This chapter considers how histories of world systems, specifically global capitalism, are narrated in Salman Rushdie’s fiction. From capitalism’s emergence in The Enchantress of Florence, and the novel’s narration of early modern Mughal and Florentine world systems, through to Midnight’s Children’s depiction of India’s independence and the incipient rise of uneven neoliberal property speculation in Bombay, and The Golden House’s depiction of transnational elites and Bombay money laundering, this chapter maps Rushdie’s shifting representation of the world system, including the failures of the ‘optimism disease’ of postcolonial India and early modern global secular humanism, and how forms like magic realism and cinematic realism limn the emergence of neoliberalism and constellate the end of US hegemony.