Economic history Books

This book deconstructs a series of myths surrounding China's economic rise. The first myth is that globalization led directly to China's rise; the second is that China is another East Asian developmental state; the third that China's market reform had...

This book explains how and why the state-socialist regime in Hungary used technology and propaganda to foster industrialization and the conservation of natural resources simultaneously. Further, this book explains why this process was ultimately a...

This book offers a comprehensive guide to the on-going Greek debt crisis. It identifies and explains Greece's idiosyncratic weaknesses, and highlights the existing rigidities in the EU architecture that make the recovery prospects of the Greek economy...

This book offers a comprehensive study of the history of African business. By analyzing the specificities of African business culture, as well as the dynamically changing African policy context, the author sheds new light on the development of African...

This book challenges the wide-ranging generalizations that dominate the literature on the impact of export-led growth upon Latin America during the first export era. The contributors to this volume contest conventional approaches, stemming from...

This book studies nineteenth-century American individualism and its relationship to the simultaneous rise of the market economy as articulated in the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William Graham Sumner.  The argument of the...

This book illustrates the role of international economic advisors in the development of Israel's economic policies. Based on extensive archival and historical research, it presents case studies on the policy impacts of the world-renowned advisors Michal...

This book explores the history of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and its place within capitalist development. Since 1948, the OECD and its forerunner, the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) worked on...

This book examines the changing reciprocal relationships between corporations and their various social obligations over the very long term - from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Chapters from emerging and established business historians assess...

This book analyses the economic history of the nuclear program in Spain, from its inception in the 1950s to the nuclear moratorium in the early 1980s, and investigates the economic, financial and business origins of atomic energy in Spain. The actual...

This book provides a historical economic analysis of two key issues relating to township and village enterprise (TVE) development in China. Firstly, the nature of the evolving relationship between TVEs and local government; in particular how TVE...

This book explores the evolution of credit and financing in Europe from the Middle Ages through to Modern Times. It engages with the distinct  political, economic and institutional frameworks of the examined areas (England, Italy, France, Germany,...

This volume offers a snapshot of the resurgent historiography of political economy in the wake of the ongoing global financial crisis, and suggests fruitful new agendas for research on the political-economic nexus as it has developed in the Western world...

This book and its companion volume offer a better understanding of the lessons that Indian policymakers can learn from China's economic experience over the last 40 years. The aim of the two books together is to evaluate China's incremental reforms...

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...

This book presents a new economic history of London construction in the early modern period. Drawing on extensive archival material from key sites such as St Paul's Cathedral and London Bridge, it describes the organization of contracts and work on...

This book investigates the performance of economic development under different forms of government, ranging from autocratic states to liberal democracies. Starting with a critical review of the literature on social and economic development, including the...

This book provides a vivid biography of a towering Italian banker, pioneer and entrepreneur. It weaves the entrepreneurial ventures of Alessandro Torlonia (1800-1886) through the narratives of business and politics in the Nineteenth century, the...

This is the first English translation of Benedetto Cotrugli's The Book of the Art of Trade, a lively account of the life of a Mediterranean merchant in the Early Renaissance, written in 1458. The book is an impassioned defense of the legitimacy of...

This book explores the formation and evolution of Scandinavian central banks. It begins by defining the nature of "central banking" in general, before moving on to investigate how and when it became meaningful to regard today's Scandinavian central...

Drawing on an array of archival evidence from court records to the poems of Chaucer, this work explores how medieval thinkers understood economic activity, how their ideas were transmitted and the extent to which they were accepted. Moving beyond the...

Aston challenges and reshapes the on-going debate concerning social status, economic opportunity, and gender roles in nineteenth-century society. Sources including trade directories, census returns, probate records, newspapers, advertisements, and...

Erst mit Beginn der 1960er Jahre gelang es dem Münchner Automobilhersteller BMW, zur allgemeinen Prosperitätsentwicklung der bundesdeutschen Nachkriegszeit aufzuschließen. Im „Wirtschaftswunder" angekommen, sah sich das Unternehmen schlagartig mit den...

This book will take the reader on a journey through the economic thought of Europe, spanning from ancient Greece to the modern day. It explores the economic ideas of the 27 European Union countries, the United Kingdom and Norway, across history. By...

This book examines how European farmers responded to the economic and political challenges created by the First World War and the Great Depression. The difficulties of interwar Europe have been frequently explored, but rarely from the perspective of the...

This book surveys the development of the Italian economy over the 150 years since unification, integrating economic analysis with an economic and social history of Italian society. The book challenges several key assumptions about the growth of the...

Did you know that Bach invested in mines? That Rossini improved his income by running casinos in the opera houses which on weekends performed his operas? Or that Puccini composed shorter arias to make them fit the length of gramophone disks as they...

This book, the first of two volumes, explores India's economic development from 5000BC through to the India's independence period from 1947AD to 2022AD. The specific characteristics of economic development in India are examined to help determine...

This book analyses the evolution of the city of Rome, in particular, papal Rome, from the plague of 1656 until 1870 when it became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy. The authors explore papal Rome as a resilient city that had to cope with numerous...

This book offers a novel explanation of the transformation of London's transport from a free market to a public corporation rooted in social and political legitimacy rather than economic rationality. To become a single corporation London Transport first...

This book brings together world-renowned experts and rising scholars to provide a collection of chapters examining the long-term impact of historical events on modern-day economic and political developments in Latin America. It uses a novel approach,...

This book comprehensively examines the development of Brazilian agriculture by focusing on the crops which evolved from national products to international commodities on a massive scale. It traces the transformation of Brazil from a country with...

This book presents an original interpretation of the building history of London in terms of its evolving political economy. Each of the seven ages of the city from the Roman to the modern, are portrayed through their monumental buildings, concentrating...

This volume sheds light on the technical and institutional handicaps that the gas industry had to face since the early 19th century to consolidate its position in the energy market. It traces the history of gas energy use in a European context to...

This book explores the functioning of coal markets and their influence on ports and maritime economics since the second half of the nineteenth century. Each chapter includes case studies from different parts of the world, explaining the role played by...

This book exposes, for the first time in modern scholarship, the role that the rise of the Carry Trade played in British financial crises between 1825 and 1866, how in reaction the Bank of England improved its management of monetary policy after 1866 and...

This edited volume discusses the life and scholarship of Friedrich Engels. Written to commemorate the two-hundred-year anniversary of Engels' birth, the contributions take a look into his research from a variety of viewpoints, trace the influence of his...

This book takes a comparative approach to economic history to offer ways to increase our understanding of the divergence between South America and Scandinavia. In particular, the book aims to deepen our understanding of why the two groups of countries...

This book investigates the economic organization of ancient societies from a comparative perspective. By pursuing an interdisciplinary approach, including contributions by archaeologists, historians of antiquity, economic historians as well as historians...

This book explores the economic factors that led to Britain forfeiting its North American colonies. Placing discussions within both a historical and political context, the development of the colonial economy is examined in relation to both slavery and...

This anthology honors the life and work of American economist John E. Murray, whose work on the evolution of the standard of living spanned multiple disciplines. Publishing extensively in the areas of the history of healthcare and health insurance, labor...

This book focuses on those features of the Roman economy that are less traceable in text and archaeology, and as a consequence remain largely underexplored in contemporary scholarship. By reincorporating, for the first time, these long-obscured practices...

Although Portugal was one of the first European states with stable borders, the process of the making of a Portuguese fiscal state still remains to be studied in detail. This volume brings together studies on the development of the Portuguese fiscal...