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.

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.

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.

This book challenges conventional wisdom by revealing an extensive and heterogeneous community of foreign businesses in Australia before 1914. Multinational enterprise arrived predominantly from Britain, but other sender nations included the USA, France, Germany, New Zealand, and Japan. Their firms spread out across Australia from mining and pastoral communities, to portside industries and CBD precincts, and they operated broadly across mining, trading, shipping, insurance, finance, and manufacturing. They were a remarkably diverse population of firms by size, organisational form, and longevity. This is a rare study of the impact of multinationals on a host nation, particularly before World War One, and that focuses on a successful resource-based economy. Deploying a database of more than 600 firms, supported by contemporary archives and publications, the work reveals how multinational influence was contested by domestic enterprise, other foreign firms, and the strategic investments of governments in network industries. Nonetheless, foreign agency - particularly investment, knowledge and entrepreneurship - mattered in the economic development of Australia in the nineteenth as well as the twentieth centuries. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in Australian and international economic and business history, the history of economic growth and scholars of international business.

The unprecedented urbanization of the 19th century prompted a range of theoretical and empirical writings on the city. Some of these writings addressed specific urban problems, especially relating to infrastructure, housing and poverty. Others were more generally concerned with the nature and texture of city life. This set collects together some of the most significant writings on the city from the period 1898 to 1938. Primarily dealing with North America and the UK, the volumes nonetheless reflect the experience of rapid urban growth, making them particularly relevant to many of the newly industrializing countries. In all some nine volumes are reproduced in their entirety, and these are supplemented by an original introduction and collection of contemporary essays.

Thorough study of the people of Bukhara and their relations with settled peoples and nomads, from Muscovy to China, and Iran to India. The book deals fully with dynastic, internal and external problems, trade routes, coinage policies and the khans' attempts to encourage trade.

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.

Originally published between 1920-70, "The History of Civilization" was a landmark in early-20th-century publishing. It was published at a formative time within the social sciences, and during a period of decisive historical discovery. The aim of the general editor, C.K. Ogden, was to summarize the most up-to-date findings and theories of historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and sociologists.

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 book depicts the Early Modern book markets in Europe and colonial Latin America. The nature of book production and distribution in this period resulted in the development of a truly international market. The integration of the book market was facilitated by networks of printers and booksellers, who were responsible for the connection of distant places, as well as local producers and merchants. At the same time, due to the particular nature of books, political and religious institutions intervened in book markets. Printers and booksellers lived in a politically fragmented world where religious boundaries often shifted. This book explores both the development of commercial networks as well as how the changing institutional settings shaped relationships in the book market.

From West Indian sugar and bottles of Southeast Asian arrack to French red wines, English felt cloth, and Mediterranean lemons, many global wares ended up in the Scandinavian borderlands during the late eighteenth century. This book explores how and why these goods came to be there and analyses what smuggling can reveal about the emergence of global trade, the formation of the nation state, and the development of consumer society in Europe's northernmost outskirts. This book shows that the global underground was ubiquitous in the Nordic countries and fundamentally altered them, politically, economically, socially, and culturally. Through re-evaluating the role of smuggling the book complements and challenges established historical accounts about state building, market dynamics, consumer culture, and ideas and identity. It also offers a roadmap for how to think about illegal global trade and how to approach this notoriously difficult research field. By integrating illegality, the book aims to show how an illicit web entangled often overlooked 'peripheral' territories with traditional 'portals of globalisation' and proposes a novel take on early modern globalisation and the paths to modernity in the European hinterlands. To achieve this a wide variety of sources are used including court records, administrative sources, diaries, ambassadorial correspondence, and maps in various languages including Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, English, and French. This book makes a significant contribution to the literature on economic history, the first wave of globalisation, the study of shadow economies, and Scandinavian history more broadly.

In recent years, there have been a number of new developments in what came to be known as the "Capital Theory Debates". The debates took place mainly during the 1960s as a result of Piero Sraffa's critique of the neoclassical theory according to which the prices of factors of production directly depend on their relative scarcities. Sraffa showed that when income distribution changes, there are many complexities developed within the economic system impacting on prices in ways which are not possible to predict. These debates were revisited in the 1980s and again more recently, along with a parallel literature that has developed among neoclassical economists and has also looked at the impact of shocks on an economy. This book summarizes the debates and issues around the theory of capital and brings to the fore the more recent developments. It also pinpoints the similarities and differences between the various approaches and critically evaluates them in light of available empirical evidence. The focus of the book is on the price trajectories induced by changes in income distribution and the resulting shape of the wage rates of profit curves and frontier. These issues are central to areas such as microeconomics, international trade, growth, technological change and macro stability analysis. Each chapter starts with the theoretical issues involved, followed by their formalization and subsequently with their operationalization. More specifically, the variables of the classical theory of value and distribution are rigorously defined and quantified using actual input-output data from a number of major economies, but mainly from the USA, over long stretches of time. The empirical results are not only consistent with the anticipations of the theory but also further inform and therefore strengthen its predictive content raising new significant questions.

Based on new archival research, this is the first comprehensive study of the failure of international co-operation to combat the Great Depression. The book explores the impact of protectionism, reparations and war debts, as well as the more well known disagreements on monetary issues which, together, helped to prolong the most profound economic depression of the twentieth century. The economic and diplomatic lessons drawn from this period by the major powers - particularly German intelligence as to the deep divisions in Anglo-American economic relations - also provide an important contribution to understanding the origins of the Second World War and the diplomatic and economic order created in its aftermath.

