Blood and Money: War, Slavery, Finance, and the State

University of Houston history professor McNally (Monsters of the Market) casts an unsparing light on the origins of money—and capitalism itself—in this scathing, Marxist-informed account. Noting that ancient Greek philosophers classified munificence as a virtue and love of money for its own sake as a “corrupting passion,” McNally chronicles the rise of money as a form of exchange and its inextricable bonds to slavery and war. Soldiers, he explains, required a means of payment that would be portable and easily exchangeable during foreign adventures. The need to finance armies led to the rise of paper currency and banks, including the Bank of England, which was incorporated in 1694 to fund a war with France. McNally shows how the sophistication of the British financial system contributed to the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade, detailing the story of the slave ship Zong, whose captain ordered 133 Africans to be thrown overboard in order to collect insurance money. McNally builds a powerful, richly documented argument that unchecked capitalism prioritizes greed and violence over compassion, but concludes without offering practical solutions to this millennia-old problem. Nevertheless, this searing academic treatise makes a convincing case. (May)