The primary aim of this work was to search for the origins of the current relationship between capital and knowledge within the long history of colonial modernity. Drawing on the theoretical and political legacy of the postcolonial critique, we have assumed a fundamental continuity between this history and the current configuration of global postcolonial capitalism. On this basis, we have discussed the main theories concerning “knowledge society” and “knowledge economy”, with special regard to how they frame the relations between knowledge, labour, and capital, the distinction between intellectual and manual labour and its development, and their explicit or implicit temporalities.