Book excerpt: Capitalism and Colonial Production (1982) examines the ways in which capitalism has transformed the societies it came to dominate, and the link between colonialism and capitalism. These essays confront the complex of issues, using as material the various countries in Asia. They advance the debate by reconsidering the problems involved by identifying pre-colonial modes of production and by analysing the precise details of the changes wrought by colonial domination. They argue that capitalism does not in these countries co-exist side-by-side with feudalism, but that colonialism has created distinctive forms of capitalism depending for their character on pre-colonial modes of production.