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O'Brien provides a critical assessment of Ernest Mandel's 1975 monograph Late Capitalism. In so doing, he offers a historical narrative that puts into question Mandel's framing of 'waves' of capitalist development as a process of capital accumulation that was dependent upon uneven development in the Third World. O'Brien starts by problematising Mandel's argument that an initial concentration of money, capital and bullion in the hands of Europeans explains combined and uneven development. He goes on to demonstrate that Mandel's (and Lenin's) notion of imperialism as a necessary conduit for the flow of surplus capital from industrialising Europe does not stand up to the historical evidence. In fact, O'Brien maintains an alternative thesis, namely that these marginalised regions were insufficiently penetrated by European capital. Adapted from the source document.

New institutional economics lacks a theory of state formation which could help us to deal with the mega question of why some states became more efficient than others at establishing and and sustaining institutions. Some kind of middle range theory could be formulated based upon historical case studies. This paper considers the case of Britain and as its title suggests degrades the myth of the United Kingdom as the paradigmn example of liberalism and laisser faire. In making its precocious transition to and industrial market economy the kingom's history is best represented as a case of successful mercantilism. – military ; sovereignty ; mercantilism ; political economy ; taxation

Modern globalization (which includes free flows of trade and factors of production across frontiers, stable rates of exchange, the containment of warfare and mercantilism, the preservation of the environment and latterly the protection of cities against rogue states and terrorism) are among the public goods provided for the world economy as a whole are represented as a beginning outcome of 6 decades of hegemony exercised by governments in Washington from l941 to 2003. The view promulgated largely by Anglo-American social scientists that the United Kingdom (and before that other powers) also supplied significant public goods for the international order has been degraded in this paper into theory without history. In short the assertion that American Hegemony can be perceived as a succession to the Pax Britannica from l793-l914 is virtually a myth.

Zusammen mit Geschichten von Hegemonie und Macht sind Geschichten des materiellen Lebens und des ökonomischen Wachstums die populärsten Metanarrative, die gegenwärtig im Feld der Globalgeschichte veröffentlicht werden. Es ist nun allerdings nicht überraschend, dass in einer Zeit, die durch "Globalisierung" gekennzeichnet ist, Geschichten erscheinen, die eine "Weltwirtschaft" erfassen, sich Chronologien zuwenden, die Jahrtausende zurück reichen, und geschrieben sind in der Absicht, die unterschiedlichen Niveaus materiellen Fortschritts zu erklären, die Ethnien, Gesellschaften, Gemeinschaften und nationale Ökonomien auf den verschiedenen Kontinenten erreicht haben. Der Beitrag liefert einen Literaturüberblick (hauptsächlich zu Marx und Weber) zu der mit den bemerkenswerten Zuwachsraten der chinesischen Wirtschaft immer mehr an Brisanz gewinnenden Frage nach den Ursachen der great diversions zwischen Westeuropa und Ostasien. Es zeigt sich, dass klassische ökonomische Modelle in ihrer Erklärungskraft beschränkt bleiben und eine Kombination von traditioneller Wirtschaftsgeschichte mit einer New Intellectual History die überzeugendsten Resultate liefert, um eine weltgeschichtliche Weichenstellung zu interpretieren, die dem Eurozentrismus des späten 19. Jahrhunderts Nahrung gab und mit diesem bis heute fortlebt. (ICA2)

All historical research, however micro and focussed can be represented as part of a process of 'reconfiguration' Research is simply the crafts dominant and traditional activity of transforming archival evidence into printed narratives which validate, qualify and occasionally demolish dominant meta-narratives. Most historians continue to be engaged in Von Ranke's grand project for construction of history by making different, more durable and better quality bricks that are piled up awaiting to be used as more modern architecture for national histories. They agree as a point of discipline (if not belief) that this remains the best way to proceed. Some (as Randolph Churchill remarked of Gladstone) are 'old men in a hurry' and opting.to proceed from the top down by relocating national histories within the wider spaces, larger chronologies and cosmopolitan concerns of global history.

This paper inserts two centuries of historical perspective into the ongoing debate on the nature and significance of participation in the global economy for the long-term material progress of the Third World. The global economy impinged upon the relative rates of growth achieved by national, regional, and local economies basically through commodity trade, the migration of labor, flows of capital, and transfers of technology between the developed continents of Europe, North America, and Australasia, on the one hand, and the less developed continents of Asia, Africa, and South America (the Third World) on the other. Despite the marked inequality in the distribution of income across continents, Third World economies and populations derived significant benefits from participation in the global economy until 1914, and the breakdown of the liberal order imposed serious impediments to trade during the era of neo-mercantilism between 1914 and 1950, which severely constrained Third World opportunities for growth through trade. When a new international economic order emerged with decolonization and the rise of American hegemony, the Third World again found it entirely beneficial to participate in global commerce.

Abstract
This article explores and engages with debates concerning the relation between internal and external 'Development' amongst nations. Types, trajectories, and patterns of economic growth and social structuring are investigated. Centering modes of trading and fiscal linkage and flow, the author concludes that 'a perspective from Europe', rather than a narrower 'British' view, has wider implications for the rest of the world.

Les historiens continuent à louer l'aristocratie de Grande-Bretagne d'avoir résisté au XVIIesiècle aux prétentions absolutistes de la monarchie. Cependant la Guerre Civile et la Glorieuse Révolution sont présentées moins comme une lutte entre un monarque réactionnaire et une aristocratie progressiste décidée à conduire le système politique vers la liberté et la démocratie, que comme la défense couronnée de succès par les familles dirigeantes de Grande-Bretagne de leurs droits traditionnels contre les tendances innovatrices et centralisatrices des Stuarts dont elles refusaient aussi l'autorité pour des raisons personnelles et religieuses. En faisant nettement pencher l'équilibre du pouvoir en faveur du Parlement, les aristocrates assuraient leur propre contrôle dans les comtés, garantissaient leurs revenus contre les impôts royaux et préservaient leur autonomie de gestion de leurs propriétés terriennes et de leurs métairies. Ils s'assuraient surtout de solides positions d'ordre constitutionnel, qui leur permirent (pendant presque 150 ans à partir de 1688) d'écarter avec succès les revendications des autres groupes sociaux désireux de partager le pouvoir politique.