Author(s): Eric Hobsbawm

History

A major treatment of the crucial years 1848-1875 - a penetrating analysis of the rise of capitalism throught the world. In the 1860s a new word entered the economic and political vocabulary of the world: capitalism. The global triumph of capitalism is the major theme of history in the decades after 1848. It was the triumph of a society which believed that economic growth rests on competitve private enterprise, on success in buying everything in the cheapest market (including labour) and selling it in the dearest.