Suchergebnisse

Die Beiträge dieses Bandes sind für eine Konferenz im Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Forschung der Universität Bielefeld (25.-26. April 1981) erarbeitet worden. Diese Tagung führte europäische Wirtschaftshistoriker zusammen, die sich vorgenommen hatten, eine neue Wirtschaftsgeschichte Westeuropas zu schreiben. Ihre Absicht wurde dadurch stimuliert, daß sie mit der in Europa und Nordamerika gepflegten Geschichtsschreibung unzufrieden waren. Sie sind der Überzeugung, daß dieser Gegenstand eine komparative Perspektive und einen gemeinsamen methodischen Zugang erfordert, der die notwendige Kohärenz liefert, um die zunehmende Anhäufung von Daten und historischen Erzählungen auf der Basis der verschiedenen Länder zu erschließen. Es ist daher an der Zeit, die europäische Wirtschaftsgeschichte nicht mehr aus der Sicht der Nationalgeschichte und getrennter Länderstudien zu betrachten, sondern die Geschichte der europäischen Wirtschaft auf die Probleme der Meßbarkeit und Erklärung der Unterschiede in der Einkommenshöhe und Produktivität, die von den Volkswirtschaften in der Zeit von Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts bis in die Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts erzielt wurden, zu fokussieren. (RW2)

AbstractFrom its foundation as a private corporation in 1694, the Bank of England extended large amounts of credit to support the British private economy and to support an increasingly centralised British state. The Bank helped the British state reach a position of geopolitical and economic hegemony in the international economic order. In this paper, we deploy recalibrated financial data to analyse an evolving trajectory of connections between the British economy, the state, and the Bank of England. We show how these connections contributed to form an effective and efficient fiscal–naval state and promote the development of a system of financial intermediation for the economy. This symbiotic relationship became stronger after 1793. The evidence that we consider here shows that although the Bank was nominally a private institution and profits were paid to its shareholders, it was playing a public role well before Bagehot's doctrine.

Abstract
The Bank Restriction Act of 1797 was the unconventional monetary policy of its time. It suspended the convertibility of the Bank of England's notes into gold, a policy that lasted until 1821. The current historical consensus is that it was a result of the state's need to finance the war, France's remonetization, a loss of confidence in the English country banks, and a run on the Bank of England's reserves following a landing of French troops in Wales. We argue that while these factors help us understand the timing of the suspension, they cannot explain its success. We deploy new long-term data that leads us to a complementary explanation: the policy succeeded thanks to the reputation of the Bank of England, achieved through a century of prudential collaboration between the Bank and the Treasury.

AbstractThis article is built upon a dense description and inferences drawn from the diaries and memoirs of travellers who visited the British Isles between 1815 and 1850. The majority came from Mainland Europe and North America and arrived aware of the economic growth and social change underway in Britain. We comment upon and analyze the ways that they reported and the language they used to describe novel features of the British economy. We reflect upon the key issues raised by these travellers on the economic, social and political change that they observed at first hand. Finally, we reflect on the overall contribution that sources from offshore might offer for the plurality of meanings attached to the First Industrial Revolution.

This paper offers a new perspective on the emergence of machinery in the cotton spinning trade during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. It does so by examining the interplay between economic, political, and national interests within the early Hanoverian state. Changes in trading relationships between textile producers across the three kingdoms of England/Wales, Ireland, and Scotland created escalating supply‐side problems, which, by the 1760s, would precipitate a quest for solutions based on new technologies.

The theory (or rather the notion) that the international economy functioned more or less effectively for roughly a century down to 1914 because Great Britain provided the 'public goods' required for the smooth operation of the 'liberal international order' has become a textbook generalization. That notion emerged quite recently and can be traced to Kindleberger's attempt to explain the pronounced cyclical fluctuations experienced by the world economy during the interwar years 1919–39, as well as the severity and duration of the Great Depression from 1929–33 in terms of the American failure to sustain conditions necessary for the financial stability of an interdependent global economy. In Kindleberger's view, Britain, which had acted as a hegemonic power before 1914, lacked the resources to continue with its historic role after the Great War, while the United States (which by 1918 enjoyed a position in the world economy of arguably greater weight and significance than the United Kingdom had ever possessed during the long nineteenth century) commanded neither the knowledge nor the political will to replace Britain as the responsible hegemonic power until after the Second World War.