Archive of History

Our essential titles on radical histories.

The study of feudal society has been central to Marxist historiography. But what if a foundational theoretical mistake has governed these inquiries for decades? In this article Hugo Raine studies the writings of Jairus Banaji and Perry Anderson on the transition from feudalism to capitalism, and asks whether you can speak of feudalism as a unitary social system, or whether that is a feature unique to capitalism.

"We can't decide in the abstract which of any social relations is more determinant in any particular social phenomenon. Some have primacy in particular moments, some come in a particular kind of sequence, but we can't just say: race, class, which one is more important?"

How did a young American woman, born to a secular, working-class New York Jewish family and raised during the Depression, end up in Algiers during a heady period of revolutionary fervor?

Historian Jennifer Le Zotte joins Betsy Beasley and David Stein to discuss used clothing and the place of second-hand goods in the capitalist economy.