Capital and Race: The History of a Modern Hydra

1492: a year that captivated the world. Columbus's "discovery" of a new continent is widely remembered for revealing both the wonders of the earth and the unprecedented capacity of men to free themselves from boundaries.But the invention of America was actually a story untold: the consecration of a new relationship between nature and mankind, which saw capital and race unite irrevocably.Sylvie Laurent tells the story of racial capitalism as a "two-headed creature" forged by figures such as Daniel Defoe in Robinson Crusoe, Voltaire, Adam Smith, and Alexis de Tocqueville.Beneath these authors' fantasies of a free-market land of endless riches is the empire of racial capitalism.However powerful, this system has been identified and resisted by a long line of anti-colonial theorists, from Rosa Luxemburg to W.E. B. Du Bois. Against the backdrop of their thinking, and at a time when it is commonplace to oppose class struggles and racial demands, Laurent illuminates the rich and little-known i