From Artisan to Worker examines the largely overlooked debate over the potential reestablishment of guilds that occurred from 1776 to 1821. The abolition of guilds in 1791 overturned an organization of labor that had been in place for centuries. The disorder that ensued - from concerns about the safety of the food supply to a general decline in the quality of goods - raised strong doubts about their abolition and sparked a debate both inside and outside of government that went on for decades. The issue of the reestablishment of guilds, however, subsequently became intertwined with the growing mechanization of production. Under the Napoleonic regime, the government considered several projects to restore guilds in a large-scale fashion, but the counterargument that guilds could impede mechanization prevailed. After Bonaparte's fall, the restored Bourbon dynasty was expected to reorganize guilds, but its sponsorship of an industrial exhibition in 1819 signaled its endorsement of mechanization, and after 1821 there were no further efforts to restore guilds during the Restoration.

Literary and Cultural Production, World-Ecology, and the Global Food System marks a significant intervention into the field of literary food studies. Drawing on new work in world literature, cultural studies, and environmental studies, the essays gathered here explore how literary and cultural texts have represented and responded to the global food system from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Covering topics such as the impact of colonial monocultures and industrial agriculture, enclosure and the loss of the commons, the meatification of diets, the toxification of landscapes, and the consequences of climate breakdown, the volume ranges across the globe, from Thailand to Brazil, Cyprus to the Caribbean. Whether it is anxieties over imported meat in late Victorian Britain, labour struggles on Guatemalan banana plantations, or food dependency in Puerto Rico, the contributors to this volume show how fiction, poetry, drama, film, and music have critically explored and contributed to food cultures worldwide.

West German Industrialists and the Making of the Economic Miracle investigates the mentality of post-war German (heavy) industrialists through an analysis of their attitudes, thinking and views on social, political and, of course, economic matters at the time, including the 'social market economy' and how they saw their own role in society, with this investigation taking place against the backdrop of the 'economic miracle' and the Cold War of the 1950s and 60s. The book also includes an assessment of whether the self-declared, new 'aristocracy of merit' justified its place in society and carried out its actions in a new spirit of political responsibility. This is an important text for all students interested in the history of Germany and the modern economic history of Europe.

The economic crisis of 2007/2008 has prompted much debate as to what caused it and what remedies may be implemented in order to regain a healthy economy. This book addresses these issues through the lens of capitalism with a focus on labour economics, arguing that capitalism, and the employment of young people and migrants, may be a suitable antidote to the ongoing political crises in Europe that are taking place as a result of the financial crisis. Using economic history and the history of economic thought to inform debate, Is Capitalism Still Progressive?: A Historical Approach will be of interest to policy makers (especially in emerging countries), students and researchers interested in exploring the pros and cons, and persistence, of the capitalist system.

The Silk Road was the current name for a complex of ancient trade routes linking East Asia with Central Asia, South Asia, and the Mediterranean world. This network of exchange emerged along the borders between agricultural China and the steppe nomads during the Han Dynasty (206BCE-220CE), in consequence of the inter-dependence and the conflicts of these two distinctive societies. In their quest for horses, fragrances, and spices, gems, glassware, and other exotics from the lands to their west, the Han Empire extended its dominion over the oases around the Takla Makan Desert and sent silk all the way to the Mediterranean, either through the land routes leading to the caravan city of Palmyra in Syria desert, or by way of northwest India, the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea, landing at Alexandria. The Silk Road survived the turmoil of the demise of the Han and Roman Empires, reached its golden age during the early middle age, when the Byzantine Empire and the Tang Empire became centers of silk culture and established the models for high culture of the Eurasian world. The coming of Islam extended silk culture to an even larger area and paved the way for an expanded market for textiles and other commodities. By the 11th century, however, the Silk Road was in decline because of intense competition from the sea routes of the Indian Ocean. Using demand and supply as the framework for analyzing the formation and development of the Silk Road, the book examines the dynamics of the interactions of the nomadic pastoralists with sedentary agriculturalists, and the spread of new ideas, religions, and values into the world of commerce, thus illustrating the cultural forces underlying material transactions. This effort at tracing the interconnections of the diverse participants in the transcontinental Silk Road exchange will demonstrate that the world had been linked through economic and ideological forces long before the modern era.

