Programme

This paper consists of three sections. The first section examines the issue of land scarcity in South Asia from a long-term perspective. We clarify that land scarcity became a serious issue in the late 19th century. In the second section, we argue that the response of Indian rural societies to the scarcity of land was not of the ‘labour-intensive’ type in agriculture, because climatic conditions did not allow this sort of path. If we look at the labour-intensity in the rural society as a whole, however, we can conclude that it was rather high during this period. There was a thick layer of landless labourers who were categorized as being employed in agriculture. But in one sense we had better think that they belonged to the service sector rather than the agricultural sector. Here we propose a working hypothesis on the South Asian path of development, namely ‘division of labour in community’. This path tended to be service-sector-oriented. In these two sections so far, we have relied mainly on studies by Japanese scholars on South India. Their research was motivated by a comparative perspective on East Asian cases, focussing on labour absorption in agriculture and division of labour in community. The third part is concerned with the particular group of people and the division of labour in community in South Asian urban settings. This group consists of people employed as scavengers by the municipal corporation of Calcutta, who were a typical product of South Asian social development. We would argue that this example clearly shows the service-sector-oriented path of social development.

This paper sketches the long-term path of economic development in South Asia, in comparison with East Asia. The starting point of this comparison is the notion that the both regions followed a “labour-intensive” path, with a relatively low land-labour ratio and labour-intensive technology and labour-absorbing institutions. Haruka Yanagisawa argued that there was a labour-intensive pattern of agricultural development in South India, similar in character to Japan, since the nineteenth century, while Tirthankar Roy traced the development of labour-intensive (or skill-intensive) industries such as cotton textiles, which grew in the sixteenth century or earlier, had survived colonial rule and remain as an important sector to this day. Although in general land was not as scarce in South Asia as in East Asia till the end of the nineteenth century, there were regional variations. In any case, there was a clear similarity between the two regions since the end of the nineteenth century.
Meanwhile, comparisons in the studies of famines and epidemics suggest that the degree of risks and uncertainties South Asian population had faced may have been much greater than East Asia. Broad ecological instabilities, such as river floods, were also more visible in South Asia. There was perhaps a greater institutional attention to these phenomena in South Asia than in East Asia as well. And this might account for the tendency that East Asia pursued the increase of land productivity more eagerly than South Asia did, while South Asian technology and institutions have been built on the need to respond to sudden shocks and frequent uncertainties, in addition to productivity concerns.
The paper ends by making some speculations about how the early modern path of economic development had underpinned South Asia’s response to the two key changes in the modern period, namely the arrival of western colonialism and the increased land scarcity, with the East Asian experience in mind.

This study examines the working conditions of salt workers, known as malangis, under the East India Company’s monopoly in early nineteenth century Bengal. The malangis are considered to be one of the most oppressed class of workers in Bengal, and this was largely due to the Company’s exploitative policies towards them. This paper suggests that their conditions were determined not only by the Company’s monopoly but also by wider environmental, economic and social changes surrounding the salt industry over the period.
Until around the mid-1830s, the malangis were in a strong bargaining position, and it was difficult for the Company to secure them without providing good welfare and extra financial support, because the malanigs had other employment options. However, the increasing difficulties in procuring fuels, grass and straw in particular, which were used for boiling brine as a part of production, began to lower the working conditions of the malangis. An increasing demand of fuel for fuel-consuming industries, steamships and motorised factories, reclamation of grasslands into cultivated lands, and ecological changes limited the availability of fuels for industries. Such circumstances encouraged commodification of biomass fuels, and as a result the malangis began to be more dependent on fuel the market for fuels, which increased their expenses.

Ramachandra Guha and others have argued that railway construction, especially the need for sleepers, was largely responsible for the initial deforestation in British India, mainly on the evidence taken from sources relating to the development of forest administration. The movement of wooden sleepers and timber, recorded in trade statistics and railway reports, have never been systematically examined with the issue of forest commercialisation in mind. This paper traces the development of external and internal trade of sleepers and timber, and show how sleepers were secured through long-distance trade across the subcontinent for the period from 1890 to 1913.

We have used foreign trade, coastal trade and rail- and river-borne trade statistics in combination with information on forests. Together, they show that the main source of sleepers initially came from Punjab, but Burmese teak quickly became the chief source from which sleepers were made. The bulk of trade passed the three main ports of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, and from these ports sleepers were transported to hinterland where they sometimes competed with local supply. The movements show large annual fluctuations, reflecting the nature of demand arising from construction and periodic replacements. We suggest that the development of transport networks and internal trade that could cope with them provided a vital foundation of the imperial forest policy, which promoted commercial timber production in relatively concentrated areas under state ownership and generated a large amount of revenue.

This paper takes up the economy of match and glass ware in Japan as well as in India, and puts focus on the mobility of its labour intensive production between those two countries. Through illuminating the historical facts around migration of manufacturing engineers/workmen, relocation of technology/production scheme, and modulation of consumption preference, between Japan and India, I emphasize that the labour intensive production did not necessarily develop in accordance with conditions within a single specific area, but was molded under the dynamic intra-Asian interactions involving the nature of industry, labour, entrepreneurship, institutions, commodity, consumption, and natural environment.
To be more concrete, match manufacturing in Japan did not go straight toward factory-based mass production, but many small and medium size units survived with unique type of labour intensive machines as well as production scheme including out-sourcing of particular operations to nearby employee homes. Glass manufacturing in Japan also reserved unique range of products, namely glass wares such as bangles and beads, with innovation of labour intensive production methods and equipments. In the early twentieth century, these elements and agencies of labour intensive production were relocated from Japan to India by the hands of entrepreneurs with some modifications to suit Indian environment.
The paper analyses this process through the investigation of historical records concerning match and glass wares industries as well as private records brought from Indian as well as Japanese merchants/industrialists who were involved in the relocation processes described above.

Indian industrialization in the first half of the twentieth century was labour-intensive in two senses: factories were characterized by a relatively high employment-elasticity, and the ordinarily more labour-intensive crafts made a positive contribution to income growth in manufacturing. Individually, these two characteristics are well-known to historians, and have inspired much debate and controversy. Central to labour history is the low labour-productivity, or the ‘inefficiency’ of the mill worker. This stylized fact has been seen in cultural terms by a segment of scholarship explaining the emergence of international economic inequality, whereas Southasianists have vehemently argued against culturalist descriptions of the worker. The ‘survival’ of the crafts, on the other hand, is central to analytical narratives of the link between trade and industrialization in the non-western world. In most received stories, the survival of the crafts would appear to be counterintuitive, and call for special assumptions about consumption and technology.

A significant gap in the economic history of modern South Asia is the absence of an integrated account of labour-intensive industrialization, one that requires us to treat the mill labour and craft labour – the inefficiency of the mill worker and the efficiency of the craft worker - as parts of one story. Such an account is not yet available, though a strong plea for one had been made by the late Rajnarayan Chandavarkar sometime ago.

