The Age of Confiscation: Making and Taking Property in the Creation of the Modern World

A bold, revelatory account of how the greatest conflicts, atrocities, and social advancements of our time have all hinged on the seizure of property, for readers of Capital in the Twenty-First Century and Why Nations Fail.

Expropriation—the act of forcibly taking property—is usually associated with dictators and unstable countries. But in fact, it has been integral to the political and economic history of the West, enabling the abolition of serfdom and slavery, the Industrial Revolution, and essential parts of the modern welfare state. For better and for worse, much of our world today was built through the coercive acquisition of property, a process that will continue to shape our future.

In this groundbreaking history, Nicholas Mulder charts a new path from the eighteenth century to the present, showing how governments of all kinds—liberal and nationalist, socialist and fascist, imperialist and anticolonial—have dissolved and redistributed property rights in the service of their ideologies and ambitions. Ranging from the French Revolution to the Russo-Ukrainian war, from railway empires to oil nationalizations, and from the confiscation of patents to financial asset freezing, The Age of Confiscation upends our understanding of state-building and economic development, showing how they are at their core a struggle over property: its making and unmaking, transfer and conversion, and theft and restoration.

In the spirit of Thomas Piketty and Daron Acemoglu, Mulder reveals how the power to take property has shaped our past—and how, amid rising geopolitical competition, growing inequality, and climate change, it will mark our future.