This book examines the history of empire and its influence on capitalism. Taking inspiration from Vladimir Lenin's essay Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, the thoughtful chapters explore how workers and resources in Africa, Latin America, and Asia were exploited by capitalist colonizers. Particular attention is given to the empires of Great Britain, Russia, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States. This book aims to trace the historical development of capitalism and its reliance of colonialism, and is relevant to those interested in economics, development studies, international relations, and global politics.

This open access book considers a pivotal era in Chinese history from a global perspective. This book's insight into Chinese and international history offers timely and challenging perspectives on initiatives like "Chinese characteristics", "The New Silk Road" and "One Belt, One Road" in broad historical context. Global History with Chinese Characteristics analyses the feeble state capacity of Qing China questioning the so-called "High Qing" (sheng qing ) era's economic prosperity as the political system was set into a "power paradox" or "supremacy dilemma". This is a new thesis introduced by the author demonstrating that interventionist states entail weak governance. Macao and Marseille as a new case study aims to compare Mediterranean and South China markets to provide new insights into both modern eras' rising trade networks, non-official institutions and interventionist impulses of autocratic states such as China's Qing and Spain's Bourbon empires.

This book explores the changing nature of social movements and economic elites in post-Second World War Europe. In the years following 1945, Europe faced diverse challenges connected by the overriding question of how the reconstruction of the continent should proceed. For the Central Powers, the implementation lay in the hands of the Allied occupying forces who organised the process of denazification and the establishment of a new economic order. In countries without military occupation, there was a deep gap between the new governmental forces and the former collaborators. In both cases, social movements which were formed by anti-fascists on the left of the political spectrum assumed the task of social reorganisation. The chapters in this book explore the discourses about economic systems and their elites which moved to the fore across a range of European countries, uncovering who was involved, what resistance these social movements faced and how these ultimately failed in the West to bring about change, while in Eastern Europe Stalinism forcibly imposed change.

From professional team sports to international events such as the Olympics and Tour de France, the modern sports industry continues to attract a large number of spectators and participants. This book, edited by John K. Wilson and Richard Pomfret, analyzes the economic evolution of sports over the last 150 years, from a pastime activity to a big business enterprise. It begins at a time when entrepreneurs and players first started making money from professional sports leagues, through to the impact of radio and TV in the twentieth century, and on to the present day. Using examples from sports across the world, the chapters cover such important issues as player migration, labor market restrictions, stadium arrangements and the rise and fall of workplace provisions. Unlike most sports economic texts, the contributors featured here provide insights into the historical origins of many practices and policies peculiar to the industry. This historical perspective casts light onto the development of practices, such as labor market regulations and public policies, which have become more prevalent in the modern age. The non-technical, user-friendly nature of this book will appeal to many students, particularly those enrolled in sports economics courses - a field of study which is increasingly common. Academics will also find this book to be a timely reference for their research and teaching. Contributors include: L. Borrowman, A. Carter, J. Cranfield, L. Frost, A.K. Halabi, K. Inwood, A. Kawaura, S. La Croix, M. Lightbody, J.-F. Mignot, R. Pomfret, J.A. Ross, W. Vamplew, J.K. Wilson

