This course explores the historical development of modern capitalism from its earliest roots to the eve of World War I. The material is organized into five parts. Part I surveys pre-capitalist societies, tracing Western Europe's evolution from primitive communities through ancient Greece and Rome, Western feudalism, and mercantilism. Part II examines the world of the 1780s-just before the Industrial and French Revolutions transformed economic and political life-and investigates the emergence of the “spirit of capitalism” between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. Part III analyzes Adam Smith's account of the origins and nature of modern commercial society in The Wealth of Nations (Books I and III) and contrasts it with the Marxist class interpretation advanced by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto. Part IV surveys the Industrial Revolution in Britain and its diffusion to France, Germany, the United States, and Japan. Part V concludes with contrasting interpretations of mature capitalism in V. I. Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism and J. M. Keynes's The Economic Consequences of the Peace.