Suchergebnisse

Chapter 1: Historiographical Context and Bibliographical Guide -- Chapter 2: Statistical Bases for a Chronology of Economic Divergence Between Imperial China and Western Europe, 1636-1839 -- Chapter 3: Environments and Natural Resources -- Chapter 4: The Ming and Qing Imperial States and their Agrarian Economies -- Chapter 5: Sino-Centred Reciprocal Comparisons of Europe's and China's Economic Growth 1650-1850 -- Chapter 6: Cosmographies for the Discovery, Development and Diffusion of Useful and Reliable Knowledge in Europe and China -- Chapter 7: Debatable Conclusions.

For centuries before the Great Divergence the priorities of Eurasian states had not been with the specification and protection of property rights, the reduction of transaction costs, the extension of markets, the facilitation of competition or any of the other institutional prerequisites specified for Smithian growth in premodern economies. Their overwhelming concern seems to have been with their own formation in contexts of intensifying geopolitical and imperial violence, attacks from nomads, as well as internal rivalries for control over resources with warlords, local gentries, aristocratic magnates, urban oligarchies, ecclesiastical prelates, and other contenders of power within their own borders. Some comprehension of when, how, and why some states constructed the kind of autonomous, centralized, and effective governments with administrative capacities required to support and sustain institution required for long-term economic growth seems to be a precondition for the initiation of a discourse for a global history of state formation. The aims of this paper are to survey the modern secondary literature covering both historical and theoretical approaches concerned with connections between the formation and constitutions of states and the construction of institutions for the assessment and collection of taxes. For global history its conclusion is that in retrospect the extensive territorial empires in both the Orient (and the Occident?) look suboptimal as political units for the promotion of economic growth.

AbstractO'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 insuffciently penetrated by European capital.

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

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.

The Industrial Revolution and British Society is an original and wide-ranging textbook survey of the principal economic and social aspects of the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries. The distinguished international team of contributors each focus on topics at the very centre of scholarly interest, and draw together the prevailing research in an accessible and stimulating manner: the intention throughout is to introduce a broad student readership to important, but less familiar aspects and consequences of the first Industrial Revolution. A variety of different disciplinary skills are employed in the analysis of empirical and conceptual data, and each chapter opens up its subject with indications for further reading. The Industrial Revolution and British Society offers a topical overview on perspectives of this central historical problem, and will be widely used as a course text by teachers in the field