For a Kinder, Gentler Society
World Accumulation: 1492-1789
  • Andre Gunder Frank
Reviews Table of Contents Introduction «Back
World Accumulation: 1492-1789.
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This book studies the effects of cyclical fluctuations in the process of capital accumulation ' the sixteenth-century expansion, the seventeenth-century depression, the cyclical swings between the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688 and the Peace of Paris in 1763, the Depression and the American, French, and Industrial Revolutions between 1762 and 1789. Frank connects the downswings or crises in accumulation to the changing leadership positions as they shifted from Italy to Spain and Portugal and then to Holland and Britain. He devotes particular attention to the successive incorporation into the single world system of Asia, Africa, and the Americas, whose economies and societies were transformed to contribute to the accumulation of capital in Western Europe and later in North America through exploitation, dependence, and unequal exchange.

About the Author

Andre Gunder Frank is a member of the Graduate Faculty of Sociology at the University of Toronto and Professor Emeritus of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. Born in Berlin in l929 and a German citizen, he is married to University of Toronto Professor Nancy Howell. Frank was educated in the United States, received a Ph D in economics at the University of Chicago in 1957 and the Doctorat d'Etat at the University of Paris in 1978. He speaks and reads English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German and Dutch and has taught in departments of anthropology, economics, history, political science and sociology at universities in Europe, North and Latin America.

About the Book
"Andre Gunder Frank has achieved the status of being a persona of controversy. This means that his writings are widely discussed, passionately debated, and hastily read. He first attained this notoriety in a polemical essay originally published...
"Andre Gunder Frank has achieved the status of being a persona of controversy. This means that his writings are widely discussed, passionately debated, and hastily read. He first attained this notoriety in a polemical essay originally published in 1967 in an early 'New Left' scholarly journal called Catalyst. It was a slashing, some thought devastating, attack on the then prevailing (and up-to-then scarcely contested) 'conventional wisdom' on economic development.... "Frank remains one of the most productive, stimulating, and incisive analysts of the global process of accumulation and hence of 'development' and 'underdevelopment.' And his recent books show that he is a reflective scholar who continues to struggle with his material. He warrants careful, not sloppy, reading."

Pages 304
Year: 2003
LC Classification: HCSLF68
Dewey code: 330,9
BISAC: HIS037000
Soft Cover
ISBN: 978-0-87586-204-0
Price: USD 22.95
Ebook
ISBN: 978-0-87586-277-4
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