Economic history Books

Exploring the interplay of politics and commerce in one of the most dynamic periods of British history, this book traces the fortunes of the India and Eastern Trading Company Limited, established in 1906 to finance a jute plantation in Assam, north-east...

This book addresses a wide range of migration-related issues in the European context and examines the socioeconomic consequences of migratory flows throughout Europe, focusing on a number of emblematic European countries. The book is divided into three...

Contributing to a better understanding of contemporary issues of environmental sustainability from a historical perspective, this book provides a cohesive and cogent account of the history of ecological economic thought. The work unearths a diverse set...

Although the Anti-Corn Law league played a most important part in the politics of the 1840's, there is no modern study of its activities and organization. Based on several years work on the original sources, as well as papers belonging to George Wilson,...

This book was first published in 1985.

This book enlarges our understanding of economic development by bringing together items or aspects of historical experience relevant to the present-day problems of developing countries; by looking at the problems over a longer period than is usual...

First Published in 2005. This volume looks at the problems and perspectives of Victorian Business in the 1870s.The purpose of this collection of essays is to explore further that part of the thesis, tentatively advanced in interrogative mode in 1975,...

First published in 1985, this book offered a fresh analysis of the problems faced by the Soviet economy by focussing on the key issues in the economic planning system. David Dyker considers the available options for reform during the 1980s and the most...

The essays in this edited collection, first published in 1986, focus on important debates surrounding the central Marxian problem of the transformation of values into prices. The collection brings together major contributions on the value theory debate...

J. A. Hobson's Imperialism: A Study, first written in 1902, was undoubtedly his most prolific work. Yet he wrote frequently about the topic of imperialism of the course of his career, and a number of his articles are included in this collection, first...

First published in 1909 and reissued in 1910, J. A. Hobson's The Industrial System provides a complex analysis of distribution and consumption. Offering a critique of contemporary capitalism whilst accepting the superiority of the free market, the book...

First published in 1915, Towards International Government considers the consequences of war for global diplomacy and the alliance system. Hobson argues that, to reduce armaments and the possibility of another world war, an organisational structure of...

First published in 1921, Problems of a New World deals with the economic and political issues that arose from the First World War. The first three parts of the study consider the world before the war, and the interests, purposes and ideals which...

Hobson's The Evolution of Modern Capitalism was first published in 1894, although this reissue is of the fourth edition, published in 1926. The work traces the developments in trade and industry which characterised the first decades of the twentieth...

The articles in this volume, originally published in a variety of journals between 1890 and 1937, deal with the themes of the distribution of income and welfare. Highlighting the contribution which Hobson made to welfare economics and the way in which he...

First Published in 2005. The authors of this book have tried to portray, in outline, the background of trade against which the Navy of Nelson's time had to operate. The Tarde Winds is the title they have chosen and the book should serve to remind us of...

Enterpreneurship is central to the market process, and yet most theories of it fail to tackle the problem of how economic agents learn from their experience. This book redresses this by systematically applying the ideas of Karl Popper. It treats the...

Peter Groenewegen's reputation as a chronicler of the history of economics is unparalleled. Building on his respected collection on eighteenth century economics, this new book focuses on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reprinting essays on...

This book follows on from the author's volume Russian Economic Development and although it encompasses some of the same material it charts the history and progress of the Soviet economy down to the efforts at reconstruction after The Second World War. A...

This fully revised and updated third edition of Japanese Economic Development looks at Japan's economic history from the nineteenth century through to World War II, recasting analysis of Japan's economic past in the light fresh theoretical perspectives...

This book  is the culmination of a major research programme on the monetary history of the United Kingdom.This volume contains monetary series ranging from detailed balance sheet material to monetary aggregates such as M3 and are in monthly,...

The economic history of the Middle East and North Africa is quite extraordinary. This is an axiomatic statement, but the very nature of the economic changes that have stemmed directly from the effects of oil resources in these areas has tended to obscure...

Providing a radical new reading of Hayek's life and work, this new book, by an important Hayekian scholar, dispels many of the mysteries surrounding one of the most prominent economists and political philosophers of the twentieth century...

