The relationship between race and capitalism is one of the most
enduring and controversial historical debates. The concept of racial
capitalism offers a way out of this impasse. Racial capitalism is not
simply a permutation, phase, or stage in the larger history of
capitalism—since the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade and the
colonization of the Americas, capitalism, in both material and
ideological senses, has been racial, deriving social and economic
value from racial classification and stratification. Although Cedric
J. Robinson popularized the term, racial capitalism has remained
undertheorized for nearly four decades.
Histories of
Racial Capitalism brings together for the first time
distinguished and rising scholars to consider the utility of the
concept across historical settings. These scholars offer dynamic
accounts of the relationship between social relations of exploitation
and the racial terms through which they were organized, justified,
and contested. Deploying an eclectic array of methods, their works
range from indigenous mortgage foreclosures to the legacies of
Atlantic-world maroons, from imperial expansion in the continental
United States and beyond to the racial politics of municipal debt in
the New South, from the ethical complexities of Latinx banking to the
postcolonial dilemmas of extraction in the Caribbean. Throughout, the
contributors consider and challenge how some claims about the history
and nature of capitalism are universalized while others remain
marginalized. By theorizing and testing the concept of racial
capitalism in different historical circumstances, this book shows its
analytical and political power for today’s scholars and activists.