This comment reviews Dale Tomich’s exceptional methodological contribution to world-historical analysis, from the perspective of a close collegial dialogue over the last 50 years. It focuses on Tomich’s preoccupation with what he calls historical theory, through his outstanding and consequential research on world-historic slave systems’ actualization of capital’s emergent world market. Aside from Tomich’s detailed research on slave systems in the New World, his opus embodies a sophisticated and original critical dialogue with Marxist orthodoxy on the dialectical relationship between theory and history.
McMichaelP (1990) Incorporating comparison within a world-historical perspective: an alternative comparative method. American Sociological Review55(3): 385–397.
7.
McMichaelP (1991) Slavery in capitalism: the rise and demise of the U.S. Ante-bellum cotton culture. Theory and Society20: 321–349.
McMichaelPMűllerB (2014) The land-grab trap. Is there a will to govern global land-grabbing?Focaal. European Journal of Anthropology70: 1–7.
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PatelR (2009) What does food sovereignty look like?Journal of Peasant Studies36(3): 663–673.
11.
TomichD (1990) Slavery in the Circuit of sugar. In: Martinique and the World-Economy, 1830-1848. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.
12.
TomichD (1991) World slavery and Caribbean capitalism. The Cuban sugar industry, 1760-1868. Theory and Society20: 297–319.
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TomichD (1994) Small islands and huge comparisons. Caribbean plantations, historical unevenness, and capitalist modernity. Social Science History18(3): 339–358.
14.
TomichD (2004) Through the Prism of Slavery: Labor, Capital, and World Economy. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
15.
TomichD (2018) The second slavery and world capitalism: a perspective for historical inquiry. International Review of Social History63(3): 477–501.
16.
WittmanH (2009) Reworking the metabolic rift: La vía campesina, agrarian citizenship, and food sovereignty. Journal of Peasant Studies36(4): 805–826.
