How Global Violence & Warlords Built the Modern World | The Killing Age (Audiobook/Lecture)
What if capitalism's founding economist lived one mile from the apparatus that would destroy the planet and chose not to look?
In this audiobook lecture on the Introduction to The Killing Age: How Violence Made the Modern World (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Clifton Crais (Emory University) argues that destruction, not ingenuity, made the modern world. Its primary agents were not armies or statesmen, but warlords, men who combined lethal weapons with banks, bonds, and insurance to extract wealth from humans and animals alike.
ADAM SMITH AND THE WORLD HE DIDN'T SEE
In 1773 London, Adam Smith completes The Wealth of Nations, a vision of free markets and peaceful commerce. One mile away, ships loaded with thousands of guns for Africa while others arrived filled with BEIC plunder from South Asia. Smith knew this world existed. He chose not to write about it.
1784: THE YEAR IT ALL CONVERGED
The year Watt filed his steam engine patent, over 200,000 guns entered Africa, nearly 100,000 enslaved people were shipped to the Americas (the highest since 1514), and over a million wild North American mammals were killed and sold. Capitalism's "Big Bang" was not a technological accident. It was accumulation by annihilation.
WARLORDS AS THE REAL CREATORS OF MODERNITY
Part loan shark, part gangster, part gun dealer, warlords combined firearms with modern finance to turn anything killable into a commodity. The BEIC's army was twice the size of Britain's in 1800. Andrew Jackson went from hunting Native Americans and trafficking enslaved people to the US presidency. Robert Clive and Warren Hastings looted a subcontinent.
SLAVERY, ECOCIDE, AND THE ORIGINS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
Human and environmental destruction were one process. Between 16 and 24 million people died to produce 13 million Atlantic slaves. Over 70 million bison were reduced to 350. Whale oil bankrolled America's fossil fuel economy. By the 1830s, the UK and US (responsible for 99% of global CO₂
from 1750–1900) were already warming the planet. Global warming began in the era of slavery.
THE MODERN PARALLELS
The Seven Years' War (1756-1763) was fought not by armies but by warlords, private militias, South Asian princes, and the Iroquois Confederacy. History since the 1970s repeats the pattern: weak states, spreading weapons, private military companies. The AK-47 is today's flintlock. Congo's coltan and cobalt flow through warlord economies. The nightmare Benjamin's angel of history watches pile up is still growing.
📖 The Killing Age: How Violence Made the Modern World by Clifton Crais
University of Chicago Press | ISBN: 978-0-226-82741-4
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/...
Companion website: thekillingage.com
⏱ TIMESTAMPS
00:00:00 - Adam Smith in London, 1773: The Wealth of Nations
00:05:30 - London's Financial Apparatus: Bank of England, Insurance, and Debt
00:08:14 - The Waterfront Smith Never Saw: Guns to Africa, BEIC Loot
00:09:55 - The Industrial Revolution Began with Weapons, Not Cloth
00:10:07 - 1784: Watt's Steam Engine and the Peak Slave Trade Converge
00:12:38 - Capitalism's "Big Bang": Accumulation by Annihilation
00:13:10 - Warlords as the Real Creators of Modernity
00:14:08 - 1784 in Numbers: 100,000 Enslaved, 200,000+ Guns
00:15:28 - Saint-Domingue (Haiti): Wealth and Violence Intertwined
00:17:41 - Fur Trade Ecocide and the Slave Trade as One System
00:18:07 - North America's Real Industrial Revolution: Whaling
00:20:40 - Deaths of Non-Human Animals: 1,000 Species Lost Since 1500
00:22:58 - The Bison Massacre: From 70 Million to 350
00:27:13 - The Great Divergence: Britain and the US as Global Polluters
00:28:51 - CO₂ Emissions: UK and US Responsible for 99% of 1750-1900 Total
00:30:34 - Early Industrial Warming: Climate Change Began in the Era of Slavery
00:34:09 - Accumulation by Annihilation: Primeval Killing + Modern Finance
00:36:17 - War as Ancient Organized Violence: Thucydides and Hobbes
00:40:50 - The Military-Commercial Revolution Defined
00:44:49 - The Seven Years' War: The First World War of Warlords
00:47:56 - Portrait of the Warlord: Loan Shark, Gangster, Gun Dealer
00:51:02 - The New Barbarism: How the 1970s Mirrors the 18th Century
00:52:06 - Modern Warlordism: Congo Coltan, Niger Delta Oil
00:55:12 - Robert Clive, Warren Hastings, and Andrew Jackson as Warlords
00:58:52 - How Warlords and Industry Created Global Warming
01:00:46 - Voices of Resistance: Modernity's Earliest Environmental Activists
01:03:38 - Walter Benjamin's Angel of History and the "Storm of Progress"
01:04:54 - Road Map: Overview of Parts 1–6 of The Killing Age