World's Key Industry

GELINA HARLAFTIS is professor of Maritime History at the Department of History of the Ionian University, Greece. She graduated from the University of Athens and completed her graduate studies at the Universities of Cambridge (M.Phil.) and Oxford (D.Phil). She was President of the International Association of Maritime Economic History from 2004-2008 and was a visiting Professor and a Fellow in universities in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. Her last books are co-authored with Ioannis Theotokas; Leadership in World Shipping: Greek Family Firms in International Business (2009) and with Nikos Karapidakis; Kostas Sbonias and Vaios Vaiopoulos,The New Ways of History (2010). JESUS M. VALDALISO is professor of Economic History at the School of Economics and Business administration of the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain, and of Maritime Business History in a MBA of Deusto University and the Basque Government. He is the author of several books and articles on the Spanish shipping and shipbuilding industries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is currently leading a research project on the historical origins of industrial clusters in the Basque Country and its legacy for the present. He is President of the International Association of Maritime Economic History and visiting scholar at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness of the Harvard Business School. STIG TENOLD is professor of Economic History atThe Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration. His main research field is twentieth century Norwegian and international shipping history, and he is the author of Tankers in Trouble - Norwegian Shipping and the Crisis of the 1970s and 1980s, and Odfjell - The History of a Shipping Company (2006), co-authored with Atle Thowsen. He is currently involved in projects on maritime innovation, Nordic shipping in the twentieth century and Norwegian voyage patterns during the transition from sail to steam.

• Introduction L. R. Fischer and the progress of Maritime Economic History; D.Williams & L.Scholl Shipping and Staple Economies in the Periphery; C.K.Harley The Progress of the Steamship in the 19th Century; D.M.Williams & J.Armstrong The Advantages of Water Carriage; Y.Kaukianen Building the Vital Networks of Trade; E.Lange , E.Ekperg & E.Merok The Development of Commercial Infrastructures for World Shipping; G.Boyce Government and British Shipping in the Later 20th Century; S.Palmer Historical Evolution of the Ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam; S.Vanfraechem Institutional Path-dependence and Port Regulation; M.Tull & J.Reveley China's Seaport Development 1978-2002; A.N.G.Koi Yu & T.Ka-chai Hull's Maritime Business Sector c. 1860-1914; M.Barnard & D.Starkey Risks and Rewards - the Business of Norwegian Shipping; S.Tenold Greek and Spanish Shipowners in the 19th and 20th Centuries; G.Harlaftis & J.M.Valdaliso Epilogue: A Key Industry or an Invisible Industry?; G.Harlaftis , S.Tenold & J.M.Valdaliso