Cameralism and the Enlightenment reassesses the relationship between two key phenomena of European history often disconnected from each other. It builds on recent insights from global history, transnational history and Enlightenment studies to reflect on the dynamic interactions of cameralism, an early modern set of practices and discourses of statecraft prominent in central Europe, with the broader political, intellectual and cultural developments of the Enlightenment world. Through contributions from prominent scholars across the field of Enlightenment studies, the volume analyzes eighteenth-century cameralist authors' engagements with commerce, colonialism and natural law. Challenging the caricature of cameralism as a German, land-locked version of mercantilism, the volume reframes its importance for scholars of the Enlightenment broadly conceived. This volume goes beyond the typical focus on Britain and France in studies of political economy, widening perspectives about the dissemination of ideas of governance, happiness and reform to focus on multidirectional exchanges across continental Europe and beyond during the eighteenth century. Emphasizing the practice of theory, it proposes the study of the porosity of ideas in their exchange, transmission and mediation between spaces and discourses as a key dimension of cultural and intellectual history.

In the context of growing public interest in sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has not brought about the expected improvement in terms of sustainable business. Self-regulation has been unable to provide appropriate answers for unsustainable business frameworks, despite empirical proof that sustainable behaviour is entirely in corporate enlightened self-interest. The lack of success of the soft law approach suggests that hard law regulation may be needed after all. This book discusses these options, alongside the issue of shareholder primacy and its externalities in corporate, social, and natural environment. To escape the "prisoner's dilemma" European corporations and their global counterparts have found themselves in, help is needed in the form of EU hard law to advocate sustainability through mandatory rules. This book argues that the necessity of these laws is based on the first-mover's advantage of such corporate law approach towards sustainable development. In the current EU law environment, where codification of corporate law is sought for, forming and defining a general EU policy could not only help corporations embrace this self-enlightened behaviour but could also build the necessary "EU corporate citizenship" atmosphere. Considering the developments in the field of CSR as attempts to mitigate negative externalities resulting from inappropriate shareholder primacy use, the book is centred around a discussion of the shareholder primacy paradigm, its legal position and its (un)suitability for modern global business. Going beyond solely legal analysis, juxtaposing legal principles and argumentation with economic theoretic approaches and, more importantly, real-life examples, this book is accessible to both professionals and academics working within the fields of business, economics, corporate governance and corporate law.

This volume examines the place of Marxist theory in the history of the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory, primarily through the selection and exploration of typical and significant articles exploring Marxist-related themes in the journal over time. The title, From Radical Marxism to Knowledge Socialism, reflects this historical approach. In the 1960s and 1970s, Marxism was considered to be a radical, extreme 'political' theory, while western liberalism and a free-market economy were largely taken for granted as natural phenomena, in western philosophy of education and in the journal. More recently, educational theorists have begun to explore trends related to the neoliberal age. Paradoxically, such trends include the move toward knowledge socialism, which decenters the normative presuppositions of knowledge capitalism as the latest iteration of western liberalism. The volume begins with an introductory chapter that examines the history of Marxism in western philosophy and philosophy of education. The rest of the book features works selected from the journal that further illustrate the evolution of Marxist theoretical perspectives in the field over time. This collection thus gives a sense of the range and extent of Marxist-inspired thinking in educational philosophy and theory. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of educational philosophy and theory and others who are interested in exploring in depth the evolution of key themes in this field over time, including liberalism, ideology, Marxism, neoliberalism, knowledge construction, capitalist and socialist schooling, and other aspects of economic analysis in education.

From an international perspective the Swedish economy has some unique features and therefore affords a most interesting model for researchers in economic history. The country has experimented with numerous economic strategies including pre-Keynesian policies in the 1930s, active labour market policies and an extensive welfare system. This book covers the most important aspects of the Swedish economy: two brief sections concerning historiography and offering a general background to the subject are followed by a selection of articles on demography, migration, the labour market, agriculture, industrialization, transport, trade, industrial organization, finance and economic policy. The volume brings together a unique and comprehensive collection of the most significant studies on the development of the Swedish economy since 1870. Several of the contributions appear for the first time in English.

