Today, virtually the entire world lives under the economic system called capitalism and most people alive have never known another. But as Trevor Jackson argues, it wasn't always capitalism, it didn't have to be capitalism and capitalism didn't have to be this way. How did it happen? With a firm grasp on history and economics and a keen eye for the telling anecdote, Jackson explains the rise of capitalism from the discovery of the New World to the First World War. A fast-paced work of global history that explores the role of Chinese mulberry trees, Dutch tulips and whale blubber-along with Spanish conquistadors, Mexican mine workers and English bankers-The Insatiable Machine traces capitalism's development from the accidental construction of an international monetary system to the creation of banking, the emergence of a new form of slavery, fossil-fuel industrialisation and finally the global capitalist system spread by imperialism.