Che Guevara is an iconic figure, four decades after his death. Yet his most significant contribution is largely unknown--his work as a member of the Cuban government is rarely discussed. This book explores his impact on Cuba's economy, through fascinating new archival material and interviews.

The Pre-Industrial Cities Reader is designed to be used on its own or as a companion volume to the accompanying Pre-Industrial Cities: Open University textbook, in the same series. Compiled as a reference source for students, this reader is divided into three main sections, presenting key readings on: Ancient Cities, Medieval and Early Modern Cities, and Pre-Industrial Cities in China and Africa. Among the technologies discussed are: agricaultural innovations such as the heavy plough, water transport, the medieval road revolution, the first urban public transport, aqueducts, building materials such as brick and Roman concrete, weaponry and fortifications, water clocks, street lighting, and fire-fighting. Among the cities covered are: Uruk, Babylon, Thebes, Athens, Rome, Constantinople, Baghdad, Siena, Florence, Antwerp, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Mexico City, Hangzhou, Beijing and Hankou.

Series Information:
RoutledgeCurzon Studies in the Growth Economies of Asia

This is a study of the long-run evolution of the relationship between China and the world economy. The book presents an original interpretation of the country's socio-economic processes in the past 150 years, focusing on China's interaction with the expanding capitalist world economy. The author argues that the general thrust of China's quest for development or modernization has been to catch up with the wealthy nations of the West, and goes on to explain the changing paths and outcomes.

Economic theory reached its highest level of analytical power and depth in the middle of the nineteenth century among John Stuart Mill and his contemporaries. This book explains classical economics when it was at its height, followed by an analysis of what took place as a result of the ensuing Marginal and Keynesian Revolutions that have left economists less able to understand how economies operate. Chapters explore the false mythology that has obscured the arguments of classical economists, clouding to the point of near invisibility the theories they had developed. Steven Kates offers a thorough understanding of the operation of an economy within a classical framework, providing a new perspective for viewing modern economic theory from the outside. This provocative book not only explains the meaning of Say's Law in an accessible way, but also the origins of the Keynesian revolution and Keynes's pathway in writing The General Theory. It provides a new look at the classical theory of value at its height that was not based, as so many now wrongly believe, on the labour theory of value. A crucial read for economic policy-makers seeking to understand the operation of a market economy, this book should also be of keen interest to economists generally as well as scholars in the history of economic thought.

This book focuses on the macro factors behind underdevelopment. The author builds two macro foundations which lead to an understanding of the economic conditions a society must satisfy in order to exist, survive, and develop. Social subsistence is used as the entry point and fundamental principle, while both production and distribution survival conditions are formulated. Demography plays a large role in the analysis. Economic history and the history of economic thought are reinterpreted through the lens of macro foundations. The author posits the need for lesser-developed countries to achieve survival conditions as the fundamental basis for economic progress.

This set reprints works by, and about, Swedish economists working between the turn of the century and 1960. The volumes contain a number of recent articles, monographs and collections of essays. Examples are given of the lively involvement in public affairs and public discussions by the generations of economists under consideration. The editor provides an overview of Swedish economics, as well as growth and specialization within the discipline. Amongst the schools and individuals included are the early neo-classical scholars Knut Wicksell, Gustav Cassel and Eli Heckscher, the Stockholm School, including Erik Lindahl, Gunner Myrdal, Bertil Ohlin, Erik Lundberg and politically influential trade economists such as Rudolf Meidner and Gosta Rehn.

The Showa Period covers the reign of Emperor Hirohito (1926-1989), encompassing war and destruction of the Japanese empire, the occupation, recovery from the ruins of war and Japan's emergence as an economic superpower. But what defines Showa historically? What sets Showa apart from the history of Meiji and Taisho Japan? Whereas historians have traditionally approached this question by splitting "prewar" and "postwar" the emphasis in this anthology is on long-term continuities which were decisive in shaping modern Japan. The readings address such crucial issues as the nature of the imperial state, why Japan embarked upon war early in the period, the impact of the occupation, the dilemmas of Japanese democracy, the social costs and international repercussions of exceptionalism, and Japan's evolving world role. With 1945 marking the beginning of a new era, the emphasis in this anthology is on long-term continuities which were decisive in shaping modern Japan. The readings address such crucial issues as the nature of the imperial state, why Japan embarked upon war early in the period, the impact of the occupation, the dilemmas of Japanese democracy, the social costs and international

This new Companion provides a wealth of information on the history of Germany since the Second World War including much material which is not readily available. Throughout, equal attention is devoted to East and West Germany and covers political, social, cultural, and economic developments. The author provides information on, for example, political parties and office-holders; living standards, crime and the environment; Germany's relationship with the European Union; and East Germany up to 1990. Attention is also devoted to topical issues such as opposition and dissent in the East, terrorism, neo-nazism and racial violence. An essential reference book for anyone studying, or teaching, postwar Germany in history or politics departments.