From the 1890s to the 1940s, French State and entrepreneurial companies were enticed to promote French interests, beyond mere colonial targets, for the sake of economic patriotism. Chinese concessions, not including Hong Kong, were thus inserted into geo-economic moves, and French stakeholders asserted their philosophy of competition, and displayed their means of influence and investment. In this book, the author assesses the challenges which confronted French actors in the face of powerful British imperial action overseas, all the more so because German Belgian, Japanese, and then also North-American competitors joined the fray. The book targets three concessions: Canton/Guangzhou, Tientsin/Tianjin, and Hankeou/Wuhan because of their significance in the emergence of a modern economy in the country. The three main sections of the book explore the position of French stakeholders, mainly businessmen, merchant houses, bankers, and a few industrialists, in these three port-cities and China overall. The chapters gauge their capital of influence and networking, commercial tools, and banking skills in the face of competition, the hardships of crossing the changes in economic productive systems or clusters in the various port-cities and their areas, rich with commercial offshoots. Also, several chapters underscore the uncertainties caused by geopolitical and military events in China. For each of the three concessions, commercial and banking systems, assessments of the successes and limits of the French bankers and merchants are investigated, with the aim of evaluating the reality of French entrepreneurialism and power in the regions prospected by the offshoots of French capitalism. The book will be an invaluable resource for academics interested in the history of banking and finance, business, entrepreneurship, colonialism and "economic patriotism" in Chinese history, in geo-economics and in connected history.

This is a coordinated presentation of the economic basis of revolutionary change in 16th- and early-17th century England, addressing a crucial but neglected phase of historical development. It traces a transformation in the agrarian economy and substantiates the decisive scale on which this took place, showing how the new forms of occupation and practice on the land related to seminal changes in the general dynamics of commercial activity. An integrated, self-regulating national market generated new imperatives, particularly a demand for a right of freedom of trade from arbitrary exactions and restraints. This took political force through the special status that rights of consent had acquired in England, based on the rise of sovereign representative law following the Break with Rome. These associations were reflected in a distinctive merchant-gentry alliance, seeking to establish freedom of trade and representative control of public finance, through parliament. This produced a persistent challenge to royal prerogatives such as impositions from 1610 onwards. Parliamentary provision, especially legislation, came to be seen as essential to good government. These ambitions led to the first revolutionary measures of the Long Parliament in early 1641, establishing automatic parliaments and the normative force of freedom of trade.

Various strains of heterodox economics have sought, and largely failed, to dismount orthodoxy from its dominant position. This book critiques the criticizers, explaining why heterodox economics challenges have faltered, and then presents a coherent alternative paradigm of its own. This simultaneously exposes the vacuousness of neoclassical economics, the limitations of heterodox critique and the subverting of Karl Marx's revolutionary economic thought by his own disciples. The book draws in particular on two key intellectual traditions in making its arguments: critical realism and Marxism. From the refounding of critical realist philosophy of science in the hands of Roy Bhaskar, emphasis is placed upon the position that the ontological nature of the object of study determines the form of its possible science. However, in their theoretical constructions, neither orthodox economics nor heterodox economics problematizes the unique ontology of capitalism to the detriment of knowledge about the social world. The book maintains that a century of misthinking over Marx's corpus has resulted in a missed opportunity to construct a paradigmatic alternative to orthodox economics. Drawing upon the tradition of the Japanese Uno approach to Marxism, and supported by Bhaskar's development of critical realism as underlaborer for science, the book defends Marx's writing in his monumental Capital as founding an economic science adequate to its ontological object of study. It then elaborates upon how Marxian economic theory exposes the hidden scourges of capitalism and what is required to unleash the potential of this theory for comprehensive analysis of capitalist vicissitudes, the study of economic life in precapitalist societies and the design of a desperately needed postcapitalist social order. Broadening its appeal as it sets out to reclaim Marx's revolutionary legacy, this original volume critically traverses writings in mainstream and heterodox economics, cutting edge philosophy of science and Marxian political economy and introduces readers to a reconstruction of Marx's Capital engineered in Japan. This provocative book is essential reading for everyone interested in heterodox economics, critical realism, Marxian economics and critiques of capitalism.

This book is about the introduction of modern power-driven rice milling to the main rice exporting countries of Burma (Myanmar), Siam (Thailand) and French Indo-China (Vietnam) from 1869. Rich in historical and empirical sources, the book draws extensively from the London Rice Brokers' Association Circular archives, published monthly from 1869 to 2014, as well as numerical data gathered from historic trade and custom reports. It outlines how rice had been exported in the husk to be milled in Britain prior to 1869, after which mills were transferred to Asia and the rice shipped back having been milled. Rice processed in Asia is explained not only as a major saving in transport costs, but the marker of a crucial step in the industrialisation of Asia - namely through the introduction of modern mechanised value adding rice mills powered by steam engines. This is a reversal of the concept that the development of modern technology de-industrialised Asia, turning it into a supplier of raw materials. Later chapters address the inter-war years, when Chinese companies in particular took over the operation of mills and developed an Asia-wide market for rice milled in the great milling centers of Rangoon (Yangon), Bangkok and Saigon (Ho Chi Minh). Rice and Industrialisation in Asia will prove a valuable resource to students and scholars of economic history, postcolonial studies, and Asian studies more broadly.

