About this item
No nation in the history of the world has been more closely identified with capitalism than the United States. Capitalism, politicians and business leaders confidently assert, is and always has been at the heart of the American dream. Not so fast, says James Parisot. In How America Became Capitalist, he tells the little-known story of how our economic system came to be, and of the alternatives that were sidelined along the way. Capitalist elements were apparent from the first colonies of white settlers, but they were far from dominant, and they weren't the driving factor in the advancement of colonies deeper into the continent. Even slavery, which was at the heart of both American capitalism and imperialism throughout much of the nation's growth, was less a monolithic force than a series of complicated encounters that took different forms.
About the Author
James Parisot currently teaches in the Department of Sociology at Drexel University. He has published articles in a variety of scholarly journals, is co-editor of the book Hegemony and the Rise of Emerging Powers: Cooperation or Conflict? (Routledge, 2017) , and is the author of How America Became Capitalist: Imperial Expansion and the Conquest of the West (Pluto, 2019) .
