It was a great pleasure to teach the “Origins of Capitalism” (or History 159A) course this past fall. I believe the course was last taught in the spring of 2013, when the instructor was Jan de Vries, my then graduate advisor, and I was the GSI. Among our students was Jordan Mursinna, who is now a lecturer in our department.
History 159A is a course with its own deep history and is also chronologically the first in a series of courses that together create one of the most robust undergraduate economic history curriculums anywhere in the country. Economic history is not an easy subject. Few students arrive with a background in it, and since it is interdisciplinary, students from different fields of study find it challenging in various ways. However, despite its rigorous nature students find it to be a particularly compelling subject.
Students who want to persue an indepth pursuit into Economic History can begin with History 159A, which addresses the origins of capitalism in the early modern world. They can then proceed to “The Power of Ideas: The History of Economic and Social Thought” (or History 159B) and “The International Economy of the 20th Century” (or History 160) which are both taught by Christoph Hermann. After this students have the option to progress further into the subject matter by taking Caitlin Rosenthal’s “History of American Capitalism,” as well as a variety of 103 proseminars on economic history topics. Many of these courses, including 159A, serve as the Historical Context requirement for the Political Economy major, thereby providing a valuable historical lens with in the curriculum of another large and diverse undergraduate major.
History 159A is a class that asks students to engage with the histories of empires, revolutions, mass politics, consumer culture, industrialization, and slavery, but also to grapple with concepts like the backward-bending labor supply curve, the monetary policy trilemma, purchasing power parity consumption bundles, and the Gini coefficient. Its periodization spans from the Portuguese Estado da India to the financial crises of the late nineteenth century. And it is fundamentally concerned with historicizing and explaining the origins and dynamics of the economic system that governs the world around us today.
This system — Capitalism — is all around us, but it is not always visible, and there is no consensus on what it means or how to understand it, which makes studying its history very challenging. That challenge is made all the more complicated by the ways that our present moment can seem permanent and natural, especially since many economic ideas and practices are taught and understood as the results of human nature rather than strange things that have histories.
That’s a lot to unpack. As one student, Colby Anderson put it, “I felt that maybe the most important contribution of the class was the way it denaturalized capitalism and allowed us to see it as a historically specific form of social organization which emerged through concrete political and economic processes.” Although it may not have been my intended goal, I was glad to hear from another student, Owen Blum, that “History 159A allowed me and other students to question modern perceptions of temporality, human nature, and human freedom. Giving me the tools to continue forming nuanced historical arguments beyond the class environment, History 159A had the effect of changing the way I study history and truly impressing on me the dictum that ‘things have not always been this way, and will not always be this way.’” The most direct assessment of the key takeaways from the class comes from Nisha Rubio, who said, “For as depressing as the class content was, it was frequently hopeful and always inspiring.”