The History of Capitalist Expansion

Abstract

There is considerable agreement among economic historians that capitalism as a mode of organising social and economic life not only began in one miniscule little corner of the globe, namely north-west Europe, but from its very beginnings, while it was itself still in the process of being formed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, involved outward expansion gradually encompassing ever-larger areas of the globe in a network of material exchanges. This network of material exchanges over time developed into a world market for goods and services, or an international division of labour. By the end of the nineteenth century the project of a single capitalist world economy had been completed in the sense that the grid of exchange relationships now covered practically all geographical areas of the world.