Why and how has the Business Corporation come to exert such a powerful influence on American Society? The essays here take up this question, offering a fresh perspective on the ways in which the business corporation has assumed as enduring place in the modern capitalist economy, and how it has affected American society, culture and politics over the past two centuries. The authors challenge standard assumptions about the business corporation's emergence and performance in the United States over the past two centuries. Reviewing in depth the different theoretical and historiographical traditions that have treated the corporation, the volume seeks a new departure that can more fully explain this crucial institution of capitalism. Rejecting assertions that the corporation is dead, the essays show that in fact it has survived and even thrived down to the present in part because of the ways in which it has related to its social, political and cultural environment. In doing so, the book breaks with older explanations ground in technology and economics, and treats the corporation for the first time as a fully social institution. Drawing on a variety of social theories and approaches, the essays help to point the way toward future studies of this powerful and enduring institution, offering a new periodization and a new set of questions for scholars to explore. The range of essays engages the legal and political position of the corporation, the ways in which the corporation has been shaped by and shaped American culture, the controversies over corporate regulation and corporate power, and the efforts of minority and disadvantaged groups to gain access to the resources and opportunities that corporations control.

The only comprehensive bibliography on Reconstruction, this book provides the definitive guide to literature published from 1877 to 1998. In over 2,900 entries, the work covers a broad range of topics including politics, agriculture, labor, religion, education, race relations, law, family, gender studies, and local history. It encompasses the years of the Civil War through the conclusion of the 1876 election and the end of the federal government's official role in reforming the postwar South and protecting the rights of Black citizens. In detailed annotations, the book covers a range of literature from scholarly and popular studies to published memoirs, letters and documents, as well as reference sources and teaching tools.

The issues of Reconstruction--civil rights, states' rights and federal-state relations, racism, nationalism, government aid to individuals--continue to be relevant today, and the literature on Reconstruction is large. This book provides a systematic and comprehensive bibliographic guide to that literature. It is organized by topics and geographical regions and states, thereby emphasizing the local diversity in the South. In addition to a variety of literature, it covers the relevant Supreme Court cases through 1883, provides full citations to federal acts and cases cited, and includes the texts of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. The book will be useful to scholars and students researching a wide range of topics in Southern history, constitutional history, and national politics in post Civil War United States.

This book is a work of contemporary economic history focusing primarily on the US and the UK. It shows that, historically, much of the wealth of the ultra-wealthy has been based on inheritance, tax evasion, political influence, or wage theft. Today, much of the wealth of the rentier class-the super-rich-is based on income from ownership or control of scarce assets, or assets artificially made scarce. As a result, the super-rich reap much of their wealth from patents, monopolies, and subsidies. Their banks retain the right to speculate on risky derivatives, and their credit-card companies are not limited by usury laws that reduce interest rates. The super-rich have lowered (or escaped) inheritance taxes, shifted much of their income to lower taxed capital gains, practiced wage theft, fought minimum wage laws, outsourced jobs, and resorted to temps and contract labor to avoid unions and decent wages. They use tax havens where trillions of dollars remain untaxed, transfer profits of their intellectual and financial property to subsidiaries in low-tax regimes, and defend for-profit health insurance that is unaffordable and inequitable for millions. This book states in qualitative and quantitative terms how expensive the super-rich have become, why they are unsustainable for the rest of us, and what the way forward to greater economic equality may be. In sum, the super-rich are unaffordable.

This is the first collection of essays dedicated to the topics of money and economics in the English literature of the late Middle Ages. These essays explore ways that late medieval economic thought informs contemporary English texts and apply modern modes of economic analysis to medieval literature. In so doing, they read the importance and influence of historical records of practices as aids to contextualizing these texts. They also apply recent modes of economic history as a means to understand the questions the texts ask about economics, trade, and money. Collectively, these papers argue that both medieval and modern economic thought are key to valuable historical contextualization of medieval literary texts, but that this criticism can be advanced only if we also recognize the specificity of the economic and social conditions of late-medieval England.