The paper seeks to connect the two segments of Indian industry. It does so by means of the concept of skill formation and training, and two related arguments. Historically South Asia has been well-endowed in craft skills, which skills shaped the evolution of modern small-scale industry in the region. The learning of craft skills was embedded in robust and long-standing master-apprentice tradition, which stood in good stead during the process of adaptation. However, the mechanized factories that emerged in the nineteenth century did not utilize the accumulated heritage of skilled craft labour. The skill exchange and institutional overlap between the two worlds, craft and factory, was weak. The mills recruited mainly from the peasantry rather than the artisanate. Consequently, they faced special challenges in the way of creating a system of skilled and trained factory work-force. Many non-western societies faced similar challenges, and handled these in distinct ways, with better or worse results. Indian factories by and large addressed skill formation with recourse to its own informal tradition of social hierarchy. The ‘inefficiency’ issue reflected, not the cultural specificity of the average Indian worker, but the slow and tortuous change from informal to formal institutions of learning.

This paper explores the role of small-scale industries in Japan’s industrialization by focusing on the changing patterns of the export trade from the late nineteenth century to after World War II. Arguably, this is the best arena to examine this issue as entering export markets entails facing severe competition. It is well known that textile goods occupied the largest part of Japan’s export continuously until the 1960s. Although the individual categories only accounted for small proportions, the sum of various consumer goods other than textiles contributed a considerable proportion of manufactured exports, with changing the patterns in the composition after World War I. We can assume that there was an evolutionary process in production and that the small-scale industries played a central role in it. In other words, the foundation of the competitive-edge of Japan’s export-oriented industries transformed from cheap female labourers at the large textile factories to the skilled or semi-skilled male workers in the small workshops. We exemplify this process by focusing on the development of urban toy industry in the interwar period and suggest that this form of industrial rivalry—competing for the affluent market in industrial finished goods—appears to have pioneered an important type of world trade, which expanded after World War II.

In the early decades of the nineteenth century only a small part of village land in Tamilnadu, a region in South India, was used as farmland. The uncropped land, however, played an important role in sustaining the lives of villagers, as it produced manure, fodder, fuelwood and house-building materials and served as grazing land for cattle and other household animals. In this sense, such uncultivated land served as village common land, indispensable for sustaining agricultural production in the village, although it was often classified as “waste land” by the colonial administration.

The extent of “waste land” in Tamilnadu shrank rapidly in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, as villagers extensively reclaimed it and converted it to cropping. The government encouraged this extension of cultivation. The reduction in, and decline of, the agrarian infrastructure, however, was not automatically accompanied by a decline in agricultural production in Taminadu, at least until the 1920s. Though the extent of village common land deceased, rural people not only managed to maintain the yield per acre but, rather more often successfully, raised agricultural productivity by changing their agricultural practices, resorting to more labour-intensive production methods and reducing their dependence on village common land.

In areas under the river-irrigation system, it is likely that the cultivation (and the resultant decrease) of non-cultivated land expanded remarkably in the first half of the nineteenth century. A typical case was witnessed in paddy cultivating areas irrigated by the Kaveri River and its canal system in Thanjavur District, where, according to government reports in the 1860s and 1870s, there was almost no waste land left by that time. Due to the shortage of pasture land, cattle there were fed only on paddy straw and were therefore in very poor condition. Silt in the river water used for irrigation was the only manure given to the growing paddy. People did not apply other manure to their fields, since a flood could wash it away. In spite of their location in an area benefiting from a highly developed canal irrigation system, most paddy fields in the region produced only one crop a year, and their yield per acre was reported to be lower than that of other districts where irrigation conditions were less favourable.

This state of affairs changed towards the end of the nineteenth century. The construction of dams in the upper reaches of the Kaveri reduced the quantity and richness of the silt. Farmers started buying leaf manure, which was brought by carts from other districts. Thanjavur farmers also penned herds of goats and sheep coming from other districts as a method to enrich the soil of their fields. It is interesting to note, in passing, that Kaveri farmers sent their cattle to other unirrigated regions to graze. By increasing the application of manure, Thanjavur farmers maintained their paddy yield per acre and succeeded in considerably increasing the extent of double-cropped areas after the 1880s. Hence, the increase in manure use in canal-irrigated fields was supported by expanding transactions and movements of manure and animals that developed between irrigated and unirrigated regions over several south Indian districts. It goes without saying that the general rise in prices of agricultural products in this period and the increased income paddy farmers received for their products are likely to have been important factors in enabling them to invest money to purchase commercial manure for their fields.

Except for river-irrigated regions like the Kaveri delta, cropped land formed only a part of village land, as exemplified by Salem district, where only one fourth of the total land was cropped in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Farmers used various kinds of manure on their fields, such as cow dung, leaf manure and rubbish. Uncultivated common land supported agriculture by providing the leaf manure as well as grazing for cattle and other animals. Cattle there were reported to be in strong condition, thanks to the good grazing in the forests. People were allowed to collect free fuelwood from forests.

Nevertheless, the environment that had supported agricultural production deteriorated towards the end of the nineteenth century. Cultivation expanded into what previously had been waste land, and this led to a rapid decrease in village common land. The government forest reservation policy also compounded the situation by regulating the collection of leaf manure in forests. This led to a shortage of leaf manure and a resultant rise in its price, as well as in that of bullocks. Local people, however, seem to have coped with the new situation by developing a more intensive agricultural production system. A 1933 document reports the development of manure markets in unirrigated regions. People not only brought leaf manure from forested areas but also started to grow manure crops in their fields. Groundnuts were also used as manure. Farmers even in unirrigated regions started to purchase green manure for their fields, and some even used chemical fertilizer. As the use of manure increased, so did the number of irrigation wells, which multiplied substantially. As a result, the cropping intensity of the cultivated fields strengthened. It is important to remind ourselves here that price rises of commercial crops like groundnuts formed the background against which the intensification of agricultural practices proceeded.

This paper provides an introduction to, and overview of, the “Early Christianity and Ancient Economy Project,” which seeks to delineate the relationship between early Christianity and the ancient economy in the period from Jesus to Justinian. During this period, early Christianity went through an incredible metamorphosis both demographically and geographically. It began as a tiny Jewish sect centered in Jerusalem, yet by the end of the first century its adherents were largely non-Jews drawn from the large urban centers of the Greco-Roman world. At that point it was still a small and statistically insignificant religion, but by the end of the fourth century it had become the official religion of the Roman Empire. Throughout this period, it dealt with different economic issues, though the role that it played in the overall Roman economy was constantly changing and becoming more substantial, especially after Constantine. Yet the economic life of Rome was by no means static during this period, for it also underwent numerous changes. The aim of the project is to establish the economic history of early Christianity, which will involve assessing its relationship to the ancient economy as a whole and demonstrating similarities and differences in attitudes, approaches to problems, and attempted solutions.

