Multicultural Origins of the Global Economy

John M. Hobson is Professor of Politics & International Relations at the University of Sheffield and is a Fellow of the British Academy. He has previously written eight books, including The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

'Building on his past path-breaking work, Hobson lays a historical foundation for a 'non-Eurocentric new Global Political Economy' in this engagingly written book. Teachers will be rewriting their lectures after reading its many fascinating arguments about the role of the 'non-West' in constructing the global economy.' Eric Helleiner, University of Waterloo

• 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.