Серия книг «Verso World History» — 12 книг

The Making of New World Slavery argues that independent commerce, geared to burgeoning consumer markets, was the driving force behind the rise of plantation slavery. The baroque state sought—successfully—to feed upon this commerce and—with markedly less success—to regulate slavery and racial relations. To illustrate this thesis, Blackburn examines the deployment of slaves in the colonial possessions of the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the English and the French. Plantation slavery is shown to have emerged from the impulses of civil society, not from the strategies of individual states.

Robin Blackburn argues that the organization of slave plantations placed the West on a destructive path to modernity and that greatly preferable alternatives were both proposed and rejected. Finally, he shows that the surge of Atlantic trade, predicated on the murderous toil of the plantations, made a decisive contribution to both the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the West.

The Making of New World Slavery argues that independent commerce, geared to burgeoning consumer markets, was the driving force behind the rise of plantation slavery. The baroque…

In 1770 a handful of European nations ruled the Americas, drawing from them a stream of products, both everyday and exotic. Some two and a half million black slaves, imprisoned in plantation colonies, toiled to produce the sugar, coffee, cotton, ginger and indigo craved by Europeans. By 1848 the major systems of colonial slavery had been swept away either by independence movements, slave revolts, abolitionists or some combination of all three. How did this happen?

Robin Blackburn’s history captures the complexity of a revolutionary age in a compelling narrative. In some cases colonial rule fell while slavery flourished, as happened in the South of the United States and in Brazil; elsewhere slavery ended but colonial rule remained, as in the British West Indies and French Windwards. But in French St. Domingue, the future Haiti, and in Spanish South and Central America both colonialism and slavery were defeated. This story of slave liberation and American independence highlights the pivotal role of the “first emancipation” in the French Antilles in the 1790s, the parallel actions of slave resistance and metropolitan abolitionism, and the contradictory implications of slaveholder patriotism.

The dramatic events of this epoch are examined from an unexpected vantage point, showing how the torch of anti-slavery passed from the medieval communes to dissident Quakers, from African maroons to radical pirates, from Granville Sharp and Ottabah Cuguano to Toussaint L’Ouverture, from the black Jacobins to the Liberators of South America, and from the African Baptists in Jamaica to the Revolutionaries of 1848 in Europe and the Caribbean.

In 1770 a handful of European nations ruled the Americas, drawing from them a stream of products, both everyday and exotic. Some two and a half million black slaves, imprisoned in…

The emergence of the book was not merely an event of world historical importance, but the dawn of modernity. In this much praised work, Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin mesh together economic and technological history, sociology and anthropology, with the study of consciousness itself to root the development of printing in the changing social relations and ideological struggles of Western Europe. Now that the printed page may become a thing of the past, The Coming of the Book is more pertinent than ever.

The emergence of the book was not merely an event of world historical importance, but the dawn of modernity. In this much praised work, Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin mesh…

“A work of sweeping scholarship, it is impressive and welcome in English.”—The Economist
For much of human history, the motive force behind war, conquest, social conflict and world exploration has been the drive to acquire gold. From the ancient world of Croesus to the wealthy dynasties of Renaissance Italy, from the earliest European explorations into Africa, America, and Asia to the gold rushes of the nineteenth century and the banking crises that lay beyond them, Pierre Vilar depicts the awesome power of avarice to structure the world in which we live. The insidious power of gold and money is the subject of this enlightening and entertaining history.

The age of exploration brought an influx of treasure into Western Europe, prompting disputes between theologians and early economists over the causes of inflation in the sixteenth century. In time, American silver distorted metropolitan Spanish society beyond recognition. Vilar goes on to examine the roots of the modern banking and financial systems in institutions founded in Holland, England and France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And in the nineteenth century, the gold rushes of Australia, California and South Africa generated new modifications in the international monetary system.

Vilar concludes the story of these developments with a discussion of the crisis of the 1920s that, in the wake of the world credit crash of 2008, is more pertinent than ever. A History of Gold and Money provides a unique work of synthesis on the role of money in modern economic history.

“A work of sweeping scholarship, it is impressive and welcome in English.”—The Economist
For much of human history, the motive force behind war, conquest, social conflict and…

“A seminal book—extremely challenging.”—Carlo Ginzburg
In this classic work which analyzes the context in which thirty years of war and revolution wracked the European continent, the great historian Arno Mayer emphasizes the backwardness of the European economies and their political subjugation by aristocratic elites and their allies. Mayer turns upside down the vision of societies marked by modernization and forward-thrusting bourgeois and popular social classes, thereby transforming our understanding of the traumatic crises of the early twentieth century.

“A seminal book—extremely challenging.”—Carlo Ginzburg
In this classic work which analyzes the context in which thirty years of war and revolution wracked the European continent,…

“One of the most creative and independent-minded revolutionary Marxists of the post-war world.”—The Guardian
The very scale of the 1939–45 war has often tempted historians to study particular campaigns at the expense of the wider panorama. In this readable and richly detailed history of the conflict, the Belgian scholar Ernest Mandel (author of the acclaimed Late Capitalism) outlines his view that the war was in fact a combination of several distinct struggles and a battle between rival imperialisms for world hegemony. In concise chapters, Mandel examines the role played by technology, science, logistics, weapons and propaganda. Throughout, he weaves a consideration of the military strategy of the opposing states into his analytical narrative of the war and its results.

