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Books > History > History of specific subjects > Economic history
This is the second volume of conference proceedings for the handbook of the economic history of the Alpine region in the preindustrial era, which finally provides an extensive cross-regional synopsis of the history of the Alpine economy. Like Braudel's classic on the Mediterranean region, renowned scholars examine the region and its people, the everyday lives of Alpine inhabitants, and commerce, migration, and communication in three volumes.
Awarded the Jaume Vicens Vives Prize by the Spanish Association of Economic History, this study analyses the development of the Spanish domestic market from 1650 to 1800, which transformed the country from a pseudocolonial territory, politically and economically dependent on its European neighbours, to a significant European power. The Emergence of a National Market in Spain, 1650-1800 places Spain firmly in a European context, arguing that the origins of a sophisticated economy must be understood through the complex diplomacy of the period, namely the competition between Britain and France for dominance in the Iberian peninsula. It was in response to this rivalry that the Spanish state actively promoted the conditions for economic development in the 18th century, aided by autonomous commercial networks of Catalan merchants, Navarrese tradesmen and migrant French businessmen. This original interpretation by one of Spain's leading economic historians, available in English for the first time, is indispensable reading for students and scholars of Spanish history.
England's capture of Canada in 1760 was the culmination of the French and Indian War and of a century and a half of conflict between Britain and France for control of the North American continent. During that long period, there were several English military efforts to evict the French, but all failed. Therefore, at the war's start, few among the English entertained serious thoughts of totally evicting France from all of Canada. Nor did the French consider such a result a serious possibility. Drawing heavily on primary sources, Brecher tells the dramatic story of why the war's outcome differed so sharply from original expectations. He does so from the vantage point of France, while demonstrating in greater depth than has been available to date the linkages between France's American policy and involvement in the Seven Years' War. Brecher provides an unprecedently full-scale analysis of the political, military, social, and economic conditions of mid-18th-century France and its North American colony, New France. That analysis also examines the direct connection between those internal conditions and the results for France of the war that ended in 1763. In doing so, Brecher assesses France's military strategy and major battles in Europe and America, as well as the diplomatic goals Versailles set for itself in the conduct of the war. Further, he describes why France concurred in leaving not only Canada, but also the vast Louisiana territory, to be divided between England and France's belated wartime ally, Bourbon Spain. Finally, Brecher explains the longer-term implications of the war for North American development and for the future of France. This is an important study for students and scholars of French and colonial American history and for the broad reading public, as well as those interested in the more recent Quebec problem.
The commercial revolution of the seventeenth century deeply changed English culture. In this ambitious book, Blair Hoxby explores what that economic transformation meant to the century's greatest poet, John Milton, and to the broader literary tradition in which he worked. Hoxby places Milton's work-as well as the writings of contemporary reformers like the Levellers, poets like John Dryden, and political economists like Sir William Petty-within the framework of England's economic history between 1601 and 1724. Literary history swerved in this period, Hoxby demonstrates, as a burgeoning economic discourse pressed authors to reimagine ideas about self, community, and empire. Hoxby shows that, contrary to commonly held views, Milton was a sophisticated economic thinker. Close readings of Milton's prose and verse reveal the importance of economic ideas in a wide range of his most famous writings, from Areopagitica to Samson Agonistes to Paradise Lost.
With the opening of sea routes in the fifteenth century, groups of
men and women left Portugal to establish themselves across the
ports and cities of the Atlantic or Ocean sea. They were refugees
and migrants, traders and mariners, Jews, Catholics, and the
Marranos of mixed Judaic-Catholic
This is the story of one of the most dynamic entrepreneurs in modern French history. Drawing upon a wealth of archival and private documentation. Lewis uncovers the history of Pierre-Francois Tubeuf and assesses his contribution to the development of industry in France. Lewis explores the relationship between seigneurial, proto-industrial, and modern forms of capitalism in the Cevennes region of southeastern France in the eighteenth century, and demonstrates the international scope of proto-industrialization. This subtle and scholarly study seeks to unravel the complex problems associated with the impact of the French Revolution on the processes of modern French capitalism. Lewis traces the responses of a wide variety of individuals, including Tubeuf and his greatest rival, the marechal de Castries. He examines the epic struggle of these two powerful men for control of the rich coal-mines of the region, and their legacy to succeeding generations.