Historians who view the ancient economy as ‘primitive’ often point to the phenomenon of hoarding as corroboration. Meikle (2002: 242), for example, concludes that Greek and Roman hoarding precludes the existence of investment opportunities and markets for capital and labor in the ancient world. Jongman (2003: 191), however, suggests that “an important reason for rich Romans to hold large reserves in cash was the need to alleviate the complexities and unpredictability of property transfers from one generation to the next.” The prospect of illness and death created two additional categories of precautionary demand extending well beyond the Roman elite. An unexpected illness or injury might necessitate cash for doctors, medicine, or even votive offerings for the gods. The structures and inscriptions to be found on the outskirts of Rome and other Roman cities indicate that a tremendous number of Romans, wealthy and otherwise, wanted themselves or their loved ones memorialized and their remains treated honorably. Death was often an unexpected event that could require the bereaved to spend considerable amounts of money on short notice. Funerals might involve the purchase of frankincense, wood to fuel cremation, land for a monument or space for an urn, as well as wine and food to be offered to the dead or consumed at the tomb. One might hire pollictores to wash and anoint the body, praeficae to wail at the funeral, vespillones to carry the corpse, ustores to cremate the body, and fossores to dig space in a catacomb. In this paper I will consider the dimensions of these precautionary demands and how they might have changed in the late Republic and early Empire.

Being basically defined as something desirable but not utilitarian, luxury has been commonly associated with sumptuous goods, conspicuous consumption and typical expressions of social status. In ancient Rome, material luxury further involved ideas of moral decadence, laxity and negligence, as Latin terms such as luxuria, opulentia and desidia illustrate Beyond moral and rhetorical uses, this paper explores the impact of the phenomenon in the Roman economy from the early Principate to Late Antiquity, focusing on particular key questions and scholar debates: Did the Roman market of high-valued goods contribute to economic stimulus, or should it be regarded as a symptom of economic decline or fatigue? Can this be explored as an indicator for the dynamics of production, distribution, marketing and consumption? To what extent did Rome experience fundamental changes or patterns of continuity in the processes of supply and demand of costly goods? How did political, military or social evolutions and transformations influence them?
Material culture (such as furniture, jewellery, tableware, etc.) made of gold, silver, bronze, fine-glass, ivory, purple or gems are some of the exclusive commodities generally involved in exemplary episodes of luxury as seen in the literature, from Cato the Elder to the hagiographic texts. Making use of complementary archaeological, epigraphic and papyrological evidence, I will further attempt to reconstruct financial and commercial mechanisms and processes of transmission and acquisition. How did public authorities and law delineate and sanction these practices? Can we follow the traces of consumers, professional agents and intermediaries, industries, workshops, market-places and other physical structures linked to this phenomenon?

Economists study rational human behaviour with a focus on the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. When the irrational aspects of human attitude come into force, then, the discipline of economics changes and becomes another form of art. The study of these aspects should not be neglected but should be incorporated in the mainstream analysis of rational data. Historians of the Roman empire tend to consider the illogical features of the economy as evidence for its underdevelopment, hence following Polanyi’s substantivist views. Such features include moral attitudes, religious beliefs, psychological factors or habits formed by long lasting traditions. In this article I intend to show that these characteristics are, in fact, potent economic determinants and they co-exist harmoniously with other more ‘rational’ factors.

During his journeys along the Mediterranean Sea Paul travelled through different harbours such as Cesarea or Puteoli. Communities of traders from several Roman provinces were living in these ports sometimes, on a permanent basis. These communities in charge of the trade of goods along the Mediterranean would probably be the first gentiles that would listened to Paul’s preaching and would help to spread Christianity. We see it in the case of Lydia in Thyatyra. This had already happened with other religions; in Italy the first place where the cult of Isis is documented is Puteoli, the major trade centre of the Mediterranean after Alexandria and also the first Italian city that Paul visited in his journey to Rome. A necessary stop since all the Alexandrian ships ended their journey there; here it is then one of the first place where he would have encountered his first listeners, either Jews, since there was an important community in the city, or gentiles. By studying the communities of traders in the ports visited by Paul we can grasp the activities of the early Christians and their involvement in economic activities since these economic centres worked also as cultural magnets and as places for the exchange of ideas.

Citizenship formed the basis of Greek and Roman socio-political organisation. Yet did it also have economic significance? Inspired by the ideas of Max Weber and especially M.I. Finley on the ancient economy, scholars have argued that ancient citizenship constituted a barrier to economic development, because it frustrated the effective functioning of factor markets. There are, however, alternative ways of looking at citizenship. In this paper, I shall discuss a number of theoretical viewpoints that might help us to reconceptualise ancient citizenship as an economically efficient institution.

Ever since the great voyage times at the end of 15th century, the economy links all over the world including Americas and Australia had been being strengthened, which unfolded the globalization of economy. Yunnan, which lies in the east of the Tibetan Plateaus and belongs to one of the important proponents of the South-West China, also initiated increasingly-closer-and-broader links with the inner-China as well as with other areas such as Southeast and south Asia, Europe, Americas and Australia. This thesis inquired briefly into the following three issues: the development of the links, transportation and communication, between Yunnan and the world; the main role of Yunnan’s in the early economic globalization; and the impacts of the early economic globalization on the Yunnan economy. So as to get a comparatively-full knowledge of the diversity and complexity of the early economic globalization.

1. Transportation and communication, the links of Yunnan and the world
Before the 15th century, Yunnan had already developed a system of transportation and communication with the caravan as its core and with the human and livestock as its power. Through this traditional system, Yunnan had exchanged economically and traded with both the inner-China and the neighboring countries. Since then, this system had been playing the key role in Yunnan’s involvement in the globalization as well as in economic links between both within and outside of Yunnan. With the strengthening of the economic links, this system also had got a relatively-greater development. During the late 19th and the early 20th century, the development of railways, roads, airports, post service and telegraphy had shortened greatly the distance between different areas both within and outside of Yunnan. The scope and the depth of Yunnan’s involvement in the globalization took on the trend of increasingly broadening and deepening.

2. The main role that Yunnan had played in the early economic globalization
Yunnan has played in the early economic globalization three major roles: one of the important areas of spreading passage and introducing base for various plant species; the supply of various mineral products for the global market; and one of the ties to the world economy in the South-West China.
(1) As one of the important areas for introducing and planting various plant species, corn and potato originated in America had been introduced into Yunnan long before and thereafter had been spread in the China. Planting poppy in Yunnan had been spread quickly because opium became widespread hard drug. Such plants as tobacco, pine-apple, coffee, rubber and olive had been introduced into successively and had been planted successfully in Yunnan. Some of them had gradually showed in Yunnan their advantage over other areas and the plantation had been enlarged rapidly.
(2) As the supply base for various mineral products, Yunnan had been an important area supplying silver for the inner China while American silver had been being exported to China. While the rate of exchange between the copper and silver rose to a high level with the increasing of outflow of the copper coin and the supply of silver in China, Yunnan had become the important base to supply the material of copper. As the outflow of silver in China’s foreign trade, the mining and smelting of copper in Yunnan had been going downhill. During the late 19th and the early 20th century, the undulating price of such mineral products as gold, silver, tin and tungsten in the world market had been leading more directly the foreign trade and the currency of Yunnan than before.
(3) As one of the ties to the world economy in China, not only had the products from the countries or areas in South-East Asia, the West and their colonies been sold through Yunnan to Tibet, Sichuan, Chongqing and Guizhou, but also those from these areas had been exported through Yunnan to foreign countries. During the late 19th century, not only had the companies from Europe, Americas and Japan been operating directly in Yunnan, but also the business organizations in Yunnan had established offices in Tibet, Chongqing, Shanghai, Beijing, Hongkong and the West colonies in South-East Asia and South Asia, doing trans-regional businesses broadly.