A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST ECONOMICS BOOK OF THE YEAR A THE ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Brilliantly conceived and enlightening at every turn' Lawrence Wright We have long been suspicious of corporations recklessly pursuing profit and amassing wealth and power. But the story of the corporation didn't have to be like this. For most of history, they were not amoral entities, but public institutions designed to promote the societies that granted them charter. Magnuson reveals how the corporation has evolved since its beginnings in the ancient world. What happens in this next chapter of the global economy depends on whether we can return to their public-minded spirit, or whether we have sunk irrevocably into the swamp of high profit at all costs. Epic and compelling in scope, For Profit illuminates the roles corporations played, for good and evil, in the making of the modern world.

The control of competition is designed, at best, to reconcile socioeconomic stability with innovation, and at worst, to keep competitors out of the market. In this respect, the nineteenth century was no more liberal than the eighteenth century. Even during the presumed liberal nineteenth century, legal regulation played a major role in the economy, and the industrial revolution was based on market institutions and organisations formed during the second half of the seventeenth century. If indeed there is a break in the history of capitalism, it should be situated at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with the irruption of mass production, consumption and the welfare state, which introduced new forms of regulation. This book provides a new intellectual, economic and legal history of capitalism from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. It analyzes the interaction between economic practices and legal constructions in France and compares the French case with other Western countries during this period, such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and Italy.

Looking from the 11th century to the 20th century, Kuroda explores how money was used and how currencies evolved in transactions within local communities and in broader trade networks. The discussion covers Asia, Europe and Africa and highlights an impressive global interconnectedness in the pre-modern era as well as the modern age. Drawing on a remarkable range of primary and secondary sources, Kuroda reveals that cash transactions were not confined to dealings between people occupying different roles in the division of labour (for example shopkeepers and farmers), rather that peasants were in fact great users of cash, even in transactions between themselves. The book presents a new categorization framework for aligning exchange transactions with money usage choices. This fascinating monograph will be of great interest to advanced students and researchers of economic history, financial history, global history and monetary studies.

The Routledge Companion to Business History is a definitive work of reference, and authoritative, international source on business history. Compiled by leading scholars in the field, it offers both researchers and students an introduction and overview of current scholarship in this expanding discipline. Drawing on a wealth of international contributions, this volume expands the field and explores how business history interacts theoretically and methodologically with other fields. It charts the origins and development of business history and its global reach from Latin America and Africa, to North America and Europe. With this multi-perspective approach, it illustrates the unique contribution of business history and its relationship with a range of other disciplines, from finance and banking to gender issues in corporations. The Routledge Companion to Business History is a vital source of reference for students and researchers in the fields of business history, corporate governance and business ethics. "This collection is an excellent starting point for understanding the field and finding areas where business history, management theory, and social science can intersect." Canadian Business History Newsletter, January 2019

This important new study examines the market trade of medieval England from a new perspective, by providing a wide-ranging critique of the moral and legal imperatives that underpinned retail trade. James Davis shows how market-goers were influenced not only by practical and economic considerations of price, quality, supply and demand, but also by the moral and cultural environment within which such deals were conducted. This book draws on a broad range of cross-disciplinary evidence, from the literary works of William Langland and the sermons of medieval preachers, to state, civic and guild laws, Davis scrutinises everyday market behaviour through case studies of small and large towns, using the evidence of manor and borough courts. From these varied sources, Davis teases out the complex relationship between morality, law and practice and demonstrates that even the influence of contemporary Christian ideology was not necessarily incompatible with efficient and profitable everyday commerce.

Sifra Lentin's 'Mercantile Bombay', - reclaims Mumbai's legacy as a global financial center in the 21st century; - explores why Mumbai has all essential elements to become one today while tracing the city's mercantile history; - will be of great interest to policy makers, city-headquartered business houses, financial institutions and its people.

Originally published in 1973, the aim of this work was to discuss the various factors governing the rate of growth of the British economy since the First World War. It endeavours to explain - or at least to provide the groundwork for an explanation of - the movements of aggregate production and productivity in this period. In so doing it examines two particular, and partly antithetical questions: why Britain exceeded the predictions of economic theorists who, until at least the Second World War, had forecast a retardation of growth in all mature industrial economies; and why, especially since 1950, the economy has expanded less quickly than many professional economists, and almost all politicians, thought possible. The authors look, in turn, at the changing trends in effective economic demand, both domestic and foreign; the supply of labour and capital; and the role of management and the state in fostering growth. Their object is to produce a balanced mixture of the available historical and statistical evidence and the relevant economic theory. They introduce their readers, at the same time, to the more specialized works of both disciplines. The book is the product of a fruitful collaboration between an economist and a historian, both with considerable experience in teaching students, combining their two subjects. It marries, accordingly, the qualities of apt and informative use of evidence, wide-ranging theoretical discussion, and clarity of exposition.

