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Empires of Labor

By Alessandro Stanziani

Empires of Labor

By Alessandro Stanziani

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Description
From the seventeenth century to the First World War, both free and unfree labor were essential for building an empire. This ambitious study examines the relationship between capitalism and coercion across the British, French and Russian empires throughout centuries of economic transformation. Overturning conventional explanations of serfdom, slavery, indentured migration and wage labor, Alessandro Stanziani demonstrates the dominance of aristocratic capitalism across Europe and Eurasia until the end of the nineteenth century. He links the Industrial Revolution, the Great Divergence and the Great Transformation into a single narrative in which the coercion and emancipation of labor are crucial steps. Stanziani argues that, if the modern state is now beset with labor inequalities and tensions surrounding mobility, it is not because Western values have been hijacked but because they were built on empire, labor and coercion.
Product details
Number of Pages:
360
Release Date:
2026-01-31
Publication Date:
2025-11-10
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
1009608592
ISBN13:
9781009608596
Weight:
672 g
Height:
157 cm
Width:
235 cm
Thickness:
24 cm
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