In this book some of the world's leading economists and experts on Serra explore the enduring appeal of his 1613 Breve trattato.
A focus on the economic and social problems in Ukraine, particularly during the war years, and the collectivization of agriculture in Western Ukraine in the late 1940s. It compares this with the imposition of the Stalinist system in Eastern Ukraine in the 1930s using a wide variety of Soviet archival information and historical works from the 1940s onwards.;The author has also written: "Chernobyl and Nuclear Power in the USSR", "The Soviet Impact of the Chernobyl Disaster", "Ukraine under Perestroika: Ecology, Economics and the Workers' Revolt". He is also the author of articles in Soviet Studies, Current History, Nationalities Papers, Canadian Slavonic Papers and Soviet Economy.
Charles MacKay's groundbreaking examination of a staggering variety of popular delusions, crazes and mass follies is presented here in full with no abridgements. The text concentrates on a wide variety of phenomena which had occurred over the centuries prior to this book's publication in 1841. Mackay begins by examining economic bubbles, such as the infamous Tulipomania, wherein Dutch tulips rocketed in value amid claims they could be substituted for actual currency. As we progress further, the scope of the book broadens into several more exotic fields of mass self-deception. Mackay turns his attention to the witch hunts of the 17th and 18th centuries, the practice of alchemy, the phenomena of haunted houses, the vast and varied practices of fortune telling and the search for the philosopher's stone, to name but a handful of subjects. Today, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds is distinguished as an expansive, well-researched and somewhat eccentric work of social history.
After years of relative neglect, the reconstruction of post-war Germany has recently become a major research focus for historians. The contributors to this volume were among the first to evaluate the archives relevant to their topic and are hence able to present many fresh insights into Allied occupation policy in the late 1940s, revealing the painful adjustment which German industry, institutions and citizens had to make in the post-1945 world.
Originally published between 2002 and 2011, the first 6 meticulously researched and extensive volumes of this set cover a vast period of US financial and economic history, from the 'discovery' of America, through Civil War, Independence, two World Wars, the Great Depression, and on through the turbulent 20th and early 21st Centuries. An entirely new volume brings the series up to date to the Pandemic of 2020. Carefully documented and lucidly written by Jerry W. Markham, these volumes give an unparalleled insight into financial scandals; corporate governance issues; the development of US securities, derivative and mortgage markets; housing boom and bust and stock market panics. The final (entirely new) 7th volume is divided into three chronological sections: the first section describes the recovery of financial markets after the Great Recession. It begins with an overview of the state of the economy at the start of the new decade, including some of the political storms affecting the economy and financial markets. The second section sets forth regulatory responses to the Financial Crisis of 2008, including the massive fines imposed on large banks by a swarm of regulators. The third section describes the rules adopted under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 that broadly affected financial markets. It also recounts the Trump trade wars and ends with an account of the financial and economic turmoil that occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
The economy of ancient Rome, with its money, complex credit arrangements, and long-range shipping, was surprisingly modern. Yet Romans also exchanged goods and services within a robust system of gifts and favors, which sustained the supportive relationships necessary for survival in the absence of the extensive state and social institutions. In Gift and Gain: How Money Transformed Ancient Rome, Neil Coffee shows how a vibrant commercial culture progressively displaced systems of gift giving over the course of Rome's classical era. The change was propelled the Roman elite, through their engagement in shipping, moneylending, and other enterprises. Members of the same elite, however, remained habituated to traditional gift relationships, relying on them to exercise influence and build their social worlds. They resisted the transformation, through legislation, political movements, and philosophical argument. The result was a recurring clash across the contexts of Roman social and economic life. The book traces the conflict between gift and gain from Rome's prehistory, down through the conflicts of the late Republic, into the early Empire, showing its effects in areas as diverse as politics, government, legal representation, philosophical thought, public morality, personal and civic patronage, marriage, dining, and the Latin language. These investigations show Rome shifting, unevenly but steadily, away from its pre-historic reliance on relationships of mutual aid, and toward to the more formal, commercial, and contractual relations of modernity.