3. The impacts of the early economic globalization on the Yunnan economy
The early economic globalization was like a two-sided sword, which had done both positive and negative effects upon the economic development of Yunnan. On the one side, with the deepening of Yunnan’s involvement in the globalization of economy, the market economy in Yunnan had been enhanced at a certain degree, its dynamics had been strengthened, the market mechanism had been gradually functioning in the allocation and distribution of resources, technologies had made progress, and economic benefits had been more or less upgraded. The economy in Yunnan had gained some development in some economic areas. On the other side, the early economic globalization had given a series of negative impacts on the development of the economy in Yunnan. Except for its damages to the environment at a certain extent, in the face of the comparatively-developed international market, the scope of the local market of Yunnan was small and under-developed, whose leading function to the development of economy was limited. Depending on its resource advantage, Yunnan inevitably fell down into the passive position in unfair competition with other areas relying upon technological advantage on the international market. Especially, because of the imperfection of market rules and a series of unequal treaties, the benefits of Yunnan were harmed in the process of the early economic globalization.

ABSTRACT
Yunnan, located in the bordering area in Southwest China, has always a special feature in its social and economic development. Historically, it used a kind of cowry as its main formal money since a remote time dated back to the Eastern Zhou Dynasty(770~221 B.C.). This historic fact was recorded in the documents of Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, and was also proven archaeologically true in the last century. However, modern scientific analysis of Yunnan’s money cowry shows that most of the shells were from the countries and areas in South and Southeast Asia, rather than from the coasts of China. What’s more important is that the numeration system of Yunnan’s cowry was different from what was adopted in Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties(2100—221 B.C.), but the same as the one used in South and Southeast Asia. These evidences indicate that Yunnan and South and Southeast Asia belonged, ever since a very ancient time, to a same area of currency circulation and trade.
As the economy and society advanced, Yunnan began “to replace cowry with coins” in Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the currency circulation gradually evolved into the copper-coin system which was accepted in most parts of China. But the replacement did not prevent Yunnan from trading with the world, especially with South and Southeast Asia. Foreign coins and paper money were still in circulation on Yunnan markets. Furthermore, foreign currency had a more stable value than Chinese money in some cases.
Modern time saw the rising and world-expanding of the capitalist world. This greatly changed the pattern of world economic development. Economic and trading activities became more frequent between the countries and areas on the whole earth, and the ties were closer as well. In these circumstances, Yunnan had such development in foreign trade that it turned from a remote bordering province into a major foreign trade frontier of China. As a result, coins from many countries and areas worldwide were brought in Yunnan and put into circulation. Among the foreign currencies circulated in Yunnan, the main ones were Spanish coins, Mexican coins, British coins, trade silver coins issued by the United States, Japan, France, etc, as well as various paper money. Yunnan was, therefore, called “the exhibition hall of world coins and notes”. These foreign coins and notes circulated in Yunnan were of great amount and had a more stable value than the Chinese domestic money, and they became actually the long-used main currency in Yunnan. This helped enhance the economic interaction between Yunnan and the world.
For a long time, we thought that Yunnan was a remote bordering province and the development of its economy and society had a characteristic of enclosure. But when we observe Yunnan through the evolvement of the money circulated there, we will find that, in spite of its bordering location, it has a strong opening feature even in its very early developing stage. Opening feature characterizes Yunnan’s development in the history
The economic interaction between Yunnan and the world shows that the phenomenon of economic globalization has existed for ages, with a profound history. It is the change of the world economic developing patterns that brings the modern economic globalization a new developing stage. The interaction also shows that economic globalization is not only suitable to the economy-developed coastal areas, but also of magnificent meanings to the remote bordering areas. Economic globalization has far-reaching effect and great influence on the world economy and human society, whether developed or underdeveloped.

Abstract

Located in the southwest frontier areas of China, Yunnan has had commercial links with South and Southeast Asia for millennia. In the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, most of South and Southeast Asia were under the rule of Britain and France. The communication with these Western colonies involved Yunnan into the economic globalization led by the modern West. The involvement changed the market behaviors and life styles in Yunnan, which demonstrated some characteristic features of China in globalization. In this article, we’ll take the Hongshengxiang as a case to see what these features would be.
The firm was established by Dong Shaohong in 1888, based on two smaller firms of Hongxingzhao and Hongxingfu. Its headquarter was located in Tengyue (the present-day city of Tengchong) in the Sino-Burmese border area, while its branches were spread in Yongchang (the present-day city of Baoshan), Xiaguan (the present-day city of Dali), Kunming, Jiading, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Rangoon, Mandalay, Lashio, Bhamo, Calcutta, Kalimpong and other cities. The major business of the firm was international trade.
Two of the survived accounting books of the Hongshengxiang, Quzhan hongshengxiang gelu wanglai dibu (榆棧洪盛祥各路往來底簿, the Dali branch’s base book of communication with other places) and Yangguang hongshengyang gexiang lingxing kaifeidi di er ce (仰光洪盛祥各項零星開費底第贰冊, the Rangoon branch’s book of out-of-pocket expenses, Book II) are kept in Yunnan Museum. The first book recorded the operations of the Dali branch of the Hongshengxiang in 1907-08, and the second one recorded the operations and overheads of the Rangoon branch in 1936. From the data kept in the two books, we can see that the foreign trade business of the firm was closely related with the demand and supply in the international market. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, besides jade which had been the traditional import goods, the firm dealt mainly with the import of new staple goods, such as cotton yarn, cloth, raw cotton and other commodities. This prosperous business brought considerable fame and fortune to the Hongshengxiang. In the 1920s and later, the firm took shihuang (石璜), a speciality of Yunnan, as its major export goods to meet the increasing demand in the markets of South and Southeast Asia. Though this business, the firm grew fast.
From the commercial operations of the Hongshengxiang, we can see that the rise and fall of the firm were closely linked with the world market. We can also see the influence of the world economy upon the society of China in general and of Yunnan in particular. On one side, the influence can be seen in the flooding of imported commodities in China’s domestic markets, in particular the impact of imported yarn and cloth to China’s agriculture and rural textile handicrafts. In another side, however, it can be seen in the influences of the Western material life and thoughts to the social life in Yunnan.
The operations of the Hongshengxiang, as a particular case, respect the interactions between Yunnan and the world economy. From this study, we can learn more about how globalization was undergoing in China, even in the remote frontier areas of the country such as Yunnan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The early economic globalization might be engined by western navigations after the sixteenth century onwards, but this process was certainly embedded in the specific economic and social development occurred in each area or country which encountered with those western foreigners. This paper will delve into the China's encounter with western trades in the eighteenth century from the angle of the growth of economic network of the southwestern China. The mining and selling of Yunnan copper constituted one of the crucial commodities in the growth of the southwestern China’s economic network, to understand this growth may shed light on the crux of the embeddedness of China’s early economic globalization.