“One of the most creative and independent-minded revolutionary Marxists of the post-war world.”—The Guardian
The very scale of the 1939–45 war has often tempted historians to…

The classic history of the Paris Commune.
In 1871, the working class of Paris, incensed by their lack of political power and tired of beingexploited, seized control of the capital. This book is the outstanding history of the Commune, theheroic battles fought in its defence, and the bloody massacre that ended the uprising. Its author,Lissagaray, was a young journalist who not only saw the events recounted here first-hand, butfought for the Commune on the barricades. He spent the next twenty-five years researching andwriting this history, which refutes the slanders levelled at the Communards by the ruling classesand is a vivid and valuable study in urban political revolution, one that retains its power to inspireto this day.

This revised edition includes a foreword by the writer and publisher Eric Hazan.

The classic history of the Paris Commune.
In 1871, the working class of Paris, incensed by their lack of political power and tired of beingexploited, seized control of the…

An acclaimed history of the Holocaust.
Was the extermination of the Jews part of the Nazi plan from the very start? Arno Mayer offers astartling and compelling answer to this question, which is much debated among historians today.In doing so, he provides one of the most thorough and convincing explanations of how the genocidecame about in Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?, which provoked widespread interest and controversywhen first published.

Mayer demonstrates that, while the Nazis’ anti-Semitism was always virulent, it did not becomegenocidal until well into the Second World War, when the failure of their massive, all-or-nothingcampaign against Russia triggered the Final Solution. He details the steps leading up to thisenormity, showing how the institutional and ideological frameworks that made it possible evolved,and how both related to the debacle in the Eastern theater. In this way, the Judeocide is placedwithin the larger context of European history, showing how similar ‘holy causes’ in the past havetriggered analogous – if far less cataclysmic – infamies.

An acclaimed history of the Holocaust.
Was the extermination of the Jews part of the Nazi plan from the very start? Arno Mayer offers astartling and compelling answer to this…

How the slave-based societies of Ancient Greece and Rome became the feudal societies of the Middle Ages
Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism is a sustained exercise in historical sociology that shows how the slave-based societies of Ancient Greece and Rome eventually became the feudal societies of the Middle Ages. In the course of this study, Anderson vindicates and refines the explanatory power of historical materialism, while casting a fascinating light on the Ancient world, the Germanic invasions, nomadic society, and the different routes taken to feudalism in Northern, Mediterranean, Eastern and Western Europe.

Through this work and its companion volume, Lineages of the Absolutist State, Anderson presents a Marxist history of Western political development that takes readers from the first stirrings of political consciousness in the classical world to the rise of absolutist monarchies in Europe and the birth of the modern epoch.

How the slave-based societies of Ancient Greece and Rome became the feudal societies of the Middle Ages
Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism is a sustained exercise in historical…

Situating the Absolutist states of the early modern epoch against the background of European feudalism
Forty years after its original publication, Lineages of the Absolutist State remains an exemplary achievement in comparative history. Picking up from where its companion volume, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, left off, Lineages traces the development of Absolutist states in the early modern period from their roots in European feudalism, and assesses their various trajectories. Why didn’t Italy develop into an Absolutist state in the same, indigenous way as the other dominant Western countries, namely Spain, France and England? On the other hand, how did Eastern European countries develop into Absolutist states similar to those of the West, when their social conditions diverged so drastically? Reflecting on examples in Islamic and East Asian history, as well as the Ottoman Empire, Anderson concludes by elucidating the particular role of European development within universal history.

Situating the Absolutist states of the early modern epoch against the background of European feudalism
Forty years after its original publication, Lineages of the Absolutist…

In his neglected masterpiece, Weber brings sociology to bear on civilizations as diverse as Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome
Max Weber, widely recognized as the greatest of the founders of classical sociology, is often associated with the development of capitalism in Western Europe and the analysis of modernity. But he also had a profound scholarly interest in ancient societies and the Near East, and turned the youthful discipline of sociology to the study of these archaic cultures.

The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations – Weber’s neglected masterpiece, first published in German in 1897 and reissued in 1909 – is a fascinating examination of the civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Hebrew society in Israel, the city-states of classical Greece, the Hellenistic world and, finally, Republican and Imperial Rome. The book is infused with the excitement attendant when new intellectual tools are brought to bear on familiar subjects. Throughout the work, Weber blends description of socio-economic structures with an investigation into mechanisms and causes of the rise and decline of social systems. The volume ends with a magisterial explanatory essay on the underlying reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire.

In his neglected masterpiece, Weber brings sociology to bear on civilizations as diverse as Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome
Max Weber, widely recognized as the greatest of…

A classic of political economy that traces the influence of religious thought on capitalism.

In one of the true classics of twentieth-century political economy, R. H. Tawney addresses the question of how religion has affected social and economic practices. He tracks the influence of religious thought on capitalist economy and ideology since the Middle Ages, shedding light on the question of why Christianity continues to exert a unique role in the marketplace. In so doing, the book offers an incisive analysis of the morals and mores of contemporary Western culture.

Religion and the Rise of Capitalism is more pertinent now than ever, as today the dividing line between the spheres of religion and secular business is shifting, blending ethical considerations with the motivations of the marketplace.

By examining the period that saw the transition from medieval to modern theories of social organization, Tawney clarifies the most pressing problems of the end of the century. In tough, muscular, richly varied prose, he tells an absorbing and meaningful story. And in his new introduction, which may well be a classic in its own right, Adam Seligman details Tawney’s background and the current status of academic thought on these issues, and he provides a comparative analysis of Tawney with Max Weber that will at once delight and inform readers.

A classic of political economy that traces the influence of religious thought on capitalism.

In one of the true classics of twentieth-century political economy, R. H. Tawney…