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Full-Text Articles in Political History
Between Equal Rights: Primitive Accumulation And Capital's Violence, Onur Ulas Ince
Between Equal Rights: Primitive Accumulation And Capital's Violence, Onur Ulas Ince
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper attempts to elaborate a political theory of capital’s violence. Recent analyses haveadopted Karl Marx’s notion of the “primitive accumulation of capital” for investigating theforcible methods by which the conditions of capital accumulation are reproduced in the present.I argue that the analytic function accorded to primitive accumulation can be better performedby a pair of new concepts: “capital-positing violence” and “capital-preserving violence.” Irefine the conceptual core primitive accumulation (coercive capitalization of social relations ofproduction) by focusing on the role of colonial violence in the history of capitalism, which Ithen elucidate with reference to Carl Schmitt’s account of European colonial expansion …
Adam Smith, Settler Colonialism, And Cosmopolitan Overstretch, Onur Ulas Ince
Adam Smith, Settler Colonialism, And Cosmopolitan Overstretch, Onur Ulas Ince
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Adam Smith has recently been celebrated as a precocious theorist of commercialcosmopolitanism who decried the injustice of imperial conquest and extraction. This paperfocuses on Smith’s endorsement of settler colonialism in North America and argues thatSmith’s newfound cosmopolitanism is overstretched. Smith welcomed settler colonies as theembodiment of the “natural progress of opulence” and spared them from his invective againstother imperial practices like chattel slavery and trade monopolies. Smith’s embrace of settlercolonies, however, involved him in an ideological conundrum insofar as the prosperity ofoverseas settlements rested on imperial expansion and seizure of land from Native Americans.I contend that Smith muffled this disturbing …
When "Comoners Were Made Slaves By The Magistrates": The 1627 Election And Political Culture In Norwich, Fiona Williamson
When "Comoners Were Made Slaves By The Magistrates": The 1627 Election And Political Culture In Norwich, Fiona Williamson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This article tells the story of a contested provincial election for sheriff which took place in Norwich during 1627. In light of recent scholarly critiques of studies that frame the early-modern period in terms of binary opposites, this article demonstrates that 1620s political culture is hard to define in such stark terms. Through a close reading of the events, characters, and outcomes of the election, this article also shows the importance of embedding local peculiarities into wider historiographical narratives of change, or continuity, and reveals the essential role of the urban middling sorts in shaping the political narratives of the …