Based on the national policies to govern frontier regions, this paper examines the socioeconomic significance of overseas trade towards Fujiang Area. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ming government made full use of the opportunities of overseas trade to suppress the turmoil in Fujiang area. Subsequently, the Qing government used an open and positive policy to fit the development of overseas trade in Fujiang area, which represented by the increasing Guangdong merchants and the rapid development of interprovincial trade, mainly food trade. Encouraged by these exterior economic factors, an unprecedented prosperity appeared in Fujiang Area. However, this kind of prosperity was at the price of that Fujiang area was brought into the South China market system and became the economic hinterland of Guangdong. At first, the nation was able to limit the negative influences of “hinterlandization” by its policies to guarantee the benefit of local people and to maintain the stability of borderland society. However, with the deepening of hinterlandization and the decreasing administrative efficiency of the nation, much more serious problems appeared both in economic and social fields. The nation was exhausted to deal with these problems and finally the situation became out of control. It can be said that the prosperity of Fujiang area in the 18th Century is the outcome of the mutual interaction between nation and overseas trade, while the social conflicts in the 19th Century is the result of independent action by overseas trade to release from the control of nation. The historic process, from turmoil to stability then to prosperity and finally back to turmoil, in Fujiang area reflects the special meaning of early economic globalization towards China’s southwest frontier regions.

Welfare States are usually understood as the product of advanced western industrial capitalism, emerging first in a few places before the First World War, further developing in some countries in the 1930s, and becoming widespread after the Second World War. But the close connection that such states are presumed to have with liberal democracy is a central issue that needs exploring in the age of the global spread of dynamic capitalist industrialization. Social Democratic Welfare Capitalism (SDWC), which is the convergent western model that has a close connection with liberalization, may not be the only possible trajectory of the capitalist/welfare trajectory in the long run.

One central question of historical welfare state research concerns the origins of SDWC in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries in a context of capitalist instability, crises, and major socio-political and ideological conflict. The relatively great stability of the period since the 1950s in Western developed countries has tended to obscure the turbulent history of capitalism in prior times and in other places. The extent to which SD welfarism was instrumental in stabilizing western capitalism in the post-war era is another, related, central question. In the current context of a developing major world economic crisis these issues have become highly pertinent again.

Welfare systems of various sorts have historically been developed within socio-economic systems other than liberal western capitalism (such as Fascism and Communism) and today Chinese and other East Asian forms of authoritarian capitalism are presenting major challenges to the capitalism-industrialisation-social democracy-welfarism path. Thus another central question concerns the possibilities of welfare states emerging in the future within models of capitalism other than the Western. The conceptualization of varieties of capitalism and the history of the capitalist/welfare connection needs to be considerably broadened to encompass all possibilities in the 21st century.

Fiscal management, as an expression of State “institutionalized engagements”, has been applied to identifiy the existence of different “fiscal regimes” in Uruguay, during the XXth. century. This paper analyzes the performance and characteristics of the social public expenditure in the framework of the fiscal regime prevaling during the last thirty years. Through a comparative perspective, it addresses the changes in the revenue structure, the evolution of the social public expenditure and the management of fiscal results for Uruguay, Argentine, Chile and Costa Rica (countries which have historically shared similar patterns of development). The period of reference is the one when economic liberalization, trade openness and structural reforms, including the macroeconomic management, were strongly implemented in the Latin American region.

After looking into the differences in the relation between “fiscal regimes” and social protection policies under macroeconomic stablization programs in the selected countries, it will be possible to identify distinct experiences of the welfare state peripecy in the capitalist periphery under “neo-liberalism” times. Has it deepened social inequalities or has it created a “reactive equity” opposed to the “proactive equity” needed for sustainable development?

It worked. Not perfectly, but in the pragmatic way that social systems succeed. In 1974-83, successive French governments expanded features of the existing welfare state, especially unemployment benefit. They used the minimum wage to preserve the purchasing power of ordinary working people. They invented 'early retirement' and started to share the available amount of work to new entrants to the job market. They ran modest deficits in total public spending, not a full-fledged Keynesian policy. Viewing the economic crisis as a structural, not merely one of macroeconomic policy, the Mitterrand government tried to use nationalizations of major industries to make the economy competitive in the long run. The international context (and opposition of the employers' federation) forced them to retreat in 1982-3. Nonetheless, they had expanded the existing bargain and defended it politically; it survived into the next stage of capitalism. Now as we face another economic crisis, analogies with 1974-83 are useful.

The transformation into the modern wage-work society has to a great extent happened in Finland after the Second World War – in European comparison late but on the other hand quite rapidly. Fol-lowing Moses Abramovitz’s (1986) famous concept of social capability it is possible to argue that Finland avoided institutional and technological obstacles of development. Social capability refers to the facilities for the diffusion of knowledge, conditions facilitating structural change, and macro-economic and monetary conditions encouraging and sustaining capital investment.

The social contract between employees, employers and the government has been the important di-mension of social capability in Finland during the second half of the 20th century. It decreased resis-tance to structural changes in the society and made easier implement economic growth. In the Nor-dic countries there were a widely shared trust in ‘a virtuous circle’ between economic growth, social equality and the widening of democracy, at least from the 1960’s until the late 1980s. Moreover, the formation of welfare state, too, can be considered as endogenous enlargement of social capabilities in Finland.

However, it can be argued that collective bargaining and welfare institutions have also negative ef-fects on productivity, e.g. by delaying and preventing necessary changes in the context of global market and economic crises. The beneficial institutional commitments induced by the past devel-opment may stand as an obstacle in the future. This paper analyses the role of Scandinavian-style social contract and extensive welfare-enhancing policy interventions during the rapid catch-up growth period in Finland.

Under minority rule a South African social security system was established along the lines of early social security in Western Europe where it evolved mainly as social insurance, first for the industrial workforce and later for the whole population. The expansion of this system to other racial groups ironically put South Africa in the uncommon situation of a semi-industrial country having the trappings of a modern welfare state, the core of which is the provision of a basic pension for everyone in need.

Black expectations of a social security system was already evident by 1955 when the so-called Congress of the People gathered near Johannesburg to endorse the Freedom Charter. The contents of the Charter reflected rudimentary elements of social security such as unemployment benefits, health insurance, social old-age pensions, disability grants and child and family grants. Prior to South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994 the ANC agreed in principle to adopt the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) of the super trade union federation, COSATU – a programme that contained elements of social security in return for COSATU’s support in the elections. However, the RDP soon ran into trouble. From the beginning the government lacked the capacity to implement it. As the RDP staff lacked proper implementation skills huge backlogs in providing access to basic services, as defined in the RDP, occurred. In order to calm domestic capital and foreign currency markets the government embraced a neo-liberal conservative macro-economic strategy – Growth, Employment and Redistribution, or GEAR. Perhaps the most important difference between the RDP and GEAR was that, while the former expected the state to conduct a people-orientated development policy, the latter saw South Africa’s economic “salvation” in a high economy growth rate that would result from a sharp increase in private capital accumulation in an unbridled capitalistic system.

