This chapter considers how histories of world systems, specifically global capitalism, are narrated in Salman Rushdie’s fiction. From capitalism’s emergence in The Enchantress of Florence, and the novel’s narration of early modern Mughal and Florentine world systems, through to Midnight’s Children’s depiction of India’s independence and the incipient rise of uneven neoliberal property speculation in Bombay, and The Golden House’s depiction of transnational elites and Bombay money laundering, this chapter maps Rushdie’s shifting representation of the world system, including the failures of the ‘optimism disease’ of postcolonial India and early modern global secular humanism, and how forms like magic realism and cinematic realism limn the emergence of neoliberalism and constellate the end of US hegemony.

Chapter 2 opens with a description of mineral resource distribution and the development of mining industries in reform-era China. It then examines the impacts of resource endowment on local economic development, with a focus on capital accumulation and investment. Through qualititative studies on mining entrepreneurs and statistical analysis on Chinese provinces, it shows that resource boom in general benefits capital by not only boosting capital accumulation in the mining industries but also generating positive spillover effects on other industrial sectors, especially those labor-intensive ones. However, resource-generated capital tends to impede the investment in high-tech industries and induce speculative investment in real estate, which may discourage industrial upgrading and undermine economic growth in the long run. Therefore, resource boom has rather mixed effects on local economic development.

Reacting to a Black president, voters elected Donald Trump in 2016. He was a real estate entrepreneur who operated at the edge of the law on real estate. He tried to change laws to help him and skirted the edge of reality when he could not. He continued his business while in office and earned money from government operations. He also was a racist who encouraged rural white people to despise Blacks and try hard to hurt them. He tried and failed to repeal Obamacare. Following 2008, investment of all kinds diminished. Physical investment went down; financial investment became harmful to the economy; educational investment was decreased ,and social capital evaporated. When the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic struck, Trump refused to lead a government effort to deal with it, leading to more than 500,000 deaths and economic disaster. Trump ran for reelection on his 2016 program and lost his bid for reelection. President Biden attempted to reign in the pandemic and restore prosperity over continuing Republican opposition.

Chapter One emphasizes the relationship between English property law and slavery. I follow colonists as they sought to classify slaves as property, and as they deployed their knowledge of English property law on a daily basis to manage slaves. Fitting slaves into an extant legal system that bifurcated property into real estate or chattels personal was an act with long-term practical consequences. American colonists – including those beyond plantation America – understood that each particular category unlocked different ways of proceeding at law that impacted their ability to buy and sell slaves and to shield them from creditors. Building upon customary practice in the transatlantic slave trade, South Carolina colonists treated enslaved people as chattel property, at first by custom and later via statute. Whereas most plantation colonies settled upon some mixture of chattel and real property when they determined how to classify their slaves, South Carolina colonists ultimately adopted pure chattel slavery in order to facilitate commercial transactions involving enslaved people and to expand their credit with British merchants. Treating slaves as a chattel property was economically beneficial for South Carolinians, but it had far-reaching cultural implications. Through close readings of legal forms, including marriage settlements, trusts, and wills, I also watch small acts of legal transformation, moments in which colonists analogized slaves to things. In these acts of legal transmutation, South Carolina colonists compared enslaved people to livestock and other valuable moveable objects, not because they believed them to be the same as those objects, but because they believed them to be the same at law.

Chapter 7 shifts attention to a different class of migrants in the post-Mao era, the new middle class and wealthy migrants. The chapter traces the rapid feminization of migration, the expanding importance of student migration, and the new prominence of skilled migrants and investors. It also shows how a drastic expansion in the numbers of Chinese tourists going abroad has shaped diasporic trajectories. The chapter also traces the emergence of new diasporic institutions, such as emigration companies, tourist agencies, and real estate firms, and their role in the development of “new Chinatowns” or “ethnoburbs” in overseas destinations.