The Price of the World: A Global History of Capitalism

Over the last 500 years, capitalism has produced a world that is highly interdependent and at the same time highly asymmetrical.These asymmetries were often established by violent means and vigorously defended to this day.In his ambitious global history of capitalism, Friedrich Lenger charts the course of these developments which have left no one unaffected - from the indigenous people of America to the silk weavers of Bengal.This is a story of flagrant wealth and extreme poverty, of violence and oppression and of the relentless exploitation both of labour and of our planet, for which we are now paying the price. Among the global inequalities produced by capitalism are the unequal consumption of fossil fuels and the environmental degradation that affects different parts of the world in different ways and to different extents.The indifference capitalists display towards the natural world resembles their past indifference to human suffering.The millions of slaves forced to work on Americ