HISTORIES OF RACIAL CAPITALISM

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.

Reviews

“Jenkins and Leroy have amassed an erudite and rigorous collection of essays that flesh out the meaning of racial capitalism in ways that are surprising and illuminating, and will extend a desperately needed debate.” —Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership

“Beginning with the ‘old history of capitalism’—the century-long discussion about empire and revolution in the Black radical tradition—this collection builds on that legacy. One by one, these learned and brilliant essays stretch and refine the meanings of racial capitalism, transforming and deepening our understanding of the histories they take up, and providing essential historical context and analytical clarity as we face the current crisis.” —Walter Johnson, author of The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States

“Eschewing the notion of a universal capitalism under which racial capitalism is a variant, Histories of Racial Capitalism is an edifying analysis of the racial and racializing character of capitalism and capital. Deft in its engagement with gender, bondage, debt, empire, and indigeneity, this volume is an urgent and brilliantly transformative revelation of racial capitalism’s conceptual possibilities for defying disciplinary enclosures and provoking new questions.” —Sarah Haley, author of No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity

“Histories of Racial Capitalism is a stunning compilation of stellar original historical work that analyzes the co-constitutive dynamics of systems of global racial subordination and the capitalist social order. This volume will be required reading for a generation of scholars and activists.” —Michael Dawson, author of Blacks In and Out of the Left