Description
Book SynopsisBy systematically linking eighteenth-century European writing to the colonial history of India,
The Stillbirth of Capital argues that the Enlightenment's vision of empire calls our own historical and theoretical paradigms into question, especially our premise that capitalism is the basis of modernity.
Trade Review"This is an original book that adopts a historical materialist approach in order to question dominant readings of Enlightenment ideas. Ahmed's research into Britain's economic activities in India and his engaging rereading of individual texts make this an indispensible book for scholars working in 18-century studies. His engagement with contemporary postcolonial criticism, moreover, and the book's revisionist approach, will be of value too to postcolonial scholars." -- Emma Bird *
Journal of Postcolonial Writing *
"[Ahmed's] well-researched, thoroughly historicized study interrogates works that purport to reflect various principles of Enlightenment, e.g., Protestant and sentimental ethics, the free market, Orientalist knowledge, and the progressive state. Ahmed offers unique and engaging readings. . . . Highly Recommended." -- J. C. Eustace
"This is an excellent book that argues with and challenges our understanding of the European Enlightenment's intellectual and material engagement with Europe's imperial history and fiscal practices, especially in colonial India. It will be of value to political and postcolonial theorists as well as to scholars with interest in Enlightenment studies, piracy, and the development of sentimentalism in the long eighteenth century." -- Ala Alryyes * Yale University *
"This ambitious book takes on contemporary critics of colonial discourse studies on its way to making a powerful, innovative argument about the violent histories of European militarized trading companies in the Indian Ocean and the capacity of eighteenth-century texts to critically register these violent practices. Ahmed's prose is the equal of his scholarship, supple and mature in every regard." -- Suvir Kaul
