This ambitious book addresses questions concerning an old theme - the rise and fall of ancient civilization - but does so from a distinctive theoretical perspective by taking its lead from the work of the great German sociologist Max Weber.

Corporate capitalism was invented in nineteenth-century Britain; most of the market institutions that we take for granted today - limited companies, shares, stock markets, accountants, financial newspapers - were Victorian creations. So were the moral codes, the behavioural assumptions, the rules of thumb and the unspoken agreements that made this market structure work. This innovative study provides the first integrated analysis of the origin of these formative capitalist institutions, and reveals why they were conceived and how they were constructed. It explores the moral, economic and legal assumptions that supported this formal institutional structure, and which continue to shape the corporate economy of today. Tracing the institutional growth of the corporate economy in Victorian Britain and demonstrating that many of the perceived problems of modern capitalism - financial fraud, reckless speculation, excessive remuneration - have clear historical precedents, this is a major contribution to the economic history of modern Britain.

An ambitious study which addresses the classic questions of the emergence, flowering and decline of ancient civilization from a fresh perspective - that of the great German sociologist Max Weber.

The aim and the methodology of the book The key idea that triggered the present philosophical (classical) study is that besides the economic situation, the formation of the ancient Greek economy and society was also favoured by social and political conditions, which must be further explored. In this study, these socio-political conditions are examined through Max Weber’s theory on the ancient Greek society. In contrast to Marx, Weber believes that we have to identify some other factor, other than economy, if we are to explain the development of intellectual phenomena in the ancient Greek society and economy. The whole book is structured around this Weberian perspective. In Part A, Weber’s views on ancient Greece will be presented, as developed in his classic, though incomplete, Economy and Society (1921). The Weberian works that refer to Greek Antiquity will also be used additionally, in particular Agrarian Conditions in Antiquity [The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilisations] (1909, 1924), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) and General Economic Theory (1923). Part B comprises an analysis of Weber’s views regarding ancient and modern capitalism through the examination of his theory and the (Marxist and other) criticism it has received. In the Appendix Aristotle’s economics will be presented, as developed in his Politics in order to draw paradigms which prove the “anti-capitalist” character of the ancient Greek economy. The aim of the book is twofold: a) to acquaint non-experts with the generally unknown theory of Max Weber on ancient Greece and b) to serve to the future researchers as a philosophical-classical tool, which will help them understand and interpret the ancient Greek economy and society from a modern (Weberian) perspective. The basic Weberian question the author will try to answer is whether and to what extent was it possible for the Greeks to develop capitalist activities. A key book in the international bibliography that examines this question is Antiquity and Capitalism: Max Weber and the Sociological Foundations of Roman Civilisation (John R. Love, Routledge, 1991). As a sociologist and political scientist, John R. Love uses Max Weber to refute the position maintained by Marxists and more modern historians that capitalism as a interpretive model cannot be applied to Roman civilisation. Following Weber’s theory, he examines the social and political institutions, distinguishes ancient from modern capitalism and explains why ancient, unlike our modern, capitalism did not progress. However, his subject matter is Rome, not ancient Greece. The book at hand will seek, with Max Weber’s theory as an analytical tool, to study ancient Greek capitalism in contrast to its different Roman, medieval and modern forms. The basic Weberian question to be answered, running through the whole book, is the following: “Could capitalism have evolved in ancient Greece?”. Marxists are right in rejecting such a possibility. However, we will see that, following Max Weber’s theory, the interpretive model of capitalism could successfully be applied to ancient Greece. However, one has to cut it loose from the connotations of modern-day capitalism and analyse ancient Greek capitalism within the framework of the cultural, religious and political conditions of Antiquity. This is exactly the method that has been followed in the present study, in an effort to present in full and in a critical spirit Weber’s theory on ancient Greece.

The rise of capitalism to global dominance is still largely associated – by both laypeople and Marxist historians – with the industrial capitalism that made its decisive breakthrough in 18th century Britain. Jairus Banaji’s new work reaches back centuries and traverses vast distances to argue that this leap was preceded by a long era of distinct “commercial capitalism”, which reorganised labor and production on a world scale to a degree hitherto rarely appreciated. Rather than a picture centred solely on Europe, we enter a diverse and vibrant world. Banaji reveals the cantons of Muslim merchants trading in Guangzhou since the eighth century, the 3,000 European traders recorded in Alexandria in 1216, the Genoese, Venetians and Spanish Jews battling for commercial dominance of Constantinople and later Istanbul. We are left with a rich and global portrait of a world constantly in motion, tied together and increasingly dominated by a pre-industrial capitalism. The rise of Europe to world domination, in this view, has nothing to do with any unique genius, but rather a distinct fusion of commercial capitalism with state power.