Sven Beckert

Sven Beckert is Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University, and the author of 'Capitalism: A Global History'.

Articles

Ideas

Where did capitalism really begin?

It is impossible to pinpoint an exact place or moment when capitalism began. Capitalism is a process, not a discrete historical event with a beginning and an end, and it did not drop fully formed into a particular location. Even today, no society is organised along fully capitalist lines, and some have argued that a […]