Religion and the Early Modern British Marketplace explores the complex intersection between the geographic, material, and ideological marketplaces through the lens of religious belief and practice. By examining the religiously motivated markets and marketplace practices in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England, Scotland, and Wales, the volume presents religious praxis as a driving force in the formulation and everyday workings of the social and economic markets. Within the volume, the authors address first spiritual markets and marketplaces, discussing the intersection of Puritan and Protestant Ethics with the market economy. The second part addresses material marketplaces, including the marriage market, commercial trade markets, and the post-Reformation Catholic black market. In the third part of the volume, the chapters focus specifically on publication markets and books, including manuscripts and commonplace books, as well as printed volumes and pamphlets. Finally, the volume concludes with an examination of the literary marketplace, with analyses of plays and poems which engage with and depict both spiritual and material markets. Taken as a whole, this collection posits that the "modern" conception of a division between religion and the socioeconomic marketplace was a largely fictional construct, and the chapters demonstrate the depth to which both were integrated in early modern life.

David Ricardo has been acclaimed - or vilified - for merits he would never have dreamt of, or sins for which he was entirely innocent. Entrenched mythology labels him as a utilitarian economist, an enemy of the working class, an impractical theorist, a scientist with 'no philosophy at all' and the author of a formalist methodological revolution. Exploring a middle ground between theory and biography, this book explores the formative intellectual encounters of a man who came to economic studies via other experiences, thus bridging the gap between the historical Ricardo and the economist's Ricardo. The chapters undertake a thorough analysis of Ricardo's writings in their context, asking who was speaking, what audience was being addressed, with what communicative intentions, using what kind of lexicon and communicative conventions, and starting with what shared knowledge. The work opens in presenting the different religious communities with which Ricardo was in touch. It goes on to describe his education in the leading science of the time - geology - before he turned to the study of political economy. Another chapter discusses five 'philosophers' - students of logic, ethics and politics - with whom he was in touch. From correspondence, manuscripts and publications, the closing chapters reconstruct, firstly, Ricardo's ideas on scientific method, the limits of the 'abstract science' and its application, and, secondly, his ideas on ethics and politics and their impact on strategies for improving the condition of the working class. This book sheds new light on Ricardian economics, providing an invaluable service to readers of economic methodology, philosophy of economics, the history of economic thought, political thought and philosophy.

Humanity and Nature in Economic Thought: Searching for the Organic Origins of the Economy argues that organic elements seen as incompatible with rational homo economicus have been left out of, or downplayed in, mainstream histories of economic thought. The chapters show that organic aspects (that is, aspects related to sensitive, cognitive or social human qualities) were present in the economic ideas of a wide range of important thinkers including Hume, Smith, Malthus, Mill, Marshall, Keynes, Hayek and the Polanyi brothers. Moreover, the contributors to this thought-provoking volume reveal in turn that these aspects were crucial to how these key figures thought about the economy. This stimulating collection of essays will be of interest to advanced students and scholars of the history of economic thought, economic philosophy, heterodox economics, moral philosophy and intellectual history.

Of Poverty and Wealth: Eric Hobsbawm, Barry Supple and Gareth Stedman Jones is a collection of interviews that is being published as a book for the first time. These interviews have been conducted by one of England's leading social anthropologists and historians, Professor Alan Macfarlane. Filmed over a period of several years, the three conversations in this volume are part of the series Creative Lives and Works. These transcriptions form a part of a larger set of interviews that cut across various disciplines, from the social sciences and the sciences to the performing and visual arts. The current volume is on three pre-eminent economic historians. There are many factors that lead to the rise and fall of power, in which wealth, trade and commerce, play a vital role. In this collection, Eric Hobsbawm takes us through the fundamental and broader concepts of economic history, while Barry Supple and Gareth Stedman Jones bring in the more focussed and often less discussed aspects of this branch of history. Through these engaging conversations one gets a better understanding of poverty and wealth in the context of history. The book will be of enormous value not just to those interested in the subject of Economics History and Comparative Studies but also to the uninitiated because of the lucidity which conversations bring to even otherwise opaque discussions. Please note: This title is co-published with Social Science Press, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Almost all economists, whether classical, neoclassical or Marxist, have failed in their analyses of capitalism to consider the underpinning systems of accounting. This book draws attention to this lacuna, focusing specifically on the concept of capital: a major concept that dominates all teaching and practice in both economics and management. It is argued that while for the practitioners of capitalism - in accounting and business - the capital in their accounts is a debt to be repaid (or a thing to be kept), for economists, it has been considered a means (or even a resource or an asset) intended to be worn out. This category error has led to economists failing to comprehend the true nature of capitalism. On this basis, this book proposes a new definition of capitalism that brings about considerable changes in the attitude to be had towards this economic system, in particular, the means to bring about its replacement. This book will be of significant interest to readers of political economy, history of economic thought, critical accounting and heterodox economics.