The ANC’s unilateral acceptance of GEAR would generate considerable internal disagreement, especially from the ranks of COSATU. Union opposition to privatisation in South Africa included concern about the socio-economic impact of restructuring and privatisation, since it would lead to enormous retrenchments and job losses and therefore labour-market insecurity. The unions also harboured fear of the loss of social security benefits, such as pension/providence, medical aid and other related benefits as part of any workplace restructuring/privatisation programme. Tensions between the Mbeki faction and COSATU supporters within the ANC, inter alias over GEAR policies, culminated at the party’s national convention in Polokwane in December 2007 when President Mbeki was ousted as ANC president. In March 2008 he was also “recalled” as state present by the ruling party. After the general election of April 2009 with the ANC under the new presidency of Jacob Zuma South Africa is probably bound to see a revised, strongly labour-biased and developing state welfare and social security policy.

This paper investigates the empirical basis for perceptions of rising affluence at the Cape of Good Hope during the 18th century. Recent scholarship (for example, Allen 2005) have calculated and compared the levels and evolution of real wages in various European and Asian economies since the early modern period. This paper extends that literature to the Dutch East India Company’s colony at the Cape of Good during the 18th century. We follow Allen (2005) in calculating two measures of real wages in the colony, the first based on a simple relation between nominal wages and the cost of a calorie and the second based on a broader index of goods as an approximation to the cost of living. We are able to perform these calculations for both skilled and unskilled categories of labour, which will allow a comparison to trends observed in European and Asian economies where real wages were either stagnant or on a downward trend in this period.

This papers draws on a number of different data sources, some of which have only recently become available to economic historians. Nominal wages data for various categories is drawn from Muster Rolls (from the National Archive at the Hague) of the VOC’s wage payments at the Cape of Good Hope for a number of dates starting in 1699 and ending in 1790. Production volumes, prices and quantities consumed of agricultural commodities central to the diet of colonists are from Van Duin and Ross (1987) while the prices of cloth and commodities are from the Transcriptions of Estate Papers at the Cape (TEPC). These data are combined to calculate the level and trend of real wages at the Cape of Good Hope over the course of the 18th century.

JEL codes: N3, N9

Bibliography
Allen, R. C. (2005). Real Wages in Europe and Asia: A First Look at the Longterm Patterns. Living Standards in the Past: New Perspectives on Well-Being in Asia and Europe. R. C. Allen, T. Bengtsson and M. Dribe. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Van Duin, P. and R. Ross (1987). The Economy of the Cape Colony in the eighteenth century. Leidein, Intercontinenta no 7.s

This paper is the first study to conduct an econometric analysis of indigenous slavery in Africa. We distinguish indigenous slavery from export slavery and survey the literature in order to identify the factors that shaped its prevalence and its impact on Africa’s long-term development. We present data collected from anthropological records and utilize these in a statistical analysis. The results show that indigenous slavery was more common in Equatorial and West Africa (specifically the Belgian colonies) and in societies with more developed states. Our analysis also shows that indigenous slavery is robustly and negatively associated with long-term income development. . We find evidence that this effect runs via less political development, especially lower democratic accountability.

Studying the profitability of the Congo companies during the colonization period reveals that this was extremely high. We report the profitability as witnessed by accounting data as well as by stock market data, and compare the stock market data with international data. The colonisation of the Congo proved to be a highly lucrative business.

Belgian investors did invest in the Congo, but a lot of the final capital of their balance sheets in 1960 was from other sources. A considerable part of capital of companies came from reserve funds, build up by retained earnings realised in the Congo itself. Put in another way, an important part of "primitive accumulation" of capital (as far as companies is concerned) in the Congo was realised by internal efforts, not by imports of capital. This was especially the case from the Second World War on. On the contrary, during the 1920s considerable amounts of investments were made, an effort that was not continued during the 1930s. With the Second World War and the boom in raw material prices due to this War and the Cold War the Congo economy produced enormous amounts of profits, making it possible to distribute huge amounts of dividends and bonuses. The bulk of capital increases was realised with incorporating reserved funds and revaluation gains.

In recent decades, mounting evidence of the deleterious effects of excessive fiscal deficits on macroeconomic performance has fueled interest in mechanisms to maintain fiscal sustainability. These include institutional innovations such as numerical fiscal rules, budget-process reforms and transparency frameworks to enhance the accountability of policymakers. Their widespread adoption should not, however, be interpreted as a consensus on the effectiveness of institutional mechanisms for ensuring fiscal discipline. Indeed, the empirical evidence is decidedly mixed – with considerable variation in the effectiveness of fiscal institutions between countries and over time – and consequently the debate about the efficacy of institutional reform continues.

In this paper we study the influence of institutions on fiscal outcomes with a case study of South Africa since the 1960s. The aim is to identify institutions that had a lasting impact on the ability to increase tax compliance and restrain public expenditure within socially acceptable bounds. The fiscal institutions included a dual-budgeting system (revenue and loan accounts) which may be described as a rules-based regime (1960-1976), a discretionary regime (1976-1997) and a discretionary regime underpinned by accountability-enhancing transparency measures (1997 to the present). During the mid-1990s and despite rapidly rising budget deficit-to-GDP and public debt-to-GDP ratios (peaking at 7.3% and 49.5% respectively) and soaring expectations about the extent and quality of public services, the fiscal authorities achieved a significant fiscal consolidation. This occurred amidst a political transition from apartheid to full democracy and was implemented with discretionary measures – an achievement that defied expectations (in terms of economic theory) of rapid growth in government spending and worsening fiscal imbalances. We argue that periods of rising deficits and public debt in South Africa, with particular reference to the above-mentioned episode, have historically been followed by a return to sustainable levels before causing major economic crises, signifying sound fiscal institutions.

One reason for the relatively poor development performance of many countries around the world today may be the high levels of inequality during and after colonisation. Evidence from colonies in the Americas suggests that skewed initial factor endowments could create small elites that owned a disproportionate share of wealth, human capital and political power. The Cape Colony, founded in 1652 at the southern tip of Africa, presents a case where a mercantilist company (the Dutch East India Company) settles the land and establishes a unique set of institutions within which inequality and development evolve. This paper provides a long-run quantitative analysis of trends in asset-based inequality (using Principle Components' Analysis on tax inventories) during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, allowing, for the first time, a dynamic rather than static analysis of inequality trends in a newly settled and pre-industrial society over this period. While theory testing in other societies has been severely limited because of a scarcity of quantitative evidence, this study presents a history with evidence, enabling an evaluation of the Engerman-Sokoloff and other hypotheses.