This is the first history on the subject of foreign investment in the United States since 1920. It shows how the United States changed from a debtor nation to a supplier of capital to the rest of the world, and then details the structural shifts to this creditor position after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in 1972. Geisst demonstrates that the United States has always been a magnet for foreign portfolio and direct investment. Traditionally, this has come from northern European or Canadian sources, but in the 1970s the Japanese became a major force. Currently, both types of investment in the United States are at historically high levels, but Geisst asserts that this foreign interest exerts a positive rather than a negative impact on the economic climate. This study is a counterpart to the author's earlier examination of domestic investment in the United States, "Visionary Capitalism: Financial Markets and the American Dream in the Twentieth Century." It will be of interest to scholars and professionals in finance and investments, business history, and American history.
The unprecedented importance of finance in our societies, as well as its central role in provoking economic crises, has generated an enormous interest in understanding the historical origins and evolution of modern financial systems. Today the U.S. economy is seen as an archetype of a capitalist system in which securities markets play a central role. Moreover, these markets have had a high profile in some of the most dramatic moments in U.S. history, often in the context of crises. Dividends of Development: Securities Markets in the History of U.S. Capitalism, 1865-1922, explains how U.S. securities markets became central to the institutional fabric of U.S. capitalism. After the Civil War, these markets had a narrowly circumscribed relationship to the country's real economy, being largely dominated by railroad securities. Moreover, their role in the U.S. financial system was of limited significance given the relatively modest resources that financial institutions committed to investment in, and lending on, corporate securities. That situation was to undergo fundamental change from the Civil War through the end of World War 1 but the development of U.S. securities markets did not occur as a result of a smooth, or even, linear process. Instead, the book shows that the transformation of U.S. securities markets occurred through a process that was volatile and time-consuming, unscripted by powerful actors, and driven, above all else, by the dramatic but unstable character of the nation's economic development. These claims about the trajectory, the operation, and the underlying dynamics of the development of U.S. securities markets are brought together in a novel synthesis that portrays the historical evolution of securities markets in the United States as the "dividends" of the country's distinctive trajectory of economic development.
Protecting economic competition has become a major objective of government in Western Europe, and competition law has become a central part of economic and legal experience. National competition laws have long helped shape the relationship between government and the economy, and their influence has grown dramatically during the last decade. Competition law has also played a key role in the process of European integration, and is likely to do so in the future. Yet, despite its importance, images of European experience with competition law often remain vague and are sometimes dangerously distorted. This book examines that experience, analysing the dynamics of European competition law systems, revealing their impacts and assessing the political and economic issues they raise.
This book is the first book-length treatment of early American banking in over 40 years. During that time economic historians have offered new interpretations of several important developments in antebellum.
Fully modern corporations appeared in fourteenth-century Toulouse, much earlier than previously believed Germain Sicard proves that Europe's first corporations were fourteenth-century mill companies operating in Toulouse, rather than seventeenth-century English and Dutch trading companies as commonly believed. He shows that the corporate form derives from a unique ownership contract from Medieval Europe called pariage, and a culture of strong property rights and municipal self-governance. Based on archival research, Sicard's 1952 thesis has been translated into English with an introduction that places the work in the context of new institutional economics and legal theory. It is an important contribution to research on the history and legal origins of the corporation.
This unique volume provides a survey of U.S. business history in a chronological framework. Designed as a basic chronology of representative events, the work covers the years from 1602 to 1988, presenting those events that pioneered trends and those that represented what was generally happening at a particular time. Richard Robinson has included minor details and incidents that are often missed in other histories of business and has arranged the descriptive historical data in a way that allows readers to draw their own conclusions about the trends and impact of American business. Each chronological entry is divided into two sections. The first covers general events, describing the changes in lifestyles and living conditions that affected business and the marketplace. Economic conditions, government actions, educational developments, social indicators, union activities, and inventions are included here, as are certain articles and books that note the concerns of a particular time. The second section covers business events, charting the rise and fall of those enterprises engaged in producing goods or providing services. Small companies are featured alongside conglomerates, and wherever possible, the chronology focuses on the colorful individuals--the entrepreneurs, financiers, promoters, and others--who played such an important role in American business. With its chronological presentation, the book not only offers a clear picture of the development of U.S. business, but also a strong indication of how deeply it is interwoven in the fabric of society. It will be a valuable resource for courses in business history, sociology, and American history, and an important addition to both public and academic libraries.