Contending that Japan's industrial and imperial revolutions were also geographical revolutions, Karen Wigen's interdisciplinary study analyzes the changing spatial order of the countryside in early modern Japan. Her focus, the Ina Valley, served as a gateway to the mountainous interior of central Japan. Using methods drawn from historical geography and economic development, Wigen maps the valley's changes--from a region of small settlements linked in an autonomous economic zone, to its transformation into a peripheral part of the global silk trade, dependent on the state. Yet the processes that brought these changes--industrial growth and political centralization--were crucial to Japan's rise to imperial power. Wigen's elucidation of this makes her book compelling reading for a broad audience.

Series Information:
Routledge Studies in the History of Economics

During the first decades of the twentieth century, modern states fighting World War I and II for the first time experimented with feeding-and starving-entire populations. Within the new globalizing economy, food became intimately intertwined with waging war. In Europe, starvation claimed more lives than any other weapon of war. As Alice Weinreb shows in Modern Hungers, nowhere was this more apparent than in Germany, initiator and loser of both wars. The end of armed conflict in 1945 did not mean that such military strategies declined in significance. Fears of hunger and fantasies of abundance were instead reframed within a new political system that saw the world as divided between capitalism and communism. Divided Germany rapidly became the key European stage for the Cold War. During the postwar decades, Europeans lived longer, possessed more goods, and were healthier than ever before. Nothing signaled this shift more clearly than the disappearance of famine from the continent. So powerful was the experience of post-1945 abundance that it is hard today to imagine a time when the specter of hunger haunted Europe, demographers feared that malnutrition would mean the end of whole nations, and the primary targets for American food aid was Belgium and Germany rather than Africa. Yet under both capitalist and communist systems, economic growth and political priorities proved inseparable from the modern food system. Drawing on sources ranging from military records to cookbooks to economic and nutritional studies from East and West German archives, Modern Hungers reveals similarities and striking ruptures in popular experience and state policy relating to the industrial food economy. It thus offers historical context for many key contemporary concerns ranging from humanitarian food aid to the gender-wage gap to the obesity epidemic.

Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, or geography that determines prosperity or poverty? As Why Nations Fail shows, none of these factors is either definitive or destiny.

Drawing on fifteen years of original research, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is our man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it). Korea, to take just one example, is a remarkably homogenous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created those two different institutional trajectories.

Acemoglu and Robinson marshal extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today.

This book examines the industrial ecology of 200 years of ironmaking with renewable resources in the Salisbury district of northwestern Connecticut.

First Published in 1997. This is a case study of changing land-use patterns in Brittany over nearly 2000 years.

ANC land reform started on a good footing with the RDP, but has since moved to a policy of supporting entrepreneurial emerging middle-class black farmers rather than the immiserated rural subsistence farmers. This has shifted government funding and support towards the urban areas leaving rural areas destitute.

In State Power in Land Reform, the author relies on a robust theoretical frame, extensive policy analysis and empirical data to advocate for a new engagement with local communities through rejuvenated municipalities, that is, through strong local institutions.

State Power in Land Reform provides a valuable analytical account for both the historian and the archive.

Trade across the Pacific will be one of the dominant forces in the economy of the next century. This collection reflects the birth of Pacific Rim history, until recently largely neglected. It addresses the development of the Pacific Rim over four centuries, combining broad historical syntheses with a range of essays on specific topics, from trade with Hong Kong to British overseas banking. It will form a major contribution to this rapidly expanding new field.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203065352

Economists and historians have viewed the events of the 1920s, the stock market boom and crash, the Great Depression and the New Deal, as largely independent events. This work provides an integrated view of this important period arguing that all of these events were the result of the electrification of U.S. industry from 1910 to 1926. The author goes from electrification through the stock market boom to the tariffs of the late 20s to the stock market crash and depression followed by the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933. The conclusion is that the NIRA is an attempt to correct the imbalance between production and consumption caused by industrial electrification.

