FRIAS Alumnus Sven Beckert releases Global History of Capitalism

No other phenomenon has shaped human history in recent centuries as much as capitalism. Our lives, work, thinking and political actions are closely linked to this economic system. His new work Capitalism. A Global History (Penguin Books) is about to be published on 25 November 2025. In 1,280 pages, the historian, who conducted research at FRIAS as a Marie S. Curie Fellow in 2019, tells the story of capitalism across continents and centuries: Arab merchants, Indian weavers and enslaved Africans on Caribbean sugar plantations play just as central a role as Amsterdam financiers or steel industrialists in the Saarland.

The book not only shows the enormous growth potential of the capitalist revolution, but also highlights its dark side: imperialism, colonialism, global inequality and exploitation and the destruction of our natural resources in the age of the climate crisis. Even before its publication, Beckert’s book was celebrated by experts. Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Centre for African & African American Research at Harvard University, writes: “Drawing on astonishing research across multiple continents, Beckert’s new book is a landmark achievement that reorients our understanding of capitalism as an evolving, ever-contested human creation.” For economist Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Beckert’s publication is set to become a “key reference on the global history of modern capitalism” and “a must-read.”