Studies in Economic History – serie

This book examines the political connections and trade relations between Italy and China, with particular emphasis on the second half of the 19th century and the period following the Second World War.

This book examines the political connections and trade relations between Italy and China, with particular emphasis on the second half of the 19th century and the period following the Second World War.

This volume will be of use to scholars and students interested in economic history, cliometrics, labor economics, and American and European history, as well as the history of religion.

This volume will be of use to scholars and students interested in economic history, cliometrics, labor economics, and American and European history, as well as the history of religion.

This book explores the global development of the production and trade of silk and related industries from a historical perspective. From the sixteenth to the twentieth century, it takes long-term movements and global dynamics into account. Covering a wide geographical area, including East-Asia, Northern and Southern Europe, and North-America, the respective contributions examine economic activities related to silk production, silk processing, trading and consumption of silk and silk fabrics, while also highlighting diverse paths of industrialization and economic development.The book is divided into three parts, the first of which features contributions on silk markets and trade, covering topics such as auction sales and Sino-European trade. The second part addresses issues of work organization, institutional developments and the gendered division of labour, discussing topics such as systems of home-based and factory production and the organization of quality control. In turn, the third part highlights technological innovations and knowledge transfer. This book appeals to scholars and students of economic history who are interested in a better understanding of the key features and patterns in the development of the silk industry and trade and, more widely, in the global economic history of the early modern and modern periods.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the pre-modern economic history of Central Asia and the Silk Road, covering several millennia.

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 enterprises, markets and institutions. The book covers a wide range of historical studies, starting with the earliest exchange networks, the new market opportunities resulting from European penetration, the dualism of state-owned companies and private enterprises during the twentieth century, the role of foreign direct investments and multinational companies during the 1990s, and the globalization of African business.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the pre-modern economic history of Central Asia and the Silk Road, covering several millennia. By analyzing an abundance of sources and materials, it illustrates the repeated economic heydays of the Silk Road, during which it linked the Orient and Occident for many centuries. Nomadic steppe empires frequently dominated Central Asia, molded its economy and influenced trade along the Silk Road. The book assesses the causes and effects of the wide-ranging overland trade booms, while also discussing various internal and external factors that led to the gradual economic decline of Central Asia and eventual demise of the Silk Road. Lastly, it explains how the economic decline gave rise to Chinese and Russian colonialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. Detailed information, e.g. on the Silk Road’s trajectories in various epochs, is offered in the form of numerous newly drafted maps.

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 enterprises, markets and institutions.

This contributed volume applies cliometric methods to the study of family and households in order to derive global patterns and determine their impact on economic development. Family and households are a fundamental feature of societies and economies. They are found throughout history and are the place where key decisions on fertility, labour force participation, education, consumption are made. This is especially relevant for the position of women. The book gathers key insights from a variety of fields – economics, history, demography, anthropology, biology – to shed light on the relation between family organisation and the long-term process of economic development.

This book explains in fascinating detail how economic and social transformations in pre-1600 Japan led to an industrious revolution in the early modern period and how the fruits of the Industrious Revolution are what have supported Japan since the eighteenth century, improving living standards and leading to the formation of the work ethic of modern Japan. The arrival of the Sengoku Period in the sixteenth century saw the emergence and domination of government by the warrior class. It was Tokugawa Ieyasu who unified the realm. Yet this unity did not give rise to an autocratic state, as the shogun was recognized merely as a main pillar of the warrior class.Economically, however, from the fourteenth century, currency payments for shōen nengu (taxes paid to the proprietor) became standard, and currency circulation began, primarily in the central region. Under Tokugawa rule, organized domestic coinage of currency began, opening the way to establishing a national economic society. Also, agricultural land was surveyed through cadastral surveys known as kenchi. Land values were converted in terms of rice, so the expected rice yields for each village were assessed, and the lords used this as a benchmark for imposing taxes. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Japan experienced a “great transition,” and conditions for peasants, agriculture, and farming villages underwent great changes. Inefficient traditional agriculture using peasants in a state of servitude was transformed into highly efficient small-sized farming operations which relied on family labor. As production yields increased due to labor-intensive agriculture, the profits obtained by the peasants improved their living standards. The stem-family system became the norm through which work ethics and even literacy were transmitted. This very change was the result of the “industrious revolution” in Japan.           The book thus presents theframework of the facts of pre-industrial Japanese history and depicts pre-modern Japan from a macroscopic point of view, showing how the industrious revolution came about. It is certain to be of great interest to economists and historians alike.