The Western literature on the history of Chinese economic thought is sparse, and comparisons with the history of Western economic thought even more so. This pioneering book brings together Western and Chinese scholars to reflect on the historical evolution of economic thought in Europe and China. The international panel of contributors cover key topics such as currency, usury, land tenure, the granary system, welfare, and government, and special attention is given to monetary institutions and policies. The problem of "good government" emerges as the unifying thread of a complex analysis that includes both theoretical issues and applied economics. Chinese lines of evolution include the problem of the agency of the State, its ideological justification, the financing of public expenditure, the role played by the public administration, and the provision of credit. The early radical condemnation of usury in the Near East and in the West gives way to theoretical justifications of interest-taking in early capitalist Europe; they, in turn, lead to advances in mathematics and business administration and represent one of the origins of modern economic theory. Other uniting themes include the relationship between metallic and paper money in Chinese and European experiences and the cross-fertilization of economic practices and ideas in the course of their pluri-millennial interactions. Differences emerge; the approach to the organization of economic life was, and still is, more State-centred in China. The editors bring together these analytical threads in a final chapter, opening wider horizons for this new line of comparative economic research which is important for the understanding of modern ideological turns. This volume provides valuable reading for scholars in the history of economic thought, economic history and Chinese studies.

Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not provides a striking new answer to the classic question of why Europe industrialised from the late eighteenth century and Asia did not. Drawing significantly from the case of India, Prasannan Parthasarathi shows that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the advanced regions of Europe and Asia were more alike than different, both characterized by sophisticated and growing economies. Their subsequent divergence can be attributed to different competitive and ecological pressures that in turn produced varied state policies and economic outcomes. This account breaks with conventional views, which hold that divergence occurred because Europe possessed superior markets, rationality, science, or institutions. It offers instead a groundbreaking rereading of global economic development that ranges from India, Japan and China to Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire and from the textile and coal industries to the roles of science, technology, and the state.

This second volume on the political and social economy of financialization in the US focuses on the consequences of the rise of finance for the American macroeconomy, household inequality, and the management of nonfinancial business enterprises. A historical-institutional balance-sheet approach to long-term trends and recent change in the US reveals a series of anomalies and provisos for critical, heterodox, and mainstream economic approaches and provides new perspectives on debates about political economic change in advanced economies since the 2007-2008 financial crisis. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on financialization and studies in social economics, household economics, the structure and management of nonfinancial business enterprises, and American political economy.

The strict conversation of financial capital allows accountants to preserve capitalism in its current form. Thus, building a more humane economy will require a new accounting model. Humanitarian Ecological Economics and Accounting: Capitalism, Ecology and Democracy argues for the adoption of a CARE model: comprehensive accounting in respect of ecology. This new model will take the traditional weapons of capitalist accounting and turn them against capitalism, with a goal to protect and conserve human and natural capital within the framework of a democratic society. The CARE model has been conceived as the potential basis of a new type of market economy and of a new type of governance of firms and nations. Additionally, this allows for a new conception of capital, cost and profit that helps with moves towards a society of the commons. The first part of the book explores the reconstruction of accounting and economics from the ground up, outlining the theoretical basis for the model. The second part of the book explores the transformation of the governance of firms and nations. Finally, an additional section is dedicated to the conception of a new model of national accounting. This book will be of significant interest to readers of ecological economics, critical accounting and heterodox economics.

In an attempt to make sense of changes that have taken place in the workplace worldwide, especially since the last quarter of the twentieth century, the two concepts of Fordism and Post-Fordism are often invoked. These volumes perform a valuable service to social scientists in bringing together important previously published contributions which explore this field. In their selection of articles, the editors range from the Fordism of Henry Ford to its oft-touted modern management successors - Japanisation and Toyotaism, flexible specialisation, lean production and McDonaldisation. They also provide useful criticisms of each of these developments. The editors have written an authoritative introduction which offers an informative discussion of the issues.