Trouble of the World

“[This] majestic work applies a close reading of the collected works of W. E. B. Du Bois to archival material from England, India, Australia, Belize, and the United States to articulate the global scope of seemingly 'national' issues. . . . As Sell painstakingly demonstrates, the so-called Pax Britannica produced not peace but a world defined by imperial violence and destruction in service of metropolitan capitalist profit and plunder.”—Journal of Southern History

“An expansive, thought-provoking work worthy of reading by those seeking to better understand the global intersections of slavery, race, and capitalism.”—North Carolina Historical Review

“Zach Sell writes a powerful history of global capitalism as racialized domination. . . . Revitalizes a Black intellectual thesis of racial capitalism, beyond doubt.”—Business History Review

“In a powerfully imagined study, Sell turns his attention to ‘the relationship between slavery and empire within capitalism,’ focusing on the histories of American slavery, British imperialism, and global capitalism across the mid-nineteenth century (p. 1). . . . Those looking for new approaches to the slavery-and-capitalism question would do well to start here.”—Journal of American History

“With obvious import for our understanding of the historical bases of present crises in the U.S. and around the world today, Trouble of the World offers tremendous insight, detail and argument to the reader. The research is meticulous and the detailed findings from small case studies are all purposefully woven into an argument about how the demands of emergent global capitalism in the mid-nineteenth century were generative in reworking racial domination and colonial occupation.”—Ethnic and Racial Studies

“Trouble of the World asks readers to wrestle with the complexities of a world imperialism has shaped. Notably, Sell’s contribution extends understandings of the global entanglements, elevating the idiosyncrasies of interconnections through an analysis that integrates Atlantic and Pacific frames.”—H-Labor

“The book is terrific. It advances our historical understanding by showing how U.S. slavery was not just one input into the development of global capitalism, but rather a signal paradigm for the formation of capitalism in a number of regions.” — Andrew Zimmerman, George Washington University

“Sell must be congratulated for this deeply researched and engaging book of such importance to a variety of fields, including the study of global capitalism, racial slavery, empire in Asia, and colonialism.” — Kris Manjapra, Tufts University

“This is a superbly researched and engaging book that illuminates the vital links between capitalism, slavery, and empire in a global frame. Rather than treat these world-altering historical phenomena separately, as they frequently are, it shows persuasively how nations and peoples were shaped by the intertwined histories of racial domination, dispossession, enslavement, and capitalism. Sell gives us a very substantial story of the past that powerfully explains our painful global present.” — Priyamvada Gopal, author of Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent

“Zach Sell’s Trouble of the World reminds us that the historical analysis of capitalism and slavery cannot be separated from that of imperialism. In the process, he provides a novel and indispensable account of the history of slavery in the nineteenth-century North Atlantic. This is a terrific book.” — Walter Johnson, author of The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States