Capitalism and racism have been indissociable since 1492, as this book demonstrates by retracing their entwined destinies.

We still often see the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in 1492 as a "closing" of the world. But it was actually the double advent of capitalism and racism. In the tradition of heterodox thinkers such as Rosa Luxembourg and W.E.B. Du Bois, Sylvie Laurent revisits classical authors and questions figures of colonization, such as Christopher Columbus or Robinson Crusoe, suggesting that there cannot be a capitalistic appropriation of the land without a reasoned system of expropriation and domination.