Jairus Banaji’s book A Brief History of Commercial Capitalism, first published in 2020, sets out to uncover the deep historical roots of capitalist development. The book touches upon important theoretical debates, especially within the Marxist tradition, about the origins of capitalism.

Banaji’s work brings into question several entrenched narratives about global economic history, including the vision of an economically regressive Middle Ages and the idea of a linear transition to modernity. The pictures that Banaji sketches out through a breathtaking set of illustrative cases from around the globe, spanning nearly a millennium, raises many fundamental issues for anyone who wants to understand how the world economic system came to be and how it might continue to develop in the future.

A Brief History of Commercial Capitalism has already had a major impact in the world of scholarship and attracted many responses from Banaji’s fellow historians. But it should be of great interest to nonspecialists as well. In what follows, I will give a brief summary of Banaji’s intellectual background and the key arguments that he makes, before looking at the discussion that the book has provoked.