33 min listen
Charly Coleman, "The Spirit of French Capitalism: Economic Theology in the Age of Enlightenment" (Stanford UP, 2021)
Charly Coleman, "The Spirit of French Capitalism: Economic Theology in the Age of Enlightenment" (Stanford UP, 2021)
ratings:
Length:
65 minutes
Released:
Apr 25, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Charly Coleman's latest book, The Spirit of French Capitalism: Economic Theology in the Age of Enlightenment (Stanford University Press, 2021) is at once a history of ideas, the economy, religion, and material culture. Pursuing the imbrication of the economy and theology with respect to both worldly and spiritual value and wealth, the book explores the emergence and development of a specifically Catholic ethic of capitalism particular to the French context in the century and more leading up to the French Revolution.
In its six chapters, the book examines the Eucharist, John Law's system, speculation and debt, usury, consumption, luxury, and more. By the time this reader reached the epilogue, it became clear that The Spirit of French Capitalism is both a history of the Age of Enlightenment and a genealogy/prehistory of the commodity fetishism elaborated by Marx and Marxist thinkers from the nineteenth century to the present. Faith in infinite wealth creation, obsessive consumption, pleasure, abundance, and enchantment are as much a part of the history of capitalism as scarcity, regulation, and restraint. Provocative and complicated, the book will be of great interest scholars and students of the histories of the early modern economy, religion, and the state in France and elsewhere, as well as the history of capitalism more broadly.
Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and its empire. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email (panchasi@sfu.ca).
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In its six chapters, the book examines the Eucharist, John Law's system, speculation and debt, usury, consumption, luxury, and more. By the time this reader reached the epilogue, it became clear that The Spirit of French Capitalism is both a history of the Age of Enlightenment and a genealogy/prehistory of the commodity fetishism elaborated by Marx and Marxist thinkers from the nineteenth century to the present. Faith in infinite wealth creation, obsessive consumption, pleasure, abundance, and enchantment are as much a part of the history of capitalism as scarcity, regulation, and restraint. Provocative and complicated, the book will be of great interest scholars and students of the histories of the early modern economy, religion, and the state in France and elsewhere, as well as the history of capitalism more broadly.
Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and its empire. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email (panchasi@sfu.ca).
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Released:
Apr 25, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Ravi Palat, "The Making of an Indian Ocean World-Economy, 1250–1650" (Palgrave, 2015): Palat counters eurocentric notions of long-term historical change by drawing upon the histories of societies based on wet-rice cultivation to chart an alternate pattern of social evolution and state formation... by New Books in Economic and Business History