Since the days of Adam Smith, Mercantilism has been a hotly debated issue. Condemned at the end of the 18th century as a "false" system of economic thinking and political practice, it has returned paradoxically to the forefront in regard to issues such as the creation of economic growth in developing countries. This concept is often used in order to depict economic thinking and economic policy in early modern Europe; its meaning and content has been highly debated for over two hundred years.

Following on from his 1994 volume Mercantilism - The Shaping of an Economic...

This book deals with two key aspects of the history of steam engines, a cornerstone of the Industrial Revolution, specifically the road that led to its discovery and the process of diffusion of the early steam engines.

The first part of the volume outlines the technological and scientific developments which took place between the 16^th and 18^th centuries, proving critical for the invention of this strategic technology. The most important question addressed is why did England come up with this innovation first as opposed to other countries (e.g., France, Italy),...

World War II was the largest and most devastating war in modern history with far reaching consequences. The single most important campaign was the Soviet-German war, which consumed the lion share of Germany s military resources. In contrast to the tone in German and Anglo-American pre-campaign assessments, the USSR was able to repulse the invasion after huge losses and turn the table on Germany and her minor Axis allies.

This book examines how the two most important Western Allies in World War II, the United States and the United Kingdom, assessed the economic and military potential...

War, Power and the Economy contains a comparative history of Great Britain, France and Spain, the three rival empires of the 1700s. It explores how the states prepared for war, what kind of economic means they had, what institutional changes they implemented, and how efficient this was. As such, the book presents the first comparative synthesis aiming to understand the outcome of the global confrontation in the eighteenth century.

Faced with the challenge of paying for new and more costly wars, some countries found flexible ways to get more money and better supplies,...

The year 2016 marks the 200^th anniversary of the founding of the Second Bank of the United States (1816-1836). This book is an economic history of an early central bank, the Second Bank of the United States (1816-36). After US President Andrew Jackson vetoed the re-chartering of the Bank in 1832, the US would go without a central bank for the rest of the nineteenth century, unlike Europe and England. This book takes a fresh look at the role and legacy of the Second Bank.

The Second Bank of the United States shows how the Bank developed a business model...

The banking and financial sector has expanded dramatically in the last forty years, and the consequences of this accelerated growth have been felt by people around the world.

European Banks and the Rise of International Finance examines the historical origins of the financialised world we live in by analysing the transformations in world finance which occurred in the decade from the first oil crisis of 1973, until the debt crisis of 1982. This a crucial and formative decade for understanding the modern financial landscape, but it is still mostly unexplored in economic and financial...