Formed in 1839, the Anti-Corn Law League was one of the most important campaigns to introduce the ideas of economic liberalism into mainstream political discourse in Britain. Seeking the abolition of a tariff barrier that buttressed the economic and political power of the land-owning aristocracy, the League presented itself as the vanguard of the emerging industrial middle class in Victorian Britain. Its aspiration for free trade played a crucial role in defining the agenda of 19th-century liberalism and shaping the modern British state. The League's faith in the free market has had resonances in the debates debates over public policy in Britain during recent years, and it also set the pattern for individuals and groups which have stood outside the Establishment articulating alternative visions of society. This study of the Anti-Corn Law League makes use of recent methodological developments in social history.

'...a tightly argued and excellent book.' - William D. Wray, Journal of Japanese Studies;How did Japan, despite her lack of natural resources, become the world's leading iron and steel producing country? This book examines how the collaboration between government and industry created this economic miracle.

This book explores imperial power and the transnational encounters of shipowners and merchants in the South China Sea from 1840 to 1930. With British Hong Kong and French Indochina on its northern and western shores, the 'Asian Mediterranean' was for almost a century a crucible of power and an axis of economic struggle for coastal shipping companies from various nations. Merchant steamers shipped cargoes and passengers between ports of the region. Hong Kong, the global port city, and the colonial ports of Saigon and Haiphong developed into major hubs for the flow of goods and people, while Guangzhouwan survived as an almost forgotten outpost of Indochina. While previous research in this field has largely remained within the confines of colonial history, this book uses the examples of French and German companies operating in the South China Sea to demonstrate the extent to which transnational actors and business networks interacted with imperial power and the process of globalisation.

The spread of currency convertibility is one of the most dramatic trends of the late twentieth century. It reflects the desire of policymakers to integrate their economies into the global trading system and to attract financial capital and direct investment from abroad. In this book a team of leading international economists and economic historians look at parallel situations in the history of the international monetary system, focusing in particular on the gold standard. The concluding chapter uses a case study of modern Portugal to draw out implications for modern international monetary relations in Europe and for the rest of the world.

This book is the fourth and final collection of Professor R.B. Serjeant's articles on the trade, commerce and society of South Arabia and the Yemen. The early articles concern trade; customary law is the next subject represented with social history and one or two incidental articles completing the volume.

As the first book to examine the origins and spread of agriculture and pastoralism in Europe and Asia as a whole, this major contribution should be essential reading for archaeologists, anthropologists, biologists and geographers. Adopting a novel approach to the subject, the authors examine it first in terms of seven different disciplinary perspectives: social, ecological, genetic, linguistic, biomolecular, epidemiological and geogrpahical. Then, 20 case studies are presented, which are based primarily on archaeological and biological evidence and which relate to three major regions: Southwest Asia, Europe and Central Asia to the Pacific. The book concludes with an overview of Eurasia as a whole.; The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture had revolutionary consequences for human society. It led to the emergence of urban civilizations and ultimately to humanity's almost complete dependence on relatively few domesticated animals and plants. The subject has been much studied, but the results have tended to be interpreted largely in terms of local cultural sequences, with insufficient comparison made with evidence from other areas. In contrast, this book provides a continental- scale framework, with its scope extended to pastoralism because in Eurasia both the raising of livestock and the cultivation of crops were integral components of the agricultural "revolution" from its inception some 10,000 years ago.; Comprehensive and authoritative, "The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia" should appeal strongly to the wide readership of students and specialists concerned with the prehistoric antecedents of modern civilization.

This collection, by an economist who participated in many of the events described, sketches the more important economic developments from the end of the Second World War to the early 1980s. In so doing, it brings together a series of papers which were produced by Sir Alec Cairncross during this period. The topics covered include: economic development in the immediate post-war period, including some long neglected issues, such as the role of economists in the wartime government of Britain; sterling crises and devaluation during the 1960s and 1970s; the wider view and long-term issues involved, including a review of some of the economic ideas that have influenced the British government since the war. The importance of ecomomic history as an intellectual discipline is central and sets the context for the entire work. This study is intended to be of use for all those seeking to understand the course of post-1945 economics.

The British mercantilist writers of the 17th and 18th centuries had great influence on modern economics. Their writings, especially on trade and on money, have had an impact both through their ideas and by shaping the language in which subsequent economic debate took place. This text demonstrates that the mercantilists were more subtle and balanced economists than Smith and his followers alleged. Far from naively confusing wealth and money, the writers produced sophisticated accouts of the workings of the economic system which show a complex response to the political economy of the time. The texts reproduced range from Thomas Mun's "A Discourse of Trade from England Unto the East..." (1621) to Jacob Vanderlint's " Money answers to all things..." (1734). Other writers featured include Edward Misselden, John Cary, Joshua Child, John Locke, Charles Davenant and Matthew Decker.

"Will delight the visual learner. ... For the college student, the general reader, and the merely curious". -- American Reference Book Annual

"Schmidt has filled a large gap. ... Superior quality, wide coverage, and considerable excellence". -- Journal of World History

A comprehensive and in-depth history of the 20th century English home, how it has been created, and how it works for people. It focuses on the various influences bearing on the development of domestic space since 1914 and covers both design and housing policy. Current debates from participation to co-operative housing are examined and several themes not previously brought together are linked, e.g. urban development/house design; technology at home/women and home; social meaning of home.

The Bretton Woods system ensured a quarter of a century of relative stability on the world's financial markets. The quarter of a century which has followed has brought financial chaos and excessive financial volatility. Exchange Rate Chaos: 25 Years of Financial and Consumer Democracy describes and compares US and British financial history during this period. It highlights: * similarites in financial developments between the two countries * consumer democracy: Have the wishes of consumers dominated exchange rate policy? * The decline of the small investor and the hegemony of financial institutions * How the floating exchange rates are manipulated to government advantage One of the few financial histories to deal with the postwar period, this book shows how financial developments have shaped contemporary society and politics.