An Alternative Genealogy for Global Capitalism: The Rhine Becomes an Inland Sea, 1792–1815

Abstract

This article argues that the change that opened the door to a capitalist world, one dominated by capitalist norms, was the alteration to the boundary between economic and public power that followed the era of the democratic revolution and in particular the French Revolution. There is consensus of the institutional creativity fostered by the resistance to Louis XIV. The role of the French Revolution and the Congress settlement in fostering capitalist innovation has not attracted the same attention. This article advances the view that the Congress settlement transposed the political universalism of the Revolution into an economic register. The article focuses on the evolution of the international legal regime regulating trade on the Rhine to illuminate the genealogy of capitalist universalism.