This book discusses the work of German economists Gustav von Schmoller and Adolph Wagner, its influence on the tradition of German and Austrian economic and social thought, and its implications for the discipline today. Schmoller and Wagner integrated philosophical, historical, sociological and political approaches into the science of economics, focusing specifically on economic development. Schmoller, who is considered the head of the second generation of the German Historical School, argued that general propositions of economic theory had to be based on historical-empirical studies. In contrast, Wagner was a systematologist who preferred to start his investigations into economic problems from abstract principles. Schmoller and Wagner share, however, a common focus on institutions and the role of the state; Wagner favored state policy initiatives, while Schmoller was concerned with the risks of state policy failure. One hundred years after their deaths, the contributions to this book look into their approach, trace the influence of their ideas, and explore the relevance of their thought in a global economy. This book will be useful for students and scholars interested in socio-economics, the history of economic thought, economic policy, and political science.

Following the Brexit vote, this book offers a timely historical assessment of the different ways that Britain's economic future has been imagined and how British ideas have influenced global debates about market relationships over the past two centuries. The 2016 EU referendum hinged to a substantial degree on how competing visions of the UK should engage with foreign markets, which in turn were shaped by competing understandings of Britain's economic past. The book considers the following inter-related questions: - What roles does economic imagination play in shaping people's behaviour and how far can insights from behavioural economics be applied to historical issues of market selection? - How useful is the concept of the 'official mind' for explaining the development of market relationships? - What has been the relationship between expanding communications and the development of markets? - How and why have certain regions or groupings (e.g. the Commonwealth) been 'unimagined'- losing their status as promising markets for the future?

Henry Heller's short account of the history of capitalism combines Marx's economic and political thought with contemporary scholarship to shed light on the current capitalist crisis. It argues that capitalism is an evolving mode of production that has now outgrown its institutional and political limits. The book provides an overview of the different historical stages of capitalism, underpinned by accessible discussions of its theoretical foundations. Heller shows that capitalism has always been a double-edged sword, on one hand advancing humanity, and on the other harming traditional societies and our natural environment. He makes the case that capitalism has now become self-destructive, and that our current era of neoliberalism may trigger a transition to a democratic and ecologically aware form of socialism.

This first of three volumes starts with a short introduction to historical metrology as a scientific discipline and goes on with an anthology of acient and modern measurement systems of all kind, scientific measures, units of time, weights, currencies etc. It concludes with an exhaustive list of references. Units of measurement are of vital importance in every civilization through history. Since the early ages, man has through necessity devised various measures to assist him in everyday life. They have enabled and continue to enable us to trade in commonly and equitably understood amounts, and to investigate, understand, and control the chemical, physical, and biological processes of the natural world. The essence of the work is an alphabetically ordered, comprehensive list of measurement nomenclature, units and scales. It provides an understanding of almost all quantitative expressions observed in all imaginable situations, including spelling variants and the abbreviations and symbols for units, and various acronyms used in metrology. It will be of use not only to historians of science and technology, but also to economic and social historians and should be in every major academic and national library as standard reference work on the topic.

For Marxists, imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. Critical analysis of imperialism has been a feature of Marxist throughout the twentieth century. The conceptualising and theorising of imperialism by Marxists has evolved over time in response to developments in the global capitalist economy and in international politics. Murray Noonan here provides the first complete analysis of Marxist theories of imperialism in over two decades. Presenting three phases of imperialist theories, he analyses and compares 'Classical', 'Neo' and 'Globalisation-era' Marxist theories of imperialism. The book moves chronologically, tracking the origins of imperialism theorised by J.A. Hobson at the beginning of the twentieth century up to the present day. He critically identifies and engages with a new 'Globalisation-era' phase of Marxist imperialism theory. Through a detailed scholarly analysis of the history and evolution of these theories, Noonan offers vital new perspectives on imperialist theory and its relevance and application in the twenty-first century.

