INGS1002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Debt Bondage, Capital Accumulation
28 May 2018
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(Lecture 6) War capitalism and the British East India Company
• Beckert rebrands the process traditionally called “mercantile-capitalism” as
“war capitalism,” his point being that violence was at its center. Without it,
there would be no Industrial Revolution
• The stage when slavery and colonial conquest prepared the ground for the
cotton industry
• The violent exploitation of the non-West through piracy, enslavement, theft of
natural resources, and the physical seizure of markets. It was not caused by
superior technology or organisation. Nor did it rest on “offering superior goods
at good prices”, such as you find in the la-la-land of economics textbooks, but
on the “military subjugation of competitors and a coercive European
mercantile presence in many regions of the world”.
• “War capitalism” was a precondition for the Industrial Revolution. It created
markets abroad. It supplied essential raw materials made by slaves and other
bonded labour. It accumulated capital which funded the new industries. And it
was the foundation on which were built the institutions public and private
which led to the Industrial Revolution. Even the new technologies invented
during the IR would have been for nought without the markets first seized and
opened by “war capitalism”.
• Slavery stood at the centre of the most dynamic and far-reaching production
complex in human history. Too often, we prefer to erase the realities of
slavery, expropriation, and colonialism from the history of capitalism, craving a
nobler, cleaner capitalism.
• The industry that brought great wealth to European manufacturers and
merchants, and bleak employment to hundreds of thousands of mill workers,
had also catapulted the United States onto center stage of the world
economy, building “the most successful agricultural industry in the States of
America which has been ever contemplated or realized.”
• Slavery enabled the stunning advances of industry, and the accompanying
profit What is “war capitalism” and what significance does Beckert
attribute to it?
• What many know as ‘mercantile capitalism’ is rebranded in Beckert’s text as ‘war
capitalism’, establishing the argument that at the centre of this system was
aggression, a foundation upon which the Industrial Revolution was born. ‘War
capitalism’ describes a stage of Western history wherein violence and enslavement
were the methods of conquest, preparing the ground for the cotton industry. Beckert
refers to the exploitation of the population and resources of the non- West as having
occurred not through the clean introduction of new trade or technology, but through
the “military subjugation of competitors and a coercive European mercantile
presence in many regions of the world”. In this sense, ‘war capitalism’ was a
necessary precursor for the Industrial Revolution, as it created and supplied new
markets with key materials made by slave labour. It was the capital accumulation of
slavery which funded such markets and is often considered responsible for many new
technologies during the Industrial Revolution. This projected the American economy
into the world economy, and builded “the most successful agricultural industry in
the States of America which has been ever contemplated or realised”. Such
projection can often overshadow the reality of this lucrative system, under which the
colonialism of the West inserted itself into economic opportunity and enslaved the
largest forced migration in history.
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Document Summary
(lecture 6) war capitalism and the british east india company: beckert rebrands the process traditionally called mercantile-capitalism as. War capitalism, his point being that violence was at its center. It was not caused by superior technology or organisation. War capitalism was a precondition for the industrial revolution. It supplied essential raw materials made by slaves and other bonded labour. It accumulated capital which funded the new industries. And it was the foundation on which were built the institutions public and private which led to the industrial revolution. War capitalism" describes a stage of western history wherein violence and enslavement were the methods of conquest, preparing the ground for the cotton industry. In this sense, war capitalism" was a necessary precursor for the industrial revolution, as it created and supplied new markets with key materials made by slave labour.
