Multicultural Origins of the Global Economy
Beyond the Western-Centric Frontier

Develops a fresh non-Eurocentric analysis of the rise and development of the global economy in the last half-millennium.

John M. Hobson (Author)

9781108744034, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 10 December 2020

518 pages, 21 b/w illus. 4 tables
22.8 x 15 x 2.8 cm, 0.73 kg

'… monumental work … Highly recommended.' M. F. Farrell, Choice Magazine

Westerners on both the left and right overwhelmingly conflate globalisation with Westernisation and presume that the global economy is a pure Western-creation. Taking on the traditional Eurocentric Big Bang theory, or the 'expansion of the West' narrative, this book reveals the multicultural origins of globalisation and the global economy, not so as to marginalise the West but to show how it has long been embedded in complex interconnections and co-constitutive interactions with non-Western actors/agents and processes. The central empirical theme is the role of Indian structural power that was derived from Indian cotton textile exports. Indian structural power organised the first (historical-capitalist) global economy between 1500 and c.1850 and performed a vital, albeit indirect, role in the making of Western empire, industrialisation and the second (modern-capitalist) global economy. These textiles underpinned the complex inter-relations between Africa, West/Central/East/Southeast Asia, the Americas and Europe that collectively drove global economic development forward.

1. Taking Stock for the Journey Ahead – Mapping a New Global Political Economy
Part I. Multicultural Origins of the First (Historical Capitalist) Global Economy, 1500–1850: 2. Going Global 1.0: Chinese Agency in the Making of the First Global Economy
3. The Afro-Indian Pivot (I): Indian Structural Power and the Global Atlantic System
4. The Afro-Indian Pivot (II): Entangled Agencies and Power of Africans, Indians and West Asian Muslims
5. Entangled Indo-European Agencies: Implications of Indian Structural Power
6. Indian Merchant-Financial Capitalists: Navigating beyond the Western-centric Sea Frontier
Part II. What was Global about the First Global Economy, 1500–c.1850?: 7. Countering the Neoliberal/Transformationalist Rejection of the First Global Economy: Un-veiling Global Structural Properties
8. Countering the Fundamentalist-Marxist Rejection of the First Global Economy: Un-veiling Global Historical Capitalism
Part III. The First Global Economy in the Making of Modern Industrial Capitalism, 1500–1800: 9. The Global Atlantic-Production Driver and the Imperial Primitive Accumulation of British Capital
10. The Global Atlantic-Consumption Driver and British Late-Developmental Agency in Global Uneven and Combined Development
Part IV: Differing 'Developmental Architectures' in Differing Global Contexts in the Second Great Divergence, 1600–1800: 11. Why Britain initiated a Cotton-Industrialization and why India and China did not
12. Why Britain initiated an Iron and Steel Industrialization and why India and China did not
Part V. Rehabilitating and Provincializing Western Imperialism: Afro-Asians Inside and Outside the Shadow of Empire: 13. Multicultural Origins of the Second Global Economy: Un-veiling the 'Multicultural Contact Zone', C.1850–C.1940
14. Varieties of Global Economy: From Historical Capitalism to Modern Capitalism, C.1500–2020.

Subject Areas: Geopolitics [JPSL], International relations [JPS], Political science & theory [JPA], Sociology [JHB], General & world history [HBG]