Sven Beckert

Prize-winning Harvard historian Professor Sven Beckert talks about his groundbreaking new global history of capitalism that places the world’s dominant economic system in a new geographical and historic framework.

Beckert says capitalism was born global. It emerged from merchant communities across Asia, Africa and Europe but rooted itself only gradually. It went global as European states and merchants built powerful alliances that would take them across the oceans. Beckert says it was not shaped by an idealised dream of free markets but by state-backed institutions and imperial expansion.

‘Magisterial in scope and ambition, Sven Beckert’s Capitalism is a dazzling global history of the forces that have shaped, and continue to shape, our world. A true tour de force.’ Peter Frankopan

Beckert is professor of American history at Harvard University. He researches and teaches the history of the United States in the 19th century with an emphasis on the history of capitalism. His previous book, Empire of Cotton, reshaped the conversation on how capitalism and slavery were intertwined. It won the Bancroft Prize The Philip Taft Award and the Cundill Recognition for Excellence and was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize.

Previous American Lectures were given by Isabel Wilkerson (2023) and Robert D Kaplan (2025).

Part of the festival’s programme of American literature and culture.