Abstract
The health of the African economy is normally measured in terms of rates of growth. This paper suggests that growth figures are to a certain extent deceptive and, even more than that, superficial. In Africa, they largely measure the internationally tradeable indices and their rise and fall tends to reflect the market price of commodities such as coffee or copper or the development of oil deposits. The current, relatively positive picture given comes mainly from the greatly improved commodity prices that have characterised the first years of the twenty-first century rather than some kind of structural ‘take-off’. The broader context of what is happening is posited as being more fundamental for understanding trends. Surveying the literature relevant since 1960, this paper tries to point to some of the factors which have been more critical in change: demographic trends including urbanisation, the scope of so-called deagrarianisation and migration out of Africa entirely. It suggests how to come to terms with the varied phenomena jointly referred to as the informal sector. It looks at changes in the labour market, at how the African bourgeoisie/entrepreneurial class have been considered and the extensive literature on the African state. It finally considers as well the necessity to develop a more nuanced sense of the continent by stressing the range of different trends in different regions.

It has been argued that the fundamental cause of Africa's current relative poverty is a lack of pro-growth institutions deriving either from the colonial system, the period of slavery, or from particular African geographic/population characteristics. This paper takes a fresh look at the African income estimates. It subjects the available datasets to tests of accuracy, reliability and volatility and finds that there is very little to explain in terms of income diversity. Apart from some resource rich enclaves and islands and the exception of South Africa, the income of one African economy is not meaningfully different from another.

Using data compiled from army archives, we test whether the referral system in use in the British colonial army in Ghana served to improve the unobserved quality of new recruits. We find that it did not. If anything, referred recruits were more likely to desert and be dismissed as inefficient or unfit. We find instead evidence of referee opportunism.
Army recruiters may have been aware of this problem by insisting that referred recruits have better observed characteristics.

Abstract
This paper provides a general view of the evolution of banking in the Portuguese Colonial Empire between the founding of the first Portuguese colonial bank in 1864, and the independence of most Portuguese colonies in 1975. The text summarizes the legal background, presents the existing banks, examines their businesses, and discusses their contribution to the economic evolution of the territories under consideration. As the main conclusions it may be said that: (i) Portuguese colonial banking followed the continental model of government initiative and tight control, not the British model of private initiative without much government control; (ii) development of Portuguese colonial banking was always mainly a matter of profiting from the opportunities afforded by the economic evolution than a matter of autonomously fostering economic development of the territories.

UtrechtPaperHistAss09Abstract

In its attempts to revamp the British Empire after World War II, the Colonial Office fell back on older plans for exploiting bauxite in the Gold Coast (later Ghana). In the following years, this initial idea formed the core to one of the largest post-war development projects of its kind: a hydro-electric dam was to be constructed at the river Volta, creating a massive new lake and enough power for Ghana’s limited electricity consumers, as well as a new fishing industry and irrigation for agriculture. The surplus power was to go towards the creation of an integrated aluminium industry that would use local bauxite to create finished aluminium ingots. Beyond the capacity of any single company or government to fund, it eventually became a joint commitment of the governments of the UK, US, and Ghana, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the Eximbank as well as Kaiser Industries and Reynolds Aluminium Company (the latter only held a ten percent stake compared to Kaisers 90 percent ownership of the aluminium smelter VALCO). As a quintessential mega-project of the Cold War era, it is a good example of how the ‘fashions’ and trends of its day shaped not only the geography, but also the political and economic room to manoeuvre for an entire country.

The Cold War shaped cultural and social phenomena in the fields of fine arts, media, literature and in the spheres of images, discourses and memories. How this process influenced war or peace cultures in Eastern and Western Europe have yet not been researched sufficiently. Besides images of high technology, economic development and dominant virility, there were two main fields of discourse, on which marketing strategies of firms like Rheinmetall focussed: security and trust.
By using the security concept of Conze and Sywottek I intend to underline the cultural and media based dimensions of the Cold War in Europe, Africa and Asia. It should become clear, that weapon producers in Germany, France and Great Britain used techniques of discourse framing for their marketing strategies, and that “aid” – both economic and military – played an important role for their argumentation.

By combining classical and recent modernization concepts, I will analyze the obstacles to Soviet engagements in Indonesia as a case study for modernization projects. I will focus on typical spheres of modernization such as the economic-technical, the military and the societal-ideological fields with special regard to the Soviet rivalry with the U.S. as well as with the People’s Republic of China. A comparison between Soviet, Western and Chinese modernization strategies for developing countries can reveal which of them was most successful in applying its own model of modernization to non-European cultures and acted according to the idea of “multiple modernities” (Eisenstadt). The paper is based on archival documents from Russia, Germany and the Netherlands.

Taking the example of copper mining during the last years of colonial rule, this paper examines the interaction of increasingly important questions concerning the role of the state, the strategies adopted by business in response to political change and rival visions of ‘development’ against the background of intensifying ideological rivalry in the Cold War. In Zambia’s case, all of these questions had a particularly acute significance because of the country’s heavy dependence on a single export – copper, making Zambia unusually vulnerable to fluctuations in world demand.

Hanseatic traders formed the largest and most prominent group of foreigners in Bergen, Norway, in the Late Middle Ages. In practice, they gained a hegemony in the trade of this Norwegian economic capital. Hansards had attained this position through the acquisition of privileges from the Norwegian rulers, through the organisation of their trade and settlement in the town in the form of the Kontor, and through being part of the efficient trade network of the Hanse. However, it has to be recognised that the process of becoming the prime players on the Bergen market did not happen in a void, but in interaction with other groups: Norwegians, Englishmen and Hollanders. The relations with these groups took a different shape, and were conditioned by changing temporal and situational contexts. Still, all these groups had one thing in common from the Hanseatic point of view: they were the ‘Other’, non-Hansards. In this paper, the various perceptions the Hansards in Bergen held of the ‘Other’, and the strategies they developed in contacts with them, will be analysed, and a model of classifications will be constructed. Moreover, the question will be addressed to what extent Hanseatic perceptions of the ‘Other’ converged with or differed from medieval notions of alterity. In other words, whether the comportment of Hansards in Bergen was typical or atypical of their time. The case of Bergen will thus set the Hanse into the general discussion on alterity in the Late Middle Ages.

Pound toll lists are one of the most important sources for the calculation of quantities in Late Medieval Hanseatic trade. Often they are regarded as comparatively objective and complete mirrors of a towns’ gross trade or of certain merchants’ trade activities within one or several towns. This assumption led as far as a comparison of Lübeck’s gross trade with that of Genua, which was solely based on the pound toll registry in Lübeck’s case.
There are, however, several issues that question the value of the pound toll lists as a source for a complete statistical survey of Lübeck’s annual trade volume. The aim of this paper is to show these issues on the background of an investigation of one particular group of Hanseatic merchants – the Bergenfahrers.
In order to achieve this goal it is necessary to have a closer look on several aspects of the Hanseatic Bergen trade. These include the Bergenfahrers’ business organization, and trade concepts as well as social and business networks of different Hanse merchants who were active in the Bergen market. With these information as a backbone we can have another look at Lübeck’s pound toll lists of the second half of the 14th century and of 1492-1496 with the focus on entries regarding the Bergen trade. This part of the paper will investigate possibilities to get information on specific Bergenfahrers’ winnings or losses in the Bergen trade and discuss reasons for differences found in these calculations. A question that follows this investigation must then be: Can we speak of a typical Bergen trade in the Late Middle Ages? Or was the untypical the typical way of doing business in this market?
On the background of the information gathered in part two, the third and last part of the paper will on one hand make a statement about the problematic issues of Lübeck’s and other hanseatic towns’ pound toll registry as a source for large scale trade statistics. On the other hand the question if they can be useful as a source must be raised, and if so, what problems and tasks can be tackled with their help.