Jacob Viner's The Customs Union Issue was originally published in 1950 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It set the framework for the contemporary debate over the benefits or otherwise of preferential trading agreements such as the European Union, NAFTA, and APEC. Viner developed the concepts of trade creation and diversion in this work as he pioneered the analysis of the global politics of trade agreements. This revival of Viner's classic work includes an introduction that places this book in the context of his life's work and the post-WWI economic and political situation. The introduction also traces the reception of Viner's work and discusses its continuing relevance for international economists, political scientists, and historians.

In Search of Ireland argues that Ireland's political problems are created by conflicts and confusions of identity. It brings together a number of distinguished contributors, each of whom examines a particular aspect of Ireland's diverse cultural geography and history. Issues covered include: the changing definitions of Irishness the roles of class and gender in constructing traditional alignments of identity the role of ethnicity in Irish society the invention and imagining of Irish 'place' the political implications of a pluralistic Ireland The contributors demonstrate that many people both inside and outside of Ireland continue to define themselves and their conflicts through simple sectarian stereotypes. The authors argue that politicians and others must reject these outdated either/or representations and accommodate instead the fluidity of Irish identity. James Anderson, University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne S.J. Connolly, Queens's University, Belfast Neville Douglas, Queen's University, Belfast Brian Graham, University of Ulste

Offering a fresh take on a crucial phase of European history, this book explores the years between the 1980s and 1990s when the European Union took shape. Whilst contributing to existing literature on the Maastricht Treaty and European integration at the end of the twentieth century, the book also brings those debates into the twenty-first century and makes connections with longer-term issues. The transformation of the European political climate in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2008, and the watershed Brexit vote in 2016, has made it all the more urgent to reconsider the way scholars and opinion-makers have looked at European integration in the past. Drawing from recently released archival documents, the authors analyse European cooperation as part of the broader international history in which it unfolded, taking into account the changes in the Cold War order and the advance of a new phase of globalisation. Comparing and contrasting the debates, objectives and achievements of the 1980s and 1990s with the current political landscape of the European Union, this book proposes a novel interpretation of the choices that were made during the Maastricht years, and of their longer-term consequences.

This volume describes the history of the borough of Arundel, with its noted castle, religious houses, and Roman Catholic cathedral, and 11 rural and suburban parishes in the adjoining coastal region of Sussex, including the seaside resorts of Felpham and Middleton. Always densely settled, though suffering from coastal erosion, the area was notable for fishing and for riverine and maritime trade, as well as agriculture and, from the 19th century, for market gardening. In the 20th century it became partly devoted to tourism and to accommodating pensioners and London commuters near the coast, and fashionable criminals at Ford open prison. New light industries also developed.

The first six volumes in our series Regional Handbooks of Economic Development examine key issues affecting the economic growth of developing regions in Asia and Europe. The series is designed to help non-specialist readers understand a variety of complex factors -- social and political as well as economic -- that will bear on a region's economic growth as it moves into the next century.

Each volume begins with an explanation of the region's economic conditions within an historical and political context. Then follow approximately 20 chapter-length essays, each prepared by a recognized expert in the field, analyzing such factors as a region's population, natural resources, foreign trade, banking and financial structure, as well as the role of multi-national corporations, the problems of labor and economic inequalities in the region, etc.

GorbacheV's reforms in domestic and foreign policy were motivated by the overriding objective of making Soviet socialism a legitimate and viable alternative among the world community of nations. Drawing on recently opened archives, this study examines the radicalization of GorbacheV's reforms and the resistance to them from the conservatives in the party apparat and the military. Gorbachev sought to demilitarize the Soviet Union from the beginning but that process took on a more revolutionary hue as he came to understand how deeply embedded Stalinism was. He sought to continue where Lenin had left off, believing that Stalin had sidetracked and deformed Soviet socialism. Toward this end, Gorbachev redefined the image of the enemy by emphasizing common human values in international relations over class conflict, and altered the nature of the threat by stressing the primacy of economic over military competition. Gorbachev changed the terms of political discourse, and by changing the way in which the Soviet Union viewed the world, he sought to make improvements in relations with the West and to decrease the military burden of his overstretched country.