This book describes the history of the IMF from its birth, through the Bretton Woods era, and in the aftermath. Special attention is paid to integrating IMF history with the macro-economic policies of member countries and of other international institutions as well. This collection of work presents a clear understanding, inter alia, of the influence of the United States over IMF policy via the National Advisory Committee; the dealings of the IMF with the UK on pound sterling policy; the institutional change of the IMF brought about by Per Jacobsson, the third managing director; and France, Italy, Germany, Canada, and Japan vis-à-vis IMF consultations. It also provides the reader with topics concerning the bankers’ acceptance market function and international liquidity issues in relation to IMF policy; the final chapter sheds light on the long-standing relations between the IMF and China, from the Bretton Woods Agreement to the contemporary period. All the chapters are archive-based academic studies providing deep insights with historical background, which makes this book the first thoroughly independent achievement in the field of IMF history. This book is highly recommended to readers interested in contemporary monetary and financial history and those who seek to obtain a coherent image of postwar international institutions and markets.

To provide an understanding of financial globalization from a historical point of view, this book sheds light on international banking in Asia before World War II.

This book gives a coherent explanation of the socio-economic dynamics of Japan from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries by means of the evolution of internalized culture and the role of culture in the ordering of the market.

This book describes the history of the IMF from its birth, through the Bretton Woods era, and in the aftermath. Special attention is paid to integrating IMF history with the macro-economic policies of member countries and of other international institutions as well. This collection of work presents a clear understanding, inter alia, of the influence of the United States over IMF policy via the National Advisory Committee; the dealings of the IMF with the UK on pound sterling policy; the institutional change of the IMF brought about by Per Jacobsson, the third managing director; and France, Italy, Germany, Canada, and Japan vis-à-vis IMF consultations. It also provides the reader with topics concerning the bankers’ acceptance market function and international liquidity issues in relation to IMF policy; the final chapter sheds light on the long-standing relations between the IMF and China, from the Bretton Woods Agreement to the contemporary period. All the chapters are archive-based academic studies providing deep insights with historical background, which makes this book the first thoroughly independent achievement in the field of IMF history. This book is highly recommended to readers interested in contemporary monetary and financial history and those who seek to obtain a coherent image of postwar international institutions and markets.

This book explains in fascinating detail how economic and social transformations in pre-1600 Japan led to an industrious revolution in the early modern period and how the fruits of the Industrious Revolution are what have supported Japan since the eighteenth century, improving living standards and leading to the formation of the work ethic of modern Japan. The arrival of the Sengoku Period in the sixteenth century saw the emergence and domination of government by the warrior class. It was Tokugawa Ieyasu who unified the realm. Yet this unity did not give rise to an autocratic state, as the shogun was recognized merely as a main pillar of the warrior class.Economically, however, from the fourteenth century, currency payments for shōen nengu (taxes paid to the proprietor) became standard, and currency circulation began, primarily in the central region. Under Tokugawa rule, organized domestic coinage of currency began, opening the way to establishing a national economic society. Also, agricultural land was surveyed through cadastral surveys known as kenchi. Land values were converted in terms of rice, so the expected rice yields for each village were assessed, and the lords used this as a benchmark for imposing taxes. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Japan experienced a “great transition,” and conditions for peasants, agriculture, and farming villages underwent great changes. Inefficient traditional agriculture using peasants in a state of servitude was transformed into highly efficient small-sized farming operations which relied on family labor. As production yields increased due to labor-intensive agriculture, the profits obtained by the peasants improved their living standards. The stem-family system became the norm through which work ethics and even literacy were transmitted. This very change was the result of the “industrious revolution” in Japan.           The book thus presents theframework of the facts of pre-industrial Japanese history and depicts pre-modern Japan from a macroscopic point of view, showing how the industrious revolution came about. It is certain to be of great interest to economists and historians alike.

