The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View

This is not a book for casual audiences. You are expected to understand what capitalism is, what feudalism is and also have a knowledge of medieval English, French and Dutch history. Ellen Meiskens Wood expects you to know this because she does help you out. This is a very complicated book and will not try to make it simple to understand.

Nonetheless, if you can get past the confusing language, Wood does make a good argument throughout the book. To spoil the gist of the book, she basically argues that the traditional model of what the origin of capitalism is, is wrong. She argues that the ‘commercialization model' assumes too much and just assumes that capitalism was always present. She points out that this is wrong and that the origin of capitalism is very specific in that it only originated in the English countryside through ‘agrarian capitalism'. This book mainly discusses why England is so unique and why they were the only ones to develop capitalism.

She also goes on to discuss her theory in other topic areas such as imperialism or the Enlightenment.

There's also the issue of bias. She is a Marxist so naturally she isn't the biggest fan of capitalism. She actually ends the book saying that socialism is a real alternative to capitalism.