THE HANDELSGERICHT OF THE KONTOR IN BERGEN
In the Bergenfahrer Archive in Lübeck there are a series of protocols called Protocolbücher des Handelsgerichts. These protocols originate from The Hanseatic Kontor in Bergen, and they cover a rather late period (c. 1630– 1760) in the history of the Kontor. The content of the protocols is of a diverse character, however, the term “Gerichtprotokollbuch” must originate from fact that the protocols for a large part were used to record the many cases judged by the Kontor’s aldermen. The extra-jurisdictional rights and practices of the Kontor have been debated by historians as a feature from its origin in the 14th century. It has been underlined that the members of the Kontor made their own internal law to regulate the daily life, but also that they avoided being submitted to Norwegian courts of law. In this paper I will argue that the Kontor in the 15th century established a court which passed sentences in matters of commerce involving the merchants at the Kontor, and that this court can be seen as the main function of the Kontor. Contrary to the established position among researchers, I will also show that this court was recognized by Norwegian authorities and functioned alongside the local town court.

Overseas trade was the basis of all Hanseatic activities. In order to secure smooth relations between all parties involved in this trade as regards any problems occurring during sea voyages, maritime laws were formulated. Paradoxically, a comprehensive Hanseatic maritime law did not come into being until the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries when the Hanse had lost the power to implement such a law, whereas at the height of its power, in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a myriad of local laws and jurisdictions existed. This paper will analyse this paradox by considering the development of maritime law and its administration in individual Hanseatic towns, such as Lübeck, Danzig, Reval and Kampen, and by examining attempts within the Hanse at creating common regulations, from irregular statutes starting in 1365, via the Schifferordnung of 1482, to the 1591/1614 general sea law. This analysis will allow us to establish why a comprehensive Hanseatic sea law only came into existence after the Hanse’s demise and how the shared special needs of Hanseatic merchants, for example with regards to gaining justice outside their home towns, were catered for nonetheless.

Since the beginning of the 20th century the “foundation” of the city of Lübeck and the beginnings of the Hanseatic League were seen as two sides of the same coin, or as the most famous German historian Fritz Rörig has said: “The whole existed earlier than the parts. The development of the proud Hanseatic cities in the Baltic Sea Area […] was not a whim of fate, but was the consequence of a wilful economic program: the economic dominance of the Baltic Sea by German merchants.” The development as well of the Baltic Sea area as of its western partner at the North Sea area was foreseen by a nearly divine plan, and those who gained the most profit were (certainly) the German merchants.
This concept, developed in the shadow of the victorious German Kaiserreich, contains many weak points, but it was never really questioned until the last decade. By this, most of the histories of the Hanseatic League start with the so called “foundation” of the city of Lübeck in 1158/59 by Duke Henry the Lion, ignoring as well the roots of the hanseatic trade as the roots of the same city. In accordance with this perspective the German merchant came to the new markets like a deus ex machina and was right away victorious as the German army of 1864.
To question these statements and to show the making of the Hanse is the main challenge of this paper. It shall be shown, that international market-connections existed long before the “foundation” of the Hanseatic League and the city of Lübeck. Trade went on the same routes and with the same goods latest at the end of the 11th century if even earlier. The main pillars of this old trade were merchants from all over the Baltic Area, from Russia, Gothland, Sweden, Denmark but also from the pagan Slavonian areas of the Baltic south. All groups together traded between Russia in the east and Flanders/England in the west, alone or together with each other. At the same time, more and more “Germans” came with their goods into this trade. They had to fit in themselves into this system by many reasons, not only because of language problems but also because of transport capacities and knowledge.
The pre-hanseatic merchants are the key-factor of the later development. They explored not only the old markets, but connected also new areas to old markets and were, latest in the middle of the 13th century, able to invest more and more money into the system. They were not dominant a prima die natali, but were part of a development from the beginning of the 12th to the end of the 13th century. In the first times, these “German” merchants were minor partners in an old system. They needed to integrate themselves into the existing system, as long they were not able to hire own ships and to build up own trading connections in foreign countries. Around 1200 the old minors changed their status and challenged the old powers. The “Germans” went to be equals in the system, not dominating but a factor. At this step, more and more old trading places in the Baltic became “German” cities that means that these cities got a new, “German” city-law.
At this time, the “Germans”, which were not a united group at all, stated to change the rules of trade. They were able, to open the big German market for Baltic products and to reinvest their profits in the Baltic trade again. By doing so, the “German” merchants got not better, but richer than their old concurrent and fought for more and more influence and privileges at the main market-stations, the natal hour of the German Hanseatic League.
First around 1240 the German merchants reached that position, which was the attribute of the Hanseatic trade of the 14th and 15th century.
The dominance of the Hanseatic League in the trade between Russia and Flanders/England is the result of a long process, beginning c.1050/90 and ending in the time between 1240 and 1300. This process was not a whim of fate, but the result of an economical development and the inner organising of the new trade, furthermost in the north and western parts of central Europe.
This paper will by this proof, to write a new history of this old story.

An all too typical error among historians is to label the Flemish city of Bruges as a member of the German Hanse. This is entirely understandable in one sense because Bruges was the most important settlement and exchange point (Kontor) of the Hanse in western Europe, and became closely identified with products imported by Hanse members. In this paper I will detail the many new findings of research projects undertaken in the last decade that illustrate this atypical relationship of Bruges and its Hanse residents across the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

This paper deals with the politics of the Hanse towards the nordic Kalmar-Union during the period from 1435 up to 1481. These years are central in Scandinavian and finnish history, covering problems like the expulsion of Eric of Pomerania 1439-1441, his piracy from Gotland up to 1449, the reign of king Christopher of Bavaria (1440-1448), the presence of two kings ruling Denmark-Norway (Christian I) and Sweden (Karl Knutsson Bonde) and the Union-wars from 1451. The Hanse and their different groups had to decide their positions towards the three Nordic countries and the establishment of a new king restoring the Kalmar-Union after the crisis 1434-1436. The combat between the Wendish Hanse-cities and the Hollanders 1438-1441 created possibilities for the new king Christopher to strengthen his own futural position, had it not been for the harsh proto-national viewpoints of the Norwegian Council of the Realm on the background of the dominant Hanseatic position in Bergen. The Danish King Christian I, who from 1448 fought Karl Knutsson for several years, almost at the end won Sweden by the help of Lübeck and the Wendish Hanse-Towns, who reached a salt monopoly towards Sweden. In short, the paper deals with the strategies and complicated internal interests and relations inside the Hanse towards the thre nordic countries inkl. Finland and Iceland with their different trade-profiles in a crucial period of Scandinavian late-medieval history.

Dans le contexte d'un "long XVIe siècle" plutôt favorable, globalement, au commerce hanséatique, il est intéressant d'étudier, grâce à des archives d'entreprises plus nombreuses que