Histories of Global Capital

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course introduces students to the study of capital in motion, as investable wealth moving across the planet, transforming places into property, things into commodities, and people into labor, over time, shaping communities, nations, and the globe. Over the course of semester, we will read about the transformation of sugar from a luxury good to a mass commodity; the lives and agency of enslaved African Americans for sale in the New Orleans slave market; smugglers, slavers, and gun-runners evading British imperial authority in the Indian Ocean; the formation of offshore tax havens in former European island colonies in the Caribbean; and about foraging and trading gourmet matsutake mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest. Through such case studies, we will trace the arc of the history of capital across the surface of the planet, examining the myriad ways the drive to turn money into profit has shaped the cultural, social, political, and ecological conditions of human life.