BOOK NEWS

As I build by library of economic history texts, I am adding more books to the "Beyond Economic Globalization" reading list.

Today, I added Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams, a seminal account of how the trans-Atlantic slave trade fueled the British Industrial Revolution in the first wave of globalization of the capitalist mode of production. This is a good one to read in tandem with Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

I should aslo note that I've dropped Robert Gilpin's Global Political Economy from the list. I first read Gilpin's prescursor The Political Economy of International Relations as an undergrad. When I recently returned to read this updated version, I was thoroughly underwhelmed by what I once found to be incisive (albeit ideologically realist-neoliberal) analysis of the world economic system. So off it goes.

As promised, more on Eric Williams after the weekend...