This monograph aims to analyze the economic and business history of colonial India from a corporate perspective by clarifying the historical role of institutional developments based on archival evidence of a representative enterprise. The perspective is distinctively unique in that it highlights the salience of corporate-level institutional responses to explain the causes of colonial India's industrial growth, in addition to two renowned perspectives focusing on government economic policy or factor endowment. One of the driving forces of India's high growth rate since the 1980s is the expansion of modern business corporations whose origins date back to the colonial era in the mid-nineteenth century. This monograph explores the historical foundation of the growth of such corporations in colonial India, guided by a substantial collection of documents of Tata Iron and Steel Company, whose rich records have not received the due attention they have long deserved. As clarified by numerous economic and business historians of leading industrialized countries since the works of Douglass North and Alfred Chandler, this study as well proposes that the development of modern business corporations in colonial India was broadly supported by the reciprocal evolution of economic institutions and corporate organizations. Adding a new perspective to the business and economic history of colonial India, the analysis also provides an important case study of the development of corporate business in the non-Western world to the study of global business history.
The corporation model of organizations is in terminal decline, says Cook, and is being displaced by what he calls syntagma, a body of persons forming a division of the population of a country. The point he makes by this is that the emerging organization will be no artifact, no fabrication. It will be innately human, and in that sense, organic. His book traces the philosophical and historical development of the modern corporation through Hellenistic-Judeo-Christian theologies, with particular emphases on the social, political, and economic impacts of rationalistic science, impacts such as humanism, democracy, capitalism, and behaviorism. Cook offers an analysis of the critical aspects of the corporation as it exists today, and draws heavily for evidence upon contemporary management theories and practices. In doing so he argues that it is the radical changes going on in society itself that is rendering the traditional corporation obsolete. And, since western civilization is undergoing an epochal shift, the new, emerging corporation can have no resemblance to the old model. He maintains that the organization evolving to replace it will be characterized by common values, mutual purpose, excess capacity, and creative action, and will have two dynamics, what he calls commensuration and essentiality. Only with this kind of human system is it possible to create an organization that solely and exclusively serves the common good. His book is a provocative contribution to the professional and academic literature of several fields, including management, the social sciences, organizational behavior, development, and history, and will be of particular interest as well to certain well informed nonspecialists with concern for the role played the corporation in their societies.
The Political Economy of Imperial Relations offers a much needed historical and theoretical intervention into the relationship between Britain and Malaya after the Second World War. It challenges existing accounts and details a strong continuity in this relationship from 1945 until 1960.
The contributors to this collection question the boundaries and limitations that are imposed on the study of cities by urban sociology. They do not disagree that during most of their history, the regions and peoples of the world have been organized hierarchically and that there are differences that need to be explained. But they see the processes and relations that link regions and people together as the main factor that explains these differences. It is the differentiation and not the differences per se that constitute this volume's focus and, in its respective accounts, taking care not to privilege any one region or time period on the basis of its presumed special characteristics. Against this background the book is divided into three parts. Part one deals with places outside of western Europe and with times that preceded the establishment of the European-based capitalist world-economy. The articles in part two discuss the different aspects of the concept of hegemony and the establishment of domination as these apply to cities in the world-system. In part three the focus shifts back to extra-European zones where the patterns of transformation around cities under the aegis of capitalist world-economy are examined. This book constitutes an important addition to the literature on cities. By approaching cities from a large-scale and a long-term perspective, the contributors develop a historical explanation of some of the different patterns of development that affected particular cities in their interaction with the world-economy. This historical and holistic perspective represents an improvement over most of urban sociology, where cities or aspects of cities are studied in isolation from all contingent and contextual factors. This book can be used by scholars, graduate, and upper-division undergraduate students of urban history and sociology.
As today's world develops and evolves, so does its economics. New economic approaches have begun to emerge, but traditional methods are still being implemented. As both systems provide different solutions to society's economic issues, thoughtful research and analysis is required regarding the tactics and strategies that both theories utilize. Comparative Approaches to Old and New Institutional Economics is an essential reference source that discusses the sequential history of these two economic theories as well as their application to global fiscal disputes. Featuring research on topics such as international relations, business management, and institutionalism, this book is ideally designed for economists, analysts, managers, researchers, practitioners, academicians, and students seeking coverage on the parallel methods of these economic philosophies. |
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