Critiques of Capital in Modern Britain and America - by M Bevir & F Trentmann (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

This book is an innovative collection of essays by a new generation of British and American historians and political theorists. Moving beyond a conventional action/reaction view of capitalism and its critics, the volume explores how critical traditions and beliefs have helped to shape capitalism. Chapters follow diverse critiques in Britain and America and explore their Atlantic and imperial exchanges. The volume includes chapters on questions of law and property in the Victorian empire; traditions of land reform in nineteenth century America and Britain; the influence of American romanticism on British socialism; the role of Britain in American progressivism; American and British consumer protection; the evolution of trusteeship and ideas of cosmopolitan democracy; the 'third way' and narratives of globalization. The editors' introduction offers a critical historiographical survey and, by stepping beyond the dogmatic opposition between post-modernists and empiricists, provides a new research agenda for an integrated study of capitalism and its critics.

Review Quotes

' Critiques of Capital in Modern Britain and America demonstrates the vitality of the new transnational impulse in modern history and political science. In shifting the focus from Britain to political and intellectual exchanges between Britain and the United States, its essays illuminate afresh the struggles over contract, trust, property, consumer rights, and global crisis that have defined the modern debate over capitalism.' - Daniel Rodgers, Henry Charles Lea Professor of History, Princeton University

About the Author

CHRISTOPHER BEAUCHAMP Doctoral Student in History, University of Cambridge JAMIE BRONSTEIN Associate Professor of History, New Mexico State University SIMON CANEY Senior Lecturer, Department of Politics, University of Newcastle SANDRA DEN OTTER Assistant Professor of History, Queen's University KEVIN GRANT Assistant Professor, Department of History, Hamilton College COLIN HAY Professor of Political Analysis, Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham AXEL R. SCHÄFER Lecturer in US History, Keele University