The history of capitalism is increasingly becoming an interesting subject among historians in the United States of America. Two successive conferences held at Harvard University this past week attest to that: Teaching Capitalism and The New History of American Capitalism . A Capitalism Reading Group has already started meeting every other week. However, one can sense a significant and fascinating shift from studying capitalism in a national or regional sense to studying it as a transnational or global phenomenon. For someone from where radical and leftist scholars have been studying and critiquing capitalism as an international system for a long time it is surprising why researching it, historically, is now a hype in the US. Is it because of the ongoing global financial/economic crisis? In any case this attempt at making sense of the history of this system that has been celebrated and lamented depending on one’s class or ideological position is welcome belatedly as it may be.
