Nikolaus Wolf - Böcker

This book is the first quantitative description of Europe’s economic development at a regional level over the entire twentieth century. Based on a new and comprehensive set of data, it brings together a group of leading economic historians in order to describe and analyze the development of European regions, both for nation states and for Europe as a whole. This provides a new transnational perspective on Europe’s quantitative development, offering for the first time a systematic long-run analysis of national policies independent from the use of national statistical units. The new transnational dimension of data allows for the analysis of national policies in a more thorough way than ever before. The book provides a comprehensive database at the level of modern NUTS 2 regions for the period 1900–2010 in 10-year intervals, and a panoramic view of economic development both below and above the national level. It will be of great interest to economic historians, economic geographers, development economists and those with an interest in economic growth.

This book is the first quantitative description of Europe’s economic development at a regional level over the entire twentieth century. Based on a new and comprehensive set of data, it brings together a group of leading economic historians in order to describe and analyze the development of European regions, both for nation states and for Europe as a whole. This provides a new transnational perspective on Europe’s quantitative development, offering for the first time a systematic long-run analysis of national policies independent from the use of national statistical units. The new transnational dimension of data allows for the analysis of national policies in a more thorough way than ever before. The book provides a comprehensive database at the level of modern NUTS 2 regions for the period 1900–2010 in 10-year intervals, and a panoramic view of economic development both below and above the national level. It will be of great interest to economic historians, economic geographers, development economists and those with an interest in economic growth.

There is a striking chronological parallel between Germany’s transition from a post-Malthusian regime to modern economic growth and the formation of a modern nation-state between the late 1860s and the early 1880s, which culminated in the events of 1871.The central question of this book is whether and how such state formation did in fact contribute to economic development. Twenty chapters written by leading experts in their respective fields deal with various aspects of the book’s main question. Together, they identify three channels by which national unification contributed to Germany’s economic development: (1) Creation of a nation-state completed a process of institutional Unification of a large inland area and thereby increased the integration of domestic markets. (2) Unification raised the capacity of the political system with respect to regulating complex domains, such as stock companies, patenting, and social insurance. (3) The emerging political regime of market-preserving federalism promoted the quality of economic institutions. Moreover, a set of chapters dealing with the experience of other European economies apart from Germany during the second half of the nineteenth century highlight additional factors in nineteenth-century economic development, most notably the first wave of modern globalization and economic geography. Readers interested in the history of state building and the economic history of Germany and of Europe in general during the age of industrialization and globalization and students of the economic effects of political integration and decentralized state growth will all gain much from this book.

There is a striking chronological parallel between Germany’s transition from a post-Malthusian regime to modern economic growth and the formation of a modern nation-state between the late 1860s and the early 1880s, which culminated in the events of 1871.The central question of this book is whether and how such state formation did in fact contribute to economic development. Twenty chapters written by leading experts in their respective fields deal with various aspects of the book’s main question. Together, they identify three channels by which national unification contributed to Germany’s economic development: (1) Creation of a nation-state completed a process of institutional Unification of a large inland area and thereby increased the integration of domestic markets. (2) Unification raised the capacity of the political system with respect to regulating complex domains, such as stock companies, patenting, and social insurance. (3) The emerging political regime of market-preserving federalism promoted the quality of economic institutions. Moreover, a set of chapters dealing with the experience of other European economies apart from Germany during the second half of the nineteenth century highlight additional factors in nineteenth-century economic development, most notably the first wave of modern globalization and economic geography. Readers interested in the history of state building and the economic history of Germany and of Europe in general during the age of industrialization and globalization and students of the economic effects of political integration and decentralized state growth will all gain much from this book.

Kurz nach der Gründung des ersten deutschen Nationalstaats 1871 trat die deutsche Wirtschaft in die Ära des modernen Wirtschaftswachstums ein. Dennoch ist bisher kaum erforscht, ob und auf welche Weise die Nationalstaatsbildung die wirtschaftliche Dynamik beeinflusst hat.In diesem Band gehen zwanzig Autorinnen und Autoren diesen Zusammenhängen aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven nach und ordnen sie in den europäischen Kontext ein. Somit wird ein umfassendes Bild der deutschen Wirtschaft in der Ära der Industrialisierung und (ersten) Globalisierung entfaltet. Darüber hinaus werden die Kanäle identifiziert, über welche die Nationalstaatsbildung den Übergang zu einem Muster des modernen Wirtschaftswachstums beeinflusste, das Deutschland in vielerlei Hinsicht bis heute prägt.

This edited volume represents the latest research on intersections of war, state formation, and political economy, i.e., how conflicts have affected short- and long-run development of economies and the formation (or destruction) of states and their political economies. The contributors come from different fields of social and human sciencies, all featuring an interdisciplinary approach to the study of societal development. The types of big issues analyzed in this volume include the formation of European and non-European states in the early modern and modern period, the emergence of various forms of states and eventually modern democracies with extensive welfare states, the violent upheavals that influenced these processes, the persistence of dictatorships and non-democratic forms of government, and the arrival of total war and its consequences, especially in the context of twentieth-century world wars. One of the key themes is the dichotomy between democracies and dictatorships; namely, what were the origins of their emergence and evolution, why did some revolutions succeed and other fail, and why did democracies, on the whole, emerge victorious in the twentieth-century age of total wars? The contributions in this book are written with academic and non-academic audiences in mind, and both will find the broad themes discussed in this volume intuitive and useful.