Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital

Description

For the appendixes mentioned in the book, Click Here. In this innovative and ambitious global history, distinguished economic historian Amiya Kumar Bagchi critically analyzes the processes leading to the rise of the West since the sixteenth century to its current position as the most prosperous and powerful group of nations in the world. Integrating the history of armed conflict with the history of competition for trade, investment, and markets, Bagchi explores the human consequences for people both within and outside the region. He characterizes the emergence and operation of capitalism as a system driven by wars over resources and markets rather than one that genuinely operates on the principle of free markets. In tracing this history, he also charts what happened to the people who came under its sway during the last five centuries. Bagchi thus broadens our understanding of the nature and history of capitalism and challenges the fetishism of commodities that limits the perspective of most economic historians. The book also challenges the Eurocentrism that still underlies the conceptual framework of many mainstream historians, joining earlier narratives that chronicle the history of human beings as living persons rather than as puppets serving the abstract cause of "economic growth." His unflinching examination of the human costs of development—not only in the colonial periphery but in the core nations—includes not only economic processes and issues of inequality within and among nations but also the intertwining of economics and war-making on a world scale. The book also contributes to our knowledge of how and in what sequence human health has been shaped by public health care, sanitation, modern medicine, income levels and nutrition. Written with extraordinary range and depth, Perilous Passage will change the ways in which we think about many of the largest issues in world history and development. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of Tables Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations Part I: Conceptual Issues: Human Development and Capitalist Growth 1. History of Human Development as the Subject of History 2. Construction of the European Miracle 3. Profit Seeking under Actually Existing Capitalism and Human Development Part II: Capitalist Competition and Human Development in Europe 4. Race for Dominance among the Western European Countries Since the Sixteenth Century 5. Population Growth and Mortality between the Sixteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: A First Look 6. The Netherlands: Rise and Fall of a Hegemonic Power 7. Delayed Transition to a Low-Mortality Regime in Europe and North America 8. Literacy in Western Europe since the Sixteenth Century Part III: The World beyond Europe in the Age of Emergence of European Dominance 9. China's Economic Development and Quality of Life between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries 10. India under Mughal Rule and After 11. Conducting Trade in Asia before and after the European Advent 12. Reconsidering Japanese Exceptionalism 13. Capitalist Competition, Colonialism, and the Physical Well-Being of Non-European Peoples 14. Civilizing Mission and Racialization: From Native Americans to Asians 15. Civilizing Mission in Lands Taken by European Settlers from the Original Inhabitants 16. Intercontinental Resource Flows Sustaining the Ascent of the European Powers 17. Colonial Tribute and Profits, 1870s Onward 18. Demographic Disasters in the Colonies and Semicolonies in the Heyday of European Colonialism Part IV: The Twentieth Century: Antisystemic Struggles, Wars, and Challenges to Global Capital 19. Setting the Stage for Megawars 20. Revolution, Nazism, Japanese Militarism, and World War II 21. Imperialism and Wars in the Late Twentieth Century 22. Capitalism and Uneven Development in the Twentieth Century 23. Destruction and Renewal in the Neoliberal Global Order 24. Contradictions, Challenges, and Resistance References Index About the Author