the indispensable framework for global economic development since World War II. Unlike most of his colleagues, Kindleberger was deeply interested in history, and his economics brimmed with real people and institutional details. His research at the New York Fed and BIS during the Great Depression, his wartime intelligence work, and his role in administering the Marshall Plan gave him deep insight into how the international financial system really operated. A biography of both the dollar and a man, this book is also the story of the development of ideas about how money works. It throws revealing light on the underlying economic forces and political obstacles shaping our globalized world.




American Empire and the Political Economy of Global Finance


Book Description

In a lively critique of how international and comparative political economy misjudge the relationship between global markets and states, this book demonstrates the central place of the American state in today's world of globalized finance. The contributors set aside traditional emphases on military intervention, looking instead to economics.




Urban Warfare


Book Description

How finance and politics have caused the global housing crisis The most comprehensive survey of the current crisis, Urban Warfare charts how the financial crisis and wider urban politics have left millions homeless and in financial desperation across the world. The financialization of housing has become a global catastrophe, leaving millions desperate and homeless. Since the 2008 financial collapse, models of home ownership, originating in the US and UK, are being exported around the world. Using examples from across the globe, Rolnik shows how our cities have been sold to construction companies and banks, while supported by government-facilitated schemes, such as “the right to buy” subsidies and micro-financing. Our homes and neighbourhoods have become the “last subprime frontiers of capitalism,” organised by those who benefit the most.




Money and Empire


Book Description




Empire of Credit


Book Description

This work describes the massive expansion in public debt brought about during the 'Financial Revolution' in 18th-century Britain, Ireland, and America. It discusses how debt was financed and new credit instruments introduced for the first time in this period.




An Empire of Wealth


Book Description

“Superb . . . the best one-volume economic history of the United States in a long time and, perhaps, ever.” —Newsweek In this illuminating history, John Steele Gordon tells the extraordinary story of the world’s first economic superpower. He shows how the American economy became not only the world’s largest, but also its most dynamic and innovative. Combining its English political inheritance with its diverse, ambitious population, the nation was able to develop more wealth for more and more people as it grew. Far from a guaranteed success, America’s economy suffered near constant adversity. It survived a profound recession after the Revolution, an unwise decision by Andrew Jackson that left the country without a central bank for nearly eighty years, and the disastrous Great Depression of the 1930s. Yet, having weathered those trials, the economy became vital enough to Americanize the world in recent decades. Virtually every major development in technology in the twentieth century originated in the United States, and as the products of those technologies traveled around the globe, the result was a subtle, peaceful, and pervasive spread of American culture and perspective.




...and Forgive Them Their Debts


Book Description

An epic journey through the economies of ancient civilizations, and how they managed debt versus social instability. Shocking historical truths about how debt played a central role in shaping (or destroying) ancient societies (viz: Rome), and that the Bible is preoccupied with debt, not sin, which has been disturbingly inverted in modern times.




Money, Finance, and Empire, 1790-1960


Book Description

Scholars have recently begun to pay renewed attention to the economics of empire, focusing in particular on the requirements of metropolitan Britain's economy and on the activities of imperial businesses. Within this broad field, financial questions, not least the subject of investment overseas or the 'export of capital', have long had a prominent place, and have been equally affected by the development of new appraoches. The consensus as to the volume and direction of Britain's overseas investments is being vigorously challenged. Technological advances have encouraged on a greatly enlarged scale the compilation and analysis of information about British investments and shareholdings abroad. The gradual easing of restrictions on business records has increased facilities for the study, especially, of imperial and colonial banking. Work on the financial policies of central governments is revealing much of interest to students of twentieth-century colonial rule and decolonization. This collection of essays brings together a selection of the latest research on these and other themes, and, for comparative purposes, includes examples of recent continental work.