Debt: The first five thousand years What follows is a fragment
of a much larger project of research on debt and debt money in
human history. The first and overwhelming conclusion of this
project is that in studying economic history, we tend to
systematically ignore the role of violence, the absolutely
central role of war and slavery in creating and shaping the
basic institutions of what we now call "the economy". What's
more, origins matter. The violence may be invisible, but it
remains inscribed in the very logic of our economic common
sense, in the apparently self-evident nature of institutions
that simply would never and could never exist outside of the
monopoly of violence – but also, the systematic threat of
violence – maintained by the contemporary state. Let me start
with the institution of slavery, whose role, I think, is key. In
most times and places, slavery is seen as a consequence of war.
Sometimes most slaves actually are war captives, sometimes they
are not, but almost invariably, war is seen as