The Mystery of Capital - Chapter 1

The key problem is to find out why that sector of society of the past, which I would not hesitate to call capitalist, should have lived as if in a bell jar, cut off from the rest; why was it not able to expand and conquer the whole of society? ... [Why was it that] a significant rate of capital formation was possible only in certain sectors and not in the whole market economy of the time?

Fernand Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce

The hour of capitalismÆs greatest triumph is its hour of crisis.