First published in 1927, Hobson's treatise on industrial conflict analyses the nature and causes of industrial disputes with the aim of finding an equitable means of settling them. Assessing the notion of a fair wage within the context of the pool of...

First published in book form in 1981, this collection of essays originally written between 1955 and 1966 contains ground-breaking research and analysis on the study of wages and prices across seven centuries, with particular reference to builder's wage...

First published in 1930, this book endeavours to trace and express the relations between economic and human values, between wealth and life. Hobson studies everything from the role of production processes and consumption in the determination of human...

This book presents a collection and analysis of original policy documents, newly translated into English, from a key period of Chinese development, providing both a current and a retrospective analysis of China's economic reform efforts. Topics dealt...

First Published in 2005. The following pages provide an extensive introduction to the study of the Economic History of China, together with a carefully selected bibliography of some 800 books and articles. The text is intended to define, in the first...

First published in 1991, Stuart Bruchey's study is a historical tribute to the financial innovation of the American Stock Exchange. He chronicles the heyday of Wall Street - from events leading to the Great Depression, through the New Deal and World War...

First published in 1931, this is an attempt by the great economist J. A. Hobson to analyse the relations between economics and religion. After considering the origins of the conflicts and compromises between God and Mammon in the life of primitive man,...

Milton Friedman and George J. Stigler shaped economics as we know it today - their Chicago School laid the groundwork for much of the neoclassical tradition in economic analysis. This book brings together a collection of letters from these two Noble...

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of academic interest in Adam Smith. As a consequence, a large number of PhD dissertations on Smith have been written by international scholars - in different languages, and in many diverse disciplines,...

Economists have long laboured under the misapprehension that all humans exist as rational beings that find happiness in maximizing their personal utility. This impressive volume presents an historical review of the evolution of economic thought, from...

Before his untimely death in 2000, the brilliant young Israeli economic historian Klug conducted a thorough survey into the different theories of international trade. The results of this are now available here for the first time with an introduction from...

The question of why empires decline and fall has attracted the attention of historians for centuries, but remains fundamentally unsolved. This unique collection is concerned with the purely economic aspects of decline. It can be observed of empires in...

First published in 1976, this much acclaimed book looks at the story of how today's large corporations have superseded the small competing firms of the nineteenth century. The long-run analysis confirms that the crucial periods in the formulation of the...

The industrial revolution and the creation of the modern (national) state are two of the most important historical processes to have occurred in Europe during the 19th century. The state and other bodies of governance play an important role in the...

This book is a collection of papers on the origins of economic thought discovered in the writings of some prominent Islamic scholars, during the five centuries prior to the Latin Scholastics, who include St. Thomas Aquinas. This period of time was...

First published in 1992, this Routledge Revival sees the reissue of a truly original exploration of the nature of urbanization and capitalism. Linda Clarke's vital work argues that:Urbanization is a product of the social human labour engaged in building...

Are there feminist, economic utopian visions amongst feminist economists? What are these visions? Is there a common vision for feminist economics or should there be? Can feminist economics be effective without a utopian vision? Comprehensive and...

First published in 1976, this book provides an interdiciplinary study fo the thoughts of Adam Smith, showing it particular how the link between economic basis and social superstructure was central to his work. The work is split into six...

The conventional received opinion of Adam Smith as an isolated figure, the founder of 'modern' economics, is thoroughly mistaken and misleading. This is the central premise of this book, first published in 1988, in which the author argues that by...

Intra-Asian trade is a major theme of recent writing on Asian economic history. From the second half of the nineteenth century, intra-Asian trade flows linked Asia into an integrated economic system, with reciprocal benefits for all participants. But...

This collection of essays amounts to the definitive guide to eighteenth century economics and is a must for any economist's bookshelves. This book represents four decades of Peter Groenewegen's research of the eighteenth century.

The essays in this volume explore and discuss the process of dissemination of economic ideas among Europe's less developed countries and regions, as well as the interaction between economic thought and economic policy in different times and places during...

Macroeconomics has always played host to contesting schools of thought, but recent events have exacerbated those differences. To fully understand the subject, students need to be aware of these controversies. Rethinking Macroeconomics: A History of...