The forces of industrialisation, urbanisation, globalisation and technological change have washed away the pre-modern outlook of most Latin American economies. Despite the improved opportunities of social mobility offered by economic modernisation, current income inequality levels (still) appear extraordinary high. Has Latin America always been unequal? Did the region fail to settle a longstanding account with its colonial past? Or should we be reluctant to point our finger so far back in time? In a comparative study of asset and income distribution Frankema shows that both the levels, and...
The forces of industrialisation, urbanisation, globalisation and technological change have washed away the pre-modern outlook of most Latin American e...
Cloth has always been the most global of all traded commodities. It is an illuminating example of the circulation of goods, skills, knowledge and capital across wide geographic spaces. South Asia has been central to the making of these global exchanges over time. This volume presents innovative research that explores the dynamic ways in which diverse textile production and trade regions generated the 'first globalization'. A series of experts connect this global commodity with the dramatic political and economic transformations that characterised the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth and...
Cloth has always been the most global of all traded commodities. It is an illuminating example of the circulation of goods, skills, knowledge and capi...
The book provides an overall reconstruction of the European economy, in the global context, from the High Middle Ages until the beginning of Modern Growth in the 19th century.
The book provides an overall reconstruction of the European economy, in the global context, from the High Middle Ages until the beginning of Modern Gr...
Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Western Europe? Was it a sudden acceleration of the European economy, or should we look at specific institutions arising in Western Europe since the Middle Ages? This book puts these big questions of European economic history in a global perspective, deals with the institutions that developed in Europe, and measures their relative efficiency over time and compared with other parts of Eurasia. It traces the growth of human capital in the centuries between 1000 and 1800, in comparison with China, Japan and India. It also demonstrates how important the...
Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Western Europe? Was it a sudden acceleration of the European economy, or should we look at specific instit...
This study presents detailed information on the book production per century and on the uses of medieval manuscripts in eleven areas of the Latin West. Based on a sample from an extensive library and on additional information the numbers of manuscripts surviving from the period 500 - 1500 have been assessed statistically. Other data have been used to quantify the loss rates of such books in the Latin West. Combining both sets of data allowed the estimation of the medieval production rates of manuscripts. Book production during the Middle Ages can be seen as a century-average indicator of local...
This study presents detailed information on the book production per century and on the uses of medieval manuscripts in eleven areas of the Latin West....
In sixteen essays authors explore the dramatic rise in the efficiency of European shipping in the three centuries before the Industrial Revolution. They offer reasons for the greater success of the sector than any other in making better use of labor. They describe the roots - political, organizational, technological, ecological, human - of rising productivity, treating those sources both theoretically and empirically. Comparisons with China show why Europeans came to dominate Asian waters. Building on past research, the volume is a statement of what is known about that critical sector of the...
In sixteen essays authors explore the dramatic rise in the efficiency of European shipping in the three centuries before the Industrial Revolution. Th...
The late Middle Ages witnessed the transformation of the county of Holland from a peripheral agrarian region to a highly commercialised and urbanised one. This book examines how the organisation of commodity markets contributed to this remarkable development. Comparing Holland to England and Flanders, the book shows that Holland's specific history of reclamation and settlement had given rise to a favourable balance of powers between state, nobility, towns and rural communities that reduced opportunities for rent-seeking and favoured the rise of efficient markets. This allowed burghers,...
The late Middle Ages witnessed the transformation of the county of Holland from a peripheral agrarian region to a highly commercialised and urbanised ...
Settler colonialism was a major aspect of the imperial age that began in the sixteenth century and has encompassed the whole world unto the present. Modern settler societies have together constituted one of the major routes to economic development from their foundation in resource abundance and labour scarcity. This book is a major and wide-ranging comparative historical enquiry into the experiences of the settler world. The roles of indigenous dispossession, large-scale immigrant labour, land abundance, trade, capital, and the settler institutions, are central to this economic formation and...
Settler colonialism was a major aspect of the imperial age that began in the sixteenth century and has encompassed the whole world unto the present. M...
Technology, Skills and the Pre-Modern Economy investigates how technological skills and knowledge were reproduced and disseminated in the advanced agrarian societies of China, India, Russia and Europe in the centuries before the Industrial Revolution. The book offers regional surveys of Europe, China and India, as well as comparative studies of building, porcelain manufacturing, instrument making, printing, and shipbuilding. The authors engage with the on-going debate about the 'great divergence' between Asia and Europe, and its possible causes. Technology has so far had a minor role...
Technology, Skills and the Pre-Modern Economy investigates how technological skills and knowledge were reproduced and disseminated in the advan...
Cloth has always been the most global of all traded commodities. It is an illuminating example of the circulation of goods, skills, knowledge and capital across wide geographic spaces. South Asia has been central to the making of these global exchanges over time. This volume presents innovative research that explores the dynamic ways in which diverse textile production and trade regions generated the 'first globalization'. A series of experts connect this global commodity with the dramatic political and economic transformations that characterised the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth and...
Cloth has always been the most global of all traded commodities. It is an illuminating example of the circulation of goods, skills, knowledge and capi...
