Colonial global economy: towards a theoretical reorientation of political economy

Abstract

Standard accounts of the emergence of the modern global economic order posit its origins in the expansion of markets or in the changing nature of the social relations of capitalist production. Each fails to acknowledge the significance of colonial relations underpinning these processes, as formative of, and continuous with them. This is a consequence of the dominant understandings (across different theoretical perspectives) of capitalism as a distinct and self-contained economic formation of modernity, the origins of which are seen to be endogenous to Europe and north America. As such, there is a concomitant failure to acknowledge, or regard as significant, the global connections forged through colonialism that are the condition of capitalist-modernity. I argue for the need to recognize the significance of historical colonial relations to both the establishment and continued reproduction of global political economy. In this article, I seek to reorient our understanding of the histories that underpin theories of capitalism to be inclusive of colonial relations and for the framework of analysis to be transformed by their appropriate consideration.