Capitalism and Geopolitics

Catalog description

This course introduces students to significant events and trends in world politics over the past five centuries, and considers their relationship to the history of capitalism. Capitalism and geopolitics, the course will show, have long been intertwined. The evolution in Europe, and eventual global spread, of a system of independent states cannot be understood separate from the emergence of capitalism. Neither can the construction of vast overseas empires by European states, their subsequent collapse, and the rise of a postcolonial, globalized international order. Conversely, we cannot adequately understand the history of capitalism without appreciating how geopolitics has shaped its emergence, spread, and transformation.