This is where the long history of colonialism's entanglement with capitalism helps us move beyond the sound and fury of contemporary scandals and grasp the longer pattern of resource appropriation that gives shape to today's developments. Long before Karl Marx identified it as a force in the world, capital was already expanding in the sixteenth century, in the period most commonly identified with historical colonialism and the emergence of the Spanish, Portuguese, and British empires. Capital was acquiring new territories from which to extract resources and new bodies from which to extract labor. Those close relations between colonialism and capitalism (indeed, between colonialism and modernity in general) are important to our story; they help us grasp what is distinctive about the current expansionary phase of capitalism.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 41