Debt: The First 5,000 Years,Updated and ExpandedNow in paperback, the updated and expanded edition: David Graeber’s “fresh . . . fascinating . . . thought-provoking . . . and exceedingly timely” (Financial Times) history of debt Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: he shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it. |
Contents
Cruelty and Redemption | |
A Brief Treatise on the Moral Grounds of Economic | |
Games with Sex and Death | |
Honor and Degradation or On the Foundations | |
Credit Versus Bullion And the Cycles of History | |
The Middle Ages 600 AD1450 | |
Age of the Great Capitalist Empires 14501971 | |
The Beginning of Something Yet to Be Determined | |
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