Empires of Labor (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781009608572)

From the seventeenth century to the First World War, both free and unfree labor were essential for building an empire. This ambitious study examines the relationship between capitalism and coercion across the British, French and Russian empires throughout centuries of economic transformation. Overturning conventional explanations of serfdom, slavery, indentured migration and wage labor, Alessandro Stanziani demonstrates the dominance of aristocratic capitalism across Europe and Eurasia until the end of the nineteenth century. He links the Industrial Revolution, the Great Divergence and the Great Transformation into a single narrative in which the coercion and emancipation of labor are crucial steps. Stanziani argues that, if the modern state is now beset with labor inequalities and tensions surrounding mobility, it is not because Western values have been hijacked but because they were built on empire, labor and coercion.

Author: Alessandro Stanziani
ISBN-10: 1009608576
ISBN-13: 9781009608572
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 12/18/2025
Pages: 360
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.06lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.75d