There are two ways people coordinate their actions: through cooperation, exercised by economic power, and through control, exercised by political power. When economic and political power are held by the same people, the result is stagnation; when those who hold economic power are not the same people who hold political power, the result is progress. This book presents the ways in which economic power and political power can be separated, and how they can remain so, by analyzing the nature of power and the differences between economic and political power. The book then discusses the history of economic and political power, including hunter-gatherer societies, agrarian societies, and modern commercial and industrial societies. This background lends insight into why political and economic power were typically held by the same people, and why recently those without political power have been able to acquire economic power. Incentives play a key role in understanding how those two types of power can become separated, and why there is always a tendency for them to recombine. But ideas also play a crucial role, including the influence of the Enlightenment, on the progress that has occurred in the last several hundred years.

The fascinating story of a man struggling to reach his dream, his small toy company's fabulous toys, and an explanation of the folklore connecting the company's wooden mouse "MICKY" with Walt Disney. The book highlights never before assembled documentation.

Reflecting the diverse and profound changes triggered by the latest wave of economic globalization, this book highlights various governance responses at national, regional and global levels. The topics covered are wide-ranging and include economic history and development, European integration, exchange rate arrangements, industrial and labor economics, international cooperation and multilateralism, and public choice. The book is divided into three parts: The first part, which contains contributions by Barry Eichengreen and Marc Flandreau, is devoted to economic history. The second part examines open economy macroeconomics with a focus on Europe, including contributions by Jurgen von Hagen and Paul Krugman. The third part presents contributions to international political economy, and related interdisciplinary topics. This Festschrift is written in honor of Jorge Braga de Macedo, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the Nova School of Business and Economics and a distinguished Portuguese academic whose work has an impressive global reach. The contributions, written by a selection of international authors, deal with his oeuvre covering the wide range of topics broached in this book, as his publication record amply attests.

An examination of East-Central European history, this book looks to the past for the roots of the cleavage between the eastern and western regions of Europe and the reasons for the east-central countries' backward, reactionary nature; their slide into fascism and war; and the ultimate destruction of the region within the Stalinist orbit. East-Central Europe emerged as a distinct region as early as the 15th century, when, in sharp contrast to an expanding urban economy and a loosening of serfdom in the West, it pursued a brutal Second Serfdom. This development would determine much of its future course, as 19th century attempts to modernize society included revolutions from above and the abolishment of serfdom, while stubbornly retaining decisive feudal structures. After World War I, industrial developments created a semi-feudal, distorted capitalism, and the region soon saw the emergence of ultra-nationalist, fascist-style regimes whose actions would eventually lead to catastrophe.

In the post-war era, the region found itself in the Soviet sphere. The short People's Democracy period attempted to purge its structure of feudal, reactionary and fascist remnants, but soon got destroyed as a distinct region by brutal Stalinization. The collapse of Communism did not restore its separate existence reintegration into the West requires a painful transition period with a yet uncertain outcome. Hodos produces a comprehensive, comparative overview of the centuries-old division, along with the resulting social, political, and economic consequences. Chapters on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust illustrate the stark differences between the regions.

Looking at women, business and finance in the long nineteenth century, this book challenges our traditional understanding of 'separate spheres'--whereby men operated in the public world of work and women in the private realm of the domestic. Drawing on case studies throughout Europe, the authors reveal that there was much greater diversity in women's economic experience across all social strata than has previously been understood. International contributors take a new look at women's roles in finance and investment, family-owned businesses, retailing, service activities, and the artisanal trades. They reveal that elite and middle-class women often manipulated financial resources in a highly sophisticated manner. Family-owned businesses and retail trade geared to women, such as grocery and fashion, also offered women opportunities. Throughout, the authors consider the impact of industrialization on women's economic agency. We learn about women in the accommodation business in London, female entrepreneurs in Italy, prostitutes in Germany, family businesses in Sweden, women in publishing in Spain and much more.

'Englishmen Transplanted' challenges the widely accepted view of seventeenth-century Barbados planters as reckless fortune seekers who failed to create a viable society in the tropics. Rather, it argues they were settlers eager to transplant what was familiar to them: political and religious institutions, the nuclear family, and traditional views about social order, housing, and apparel.