Forum: Máté Rigó’s Capitalism in Chaos: How the Business Elites of Europe Prospered in the Era of the Great War
Rezumat
Abstract: This forum explores Capitalism in Chaos: How the Business Elites of Europe Prospered in the Era of the Great War (2022), a historical monograph that reshapes long-standing understandings of the political and economic upheavals surrounding the First World War and its aftermath. By juxtaposing Alsace-Lorraine and Transylvania, Máté Rigó offers a masterful comparative study that reveals how business elites—rather than aristocrats or ordinary citizens—transformed the volatility of imperial collapse into opportunities for continuity and influence. Reviewers highlight the book’s methodological rigor, linguistic breadth, and innovative use of borderland perspectives. Together, their insights underscore Rigó’s central contribution: borderlands function not as peripheral zones of decline but as crucibles for the tensions of statehood, capitalism, and ethnicity. Capitalism in Chaos thus reframes these regions as dynamic transnational sites in which modern Europe was continually constructed and reconstructed by actors adept at converting disorder into strategy.
Keywords: Business elites, Comparative history, Transylvania, World War I, Economic continuity, Political instability, Alsace-Lorraine, Austro-Hungarian Empire
Citation suggestion: Ban, Cornel, Anna Adorjáni, Roland Clark, Valer Simion Cosma, Elena Maria Cautiș, Alina- Sandra Cucu, and Oana Mateescu. “Forum: Máté Rigó’s Capitalism in Chaos: How the Business Elites of Europe Prospered in the Era of the Great War”. Transilvania, no. 9 (2025): 76-85.
https://doi.org/10.51391/trva.2025.9.09.
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