This book sheds new light on the role of industrial districts in the industrial development of the past and present. Industrial districts, which refer to the geographical concentration of enterprises producing similar or closely related commodities in a small area, play a significant role in the development of manufacturing industries not only historically in Europe and Japan but also at present in emerging East Asian economies, such as China and Vietnam and low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The book identifies similarities in the development patterns of industrial districts in history and the present and analyzes the reasons for these similarities. More specifically, the book examines whether Marshallian agglomeration economies provide sufficient explanations and seeks to deepen understanding about the important factors that are missing.Despite the common issues addressed by economic historians and development economists regarding the advantages of industrial districts for industrial development, discussion of these issues between the two groups of researchers has been largely absent, or at best weak. The purpose of this book is to integrate the results of case studies by economic historians interested in France, Spain, and Japan and those by development economists interested in the contemporary industries still developing in China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Tanzania, and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

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.

This book focuses on the production of low-quality goods, the rise of markets for imitations and shoddy goods, and dishonest trading practices which developed along with the expansion of global trade in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in East Asia. Fake, imitation, counterfeit, and adulterated goods have long plagued domestic and international trade. While we are all familiar with contemporary attempts to control the manufacture and sales of such goods, economic historians have given the subject little attention, despite the fact that the growth of international trade and the lengthening of commodity chains played a major role in the spread of such practices. The problem is approached in several ways. Part I of the book examines the ways in which the asymmetry of product-quality information was reduced and mechanisms were developed to bring greater order in the markets, using case studies on cotton fiber, silk pongee, cotton cloth, fertilizer, and tea. Part II of the book focuses on problems associated with imported everyday-use items—which are referred to here as “small things”—and the role played by imitations of such everyday goods as soap, matches, glass bottles, and toys in the development of the modern economies of Japan, China and Taiwan. The project brings together the work of an international team of scholars who offer important historical perspectives on these issues, exploring the ways in which new institutions were created that continue to play a role in contemporary global economic activities.

This is the first book to examine the process of railway development in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China from historical and comparative perspectives. Moreover, it discusses and compares the East Asian experiences of railway development with cases in Germany, which was a mainstay of railway development in Europe.After the opening of Japan in the mid-nineteenth century, the country achieved import substitution of locomotives in half a century. This book explores the social capability of Meiji Japan to overtake the advanced countries in railway technology. Parallel with the expansion of the Japanese empire, a large team of engineers constructed and operated the colonial government railways of Taiwan and Korea and the South Manchuria Railway. The book clearly outlines the education and training of these engineers. The management capabilities of the colonial railways and South Manchuria Railway were transferred to the postwar period, and such expertise supported the economic development of each country and region. These dramatic East Asian experiences of railway development are compared with European cases, mainly German railways.

This book presents and uses a major, new database of the most serious forms of internal resistance to the Nazi state to study empirically the whole phenomenon of resistance to an authoritarian regime. By studying serious political resistance from a quantitative historical perspective, the book opens up a new avenue of research for economic history.The database underpinning the book was painstakingly compiled from official state records of treason and/or high treason tried before the German People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof) between 1933 and 1945. It brings together material on resistance groups stored in the archives of the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria with previously inaccessible files from the former German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia and Soviet Union. Through searching these records, the authors have been able to reconstruct in hitherto unattainable detail the economic, social, political, ethnic and familial profiles, backgrounds, and influences of all 4,378 civilians of the Third Reich active in Germany, Austria and the outside territories for whom there are complete records.The findings of their research afford fresh, new interdisciplinary insights and perspectives, not only on the configuration, timing, impact and profile of resistance to the Nazi state, but also on a range of real-world behaviours common within authoritarian states, such as defection, reward and punishment, and commitment to group identities. The book’s statistical analysis reveals precisely the who, how, where and when of serious resistance. In so doing, it advances significantly our understanding of the overall pattern and nature of serious resistance within Nazi Germany.

This edited volume is based on original essays first presented at the World Economic History Conference, Kyoto, Japan, in August 2015. It also includes three essays subsequently written especially for this volume. All of the essays focus on financial markets in the periods leading up to, during, and after financial crises, and all are based on new data and archival research. The essays in this volume enlarge the range of historical evidence on the causes and potential cures for financial crises. While not neglecting the United States or Britain, the usual focus of financial historians, it includes studies of financial markets in times of crisis in Japan, Sweden, France, and other countries to achieve a truly global and historical perspective. As a result of the research reported here the reader will be made aware of several neglected factors that have shaped financial crises including the most recent crisis. These factors are (1) the role played by monetary policy in causing and ameliorating crises, (2) the role played by international contagion in private financial markets in propagating financial crises, (3) the role played by variations in the institutional structures of financial markets in determining the impact of financial crises, and (4) the role played by the social background of the central bankers who must contend with financial crises in determining the final outcome.

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.

This book sheds new light on the role of industrial districts in the industrial development of the past and present. Industrial districts, which refer to the geographical concentration of enterprises producing similar or closely related commodities in a small area, play a significant role in the development of manufacturing industries not only historically in Europe and Japan but also at present in emerging East Asian economies, such as China and Vietnam and low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The book identifies similarities in the development patterns of industrial districts in history and the present and analyzes the reasons for these similarities. More specifically, the book examines whether Marshallian agglomeration economies provide sufficient explanations and seeks to deepen understanding about the important factors that are missing.Despite the common issues addressed by economic historians and development economists regarding the advantages of industrial districts for industrial development, discussion of these issues between the two groups of researchers has been largely absent, or at best weak. The purpose of this book is to integrate the results of case studies by economic historians interested in France, Spain, and Japan and those by development economists interested in the contemporary industries still developing in China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Tanzania, and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

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.

This book focuses on the production of low-quality goods, the rise of markets for imitations and shoddy goods, and dishonest trading practices which developed along with the expansion of global trade in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in East Asia. Fake, imitation, counterfeit, and adulterated goods have long plagued domestic and international trade. While we are all familiar with contemporary attempts to control the manufacture and sales of such goods, economic historians have given the subject little attention, despite the fact that the growth of international trade and the lengthening of commodity chains played a major role in the spread of such practices. The problem is approached in several ways. Part I of the book examines the ways in which the asymmetry of product-quality information was reduced and mechanisms were developed to bring greater order in the markets, using case studies on cotton fiber, silk pongee, cotton cloth, fertilizer, and tea. Part II of the book focuses on problems associated with imported everyday-use items—which are referred to here as “small things”—and the role played by imitations of such everyday goods as soap, matches, glass bottles, and toys in the development of the modern economies of Japan, China and Taiwan. The project brings together the work of an international team of scholars who offer important historical perspectives on these issues, exploring the ways in which new institutions were created that continue to play a role in contemporary global economic activities.

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.

This edited volume is based on original essays first presented at the World Economic History Conference, Kyoto, Japan, in August 2015. It also includes three essays subsequently written especially for this volume. All of the essays focus on financial markets in the periods leading up to, during, and after financial crises, and all are based on new data and archival research. The essays in this volume enlarge the range of historical evidence on the causes and potential cures for financial crises. While not neglecting the United States or Britain, the usual focus of financial historians, it includes studies of financial markets in times of crisis in Japan, Sweden, France, and other countries to achieve a truly global and historical perspective. As a result of the research reported here the reader will be made aware of several neglected factors that have shaped financial crises including the most recent crisis. These factors are (1) the role played by monetary policy in causing and ameliorating crises, (2) the role played by international contagion in private financial markets in propagating financial crises, (3) the role played by variations in the institutional structures of financial markets in determining the impact of financial crises, and (4) the role played by the social background of the central bankers who must contend with financial crises in determining the final outcome.

This is the first book to examine the process of railway development in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China from historical and comparative perspectives.