What were the consequences of the German occupation for the economy of occupied Europe? After Germany conquered major parts of the European continent, it was faced with a choice between plundering the suppressed countries and using their economies to produce what it needed. The decision made not only differed from country to country but also changed over the course of the war. Individual leaders; the economic needs of the Reich; the military situation; struggles between governors of occupied countries and Berlin officials, and finally racism all had an impact on the outcome. In the end, in Western Europe and the Czech Protectorate, emphasis was placed on production for German warfare, which kept these economies functioning. New research, presented for the first time in this book, shows that as a consequence the economic setback in these areas was limited, and therefore post-war recovery was relatively easy. However, plundering was characteristic in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, resulting in partisan activity, a collapse of normal society and a dramatic destruction not only of the economy but in some countries of a substantial proportion of the labour force. In these countries, post-war recovery was almost impossible.

Britain and the United States share a common language, a liberal and cultural heritage, and a democratic political system. They also have pronounced differences, for their economic, political, and social structures have developed in distinctive ways. This book compares and contrasts the historical course of the two countries and explores the significance of their similarities and differences over a period of two centuries. The book offers wide ranging and up-to-date analyses of such issues as industrialization and urbanization, democracy and politics, class and gender, and citizenship and welfare. With contributions from leading scholars in both countries, it will be an invaluable resource for classrooms and seminar study, appealing to students of both history and social science. Some of the essays are classic expositions of debates that resonate on both sides of the Atlantic. Others are exemplary pieces that signal new agendas for research. Contributors: Anthony Badger, Mark Clapson, J.C.D. Clark, Clive Emsley, Mary K. Geiter, H.J. Habakkuk, Jeffrey Haydu, Ira Katznelson, Leon S. Marshall, David Morgan, Ann Shola Orloff, Gretchen Ritter, S.B. Saul, Theda Skocpol, W.A. Speck, and David Ward.

Drawing on materials ranging from archaeological findings to recent studies of migration issues and drug violence, William H. Beezley provides a dramatic narrative of human events as he recounts the story of Mexico in the context of world history. Beginning with the Mayan and Aztec civilizations and their brutal defeat at the hands of the Conquistadors, Beezley highlights the penetrating effect of Spain's three-hundred-year colonial rule, during which Mexico became a multicultural society marked by Roman Catholicism and the Spanish language. Independence, he shows, was likewise marked by foreign invasions and huge territorial losses, this time at the hands of the United States, who annexed a vast land mass-including the states of Texas, New Mexico, and California-and remained a powerful presence along the border. The 1910 revolution propelled land, educational, and public health reforms, but later governments turned to authoritarian rule, personal profits, and marginalization of rural, indigenous, and poor Mexicans. Throughout this eventful chronicle, Beezley highlights the people and international forces that shaped Mexico's rich and tumultuous history.

The forces of industrialisation, urbanisation, globalisation and technological change have washed away the pre-modern outlook of most Latin American economies. Despite the improved opportunities of social mobility offered by economic modernisation, current income inequality levels (still) appear extraordinary high. Has Latin America always been unequal? Did the region fail to settle a longstanding account with its colonial past? Or should we be reluctant to point our finger so far back in time? In a comparative study of asset and income distribution Frankema shows that both the levels, and nature, of income inequality have changed significantly since 1870. Besides the deep historical roots of land and educational inequality, more recent demographic and political-institutional forces are taken on board to understand Latin America's distributive dynamics in the long twentieth century.

Some see the 1980s as a Golden Age, a "Morning in America" when Ronald Reagan revived America's economy, reoriented American politics, and restored Americans' faith in their country and in themselves. Others see the 1980s as a new "Gilded Age," an era that was selfish, superficial, glitzy, greedy, divisive, and destructive. This multifaceted exploration of the 1980s brings together a variety of voices from different political persuasions, generations, and vantage points. The volume features work by Reagan critics and Reagan fans (including one of President Reagan's closest aides, Ed Meese), by historians who think the 1980s were a disastrous time, those who think it was a glorious time, and those who see both the blessings and the curses of the decade. Their essays examine everything from multiculturalism, Southern conservatism, and Reaganomics, to music culture, religion, crime, AIDS, and the city. A complex, thoughtful account of a watershed in our recent history, this volume will engage anyone interested in this pivotal decade.

In Studies on Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production British and Argentinian historians analyse the Asiatic, Germanic, peasant, slave, feudal, and tributary modes of production by exploring historical processes and diverse problems of Marxist theory. The emergence of feudal relations, the origin of the medieval craftsman, the functioning of the law of value and the conditions for historical change are some of the problems analysed. The studies treat an array of pre-capitalist social formations: Chris Wickham works on medieval Iceland and Norway, John Haldon on Byzantium, Carlos Garcia Mac Gaw on the Roman Empire, Andrea Zingarelli on ancient Egypt, Carlos Astarita and Laura da Graca on medieval Leon and Castile, and Octavio Colombo on the Castilian later Middle Ages. Contributors include: Chris Wickham, John Haldon, Carlos Astarita, Carlos Garcia Mac Gaw, Octavio Colombo, Laura da Graca, and Andrea Zingarelli.

Although there are many books in English on the city and state of Lucca, this is the first scholarly study to cover the history of the entire region from classical antiquity to the end of the fifteenth century. At one level, it is an archive-based study of a highly distinctive political community; at another, it is designed as a contribution to current discussions on power-structures, the history of the state, and the differences between city-states and the new territorial states that were emerging in Italy by the fourteenth century.
There is a rare consensus among historians on the characteristic features of the Italian city-state: essentially the centralization of economic, political, and juridical power on a single city and in a single ruling class. Thus defined, Lucca retained the image of an old-fashioned, old-style city-republic right through until the loss of political independence in 1799. No consensus exists with regard to the defining qualities of the Renaissance state. Was it centralized or de-centralized; intrusive or non-interventionist? The new regional states were all these things. And the comparison with Lucca is complicated and nuanced as a result.
Lucca ruled over a relatively large city territory, in part a legacy from classical antiquity. Lucca was distinctive in the pervasive power exercised over its territory (largely a legacy of the region's political history in the early and central middle ages). In consequence, the Lucchese state showed a marked continuity in its political organization, and precociousness in its administrative structures. The qualifications relate to practicalities and resources. The coercive powers and bureaucratic aspirations of any medieval state were distinctly limited, whilst Lucca's capacity for independent action was increasingly circumscribed by the proximity (and territorial enclaves) of more powerful and predatory neighbors.

What really caused the failure of the Soviet Union's ambitious plans to modernize and industrialize its agricultural system? This book is the first to investigate the gap between the plans and the reality of the Soviet Union's mid-twentieth-century project to industrialize and modernize its agricultural system. Historians agree that the project failed badly: agriculture was inefficient, unpredictable, and environmentally devastating for the entire Soviet period. Yet assigning the blame exclusively to Soviet planners would be off the mark. The real story is much more complicated and interesting, Jenny Leigh Smith reveals in this deeply researched book. Using case studies from five Soviet regions, she acknowledges hubris and shortsightedness where it occurred but also gives fair consideration to the difficulties encountered and the successes-however modest-that were achieved.

In Globalization and the Colonial Origins of the Great Divergence Pim de Zwart examines the Dutch East India Company's intercontinental trade and its effects on living standards in various regions on the edges of the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Contrary to conventional views, De Zwart finds significant evidence of the integration of global commodity markets, an important dimension of globalization, before the 1800s. The effects of this globalization, and the associated colonialism, were diverse and could vary between and within regions. As globalization and colonialism affected patterns of economic development across the globe they played a part in the rise of global economic inequality, known as the 'Great Divergence', in the early modern period.

Italy - born as one nation on March 17, 1861 - was a poor and backward country in the most Southern part of Europe. Most Italians lived a short and troubled life, with little prospect of giving their children a better future. That was how it had been for centuries in the Italian peninsula. In one and half centuries, the Italians astonished us by turning Italy into a country where living standards are among the highest in the world. The Dolce Vita found its home in Italy. How did such a transformation come about? The book provides an answer based on an impressive volume of newly-constructed historical statistics, and does so aided by an easilyt accessible and enjoyable narrative. In more than 20 years of research, Giovanni Vecchi has gathered tens of thousands of family accounts, so that the themes of economic inequality, poverty and vulnerability can at last be placed at the centre of the book. This history is written from the bottom up, starting with the elementary data, those coming from the lives of individuals and households. Measuring Wellbeing builds up the "macro" picture (the history) from the "micro" data (the stories). The concept of wellbeing is, by its very nature, multidimensional and must therefore include the non-monetary aspects of life: nutrition, health and education, but also less tangible elements such as freedom or the possibility to exercise one's political rights. The book deals with this polyhedral nature of wellbeing using a uniform method. Great effort has been taken not to exercise the reader with technical details, but tables and graphs have nevertheless been included because they are decisive tools for readers to gain insight and keep up their guard against the fallacy of what at first sight may seem to be incontrovertible.

This book is an economic analysis of the "Kipper und Wipper" inflation of 1619-23, the most serious German inflation before the hyperinflation following World War I, with a particular focus on how it affected people's lives and behavior. The volume features full-page reproductions of rare contemporary broadsheets--early forerunners of the modern newspaper--with striking illustrations and engaging texts. Published here in their entirety and for the first time in superb English translation, they are a unique window on society at the time and give a voice to the people who were actually devastated by the inflation.

Japan's emergence as a modern state in the middle of the nineteenth century was a unique socio-political event. The accompanying economic development - achieved without tariff autonomy and with practically no injection of foreign capital - was certainly no less remarkable. A major portion of this important volume discusses how this transformation was accomplished.This important book presents a unique insight into the institutional development of capitalism in Japan through a series of Shigeto Tsuru's papers, some of which are published here for the first time. The volume also includes a critical appraisal of Japan's economy during her invasion of China, discussion of general historical trends in capitalism and an assessment of the present, and future, economic problems of Japan. The Economic Development of Modern Japan will be welcomed by scholars and students with an interest in Japan's economic development and her present and future role in the world. Economic Theory and Capitalist Society, the first volume of Shigeto Tsuru's essays, is also available.

Victorian Britain offered to the globe an economic structure of unique complexity. The trading nation, at the heart of a great empire, developed the practices of advanced capitalism - currency, banking, investment, money markets, business practices and theory, intellectual property legislation - from which the financial systems of the contemporary world emerged. Cultural forms in Victorian Britain transacted with high capitalism in a variety of ways but literary critics interested in economics have traditionally been preoccupied either with writers' hostility to industrial capitalism in terms of its shaping of class, or with the development of consumerism. Victorian Literature and Finance is the first extended study to take seriously the relationships between literary forms and those more complex discourses of Victorian high finance. These essays move beyond the examination of literature that was merely impatient with the perceived consequences of capitalism to analyse creative relationships between culture and economic structures. Considering such topics as the nature of currency, women and the culture of investment, the profits of a modern media age, the dramatization of risk on the Victorian stage, the practice of realism in relation to business theory, the culture of speculation at the end of the century, and arguments about the uncomfortable relationship between literary and financial capital, Victorian Literature and Finance sets new terms for understanding and theorizing the relationship between high finance and literary writing in the nineteenth century.

This volume explores early-modern formations of economic thought and policy in a country widely regarded as having followed a unique, non-Western path to capitalism. In discussing such topics as money and the state, freedom and control, national interest ideology, shogunal politics and networks, case studies of the Saga Domain and Ryukyu Kingdom, Confucian banking, early Meiji entrepreneurship, and relationships between macroeconomic fluctuations and policy, the essays here deepen and revise our understanding of early-modern Japan. They also enlarge and refine the analytical vocabulary for describing early-modern economic thought and policy, thereby raising issues of interest to scholars of world history and economic thought outside of Japan or East Asia.

The growth of rural industry in China since 1978 has been explosive. Much of the existing literature explains its growth in terms of changes in economic policy. By means of a combination of privatization, liberalization and fiscal decentralization, it is argued, rural industrialization has taken off. This book takes issue with such claims. Using a newly constructed dataset covering all of China's 2000 plus counties and complemented by a detailed econometric study of county-level industrialization in the provinces of Sichuan, Guangdong and Jiangsu, the author demonstrates that history mattered. More precisely, it is argued that the development of rural industry in the Maoist period set in motion a process of learning-by-doing whereby China's rural workforce gradually acquired an array of skills and competencies. As a result, rural industrialization was accelerating well before the 1978 climacteric. The growth of the 1980s and 1990s is therefore likely to be a continuation of this process. Without prior Maoist development of skills, the growth of the post-1978 era would have been much slower, and perhaps would not have occurred at all - as has been the case in countries such as India and Vietnam. This is not to say that the Maoist legacy was without flaw. Many of the rural industries created under Mao were geared towards meeting defence-related objectives resulting in inefficiencies, and there can be no question that post-1978 policy changes facilitated the growth process. But without the Maoist inheritance, rural industrialization across China would have been unsuccessful.

Japan and South Korea are two of the most important success stories in recent economic history. Both countries have succeeded in achieving remarkably high growth rates to transform themselves from isolated agricultural societies to major industrial powers.In The Economics of Rapid Growth, Dirk Pilat uses catch-up theory to explain why countries with lower levels of income can use the technology of more advanced economies to foster growth and industrialization. His analysis emphasizes the importance of pre-existing education levels, financial and commercial institutions and infrastructure to explain the rapid economic growth of Japan and Korea. A growth accounting framework is used to show the contribution of capital, labour and land to the rapid economic growth from the early 1950s. This growth is put in an international perspective by detailed sectoral productivity comparisons which include discussion of some of the measurement problems implicit in international comparisons. The final parts of the book look at the links between productivity and competitiveness, as well as the role of trade policy and exports in productivity growth. This acclaimed book will be widely read by researchers, students and policymakers concerned with growth, development and the emergence of two of the most powerful economies in the modern world.

The rapid development of a series of technologically advanced, industrial economies in the post-war period has challenged conventional understandings of economic growth. The emergence of these economies has reinvigorated the long-standing debate about why some countries grow quickly, and reach high levels of productivity, while others fall behind. Until the emergence of the new growth theory, few neoclassical economists focused upon this important issue despite the existence of a rich tradition among economic historians and economists from more heterodox traditions. The Dynamics of Technology, Trade and Growth draws upon contributions of scholars from different theoretical backgrounds to discuss why economies succeed, or fail, in creating the infrastructure, finance and technology to develop rapidly and 'catch-up' with others. After an overview by the editors of theoretical and practical developments in the economics of convergence and divergence, the book features chapters which discuss the origins of the post-war catch-up and convergence boom, convergence in trade and sectoral growth, capital accumulation, investment and resource allocation, specialization, technological change, and the potential contribution of information and communication technologies. The distinguished contributors bring together in one volume a breadth of scholarship on economic growth, convergence and divergence, ensuring that this book will be widely read by economists interested in growth, technical change and economic development.

This engaging and intelligent book argues that the unbridled impact of deregulated market forces will lead to social polarization and ultimately to the destruction of capitalist society as we know it today. After providing a lucid and accessible overview of the development of capitalism, Professor Brenner explains how human greed was confined within legal boundaries and shows how ingenuity rather than brute force ultimately became the source of wealth. He explores the interaction between ideas, behaviour and economic change and points out comparisons between scientific ideas and the phases of economic development. He warns that, by an inner logic, deregulated capitalism must necessarily lead to increased inequality and to the waning of those elements in bourgeois culture which are necessary for the proper functioning of a technologically advanced industrial economy.Written in a lively and non-technical style, the book will appeal not only to economists but also to other social scientists and historians concerned with the history and development of modern capitalist society.