This chapter presents a critical analysis of how historians have used the concept of capitalism. It argues that the financial history of capital needs to be integrated more fully into the histories of all social relations if we want to use history to refine a ‘presentist’ concept about financial power and its effect on society and political choice. It is a contention of what has been termed the ‘new history of capitalism’ that financial history is often too narrowly institutional in that it focuses to narrowly on economic growth and not the social effects of financialisation on broader society. Finance, in these histories, when socialised, is generally presented as having a negative role on broader social relations. However, capital was created institutionally through relations of interdependence first, and then once created was used by those who accumulated great amounts of it to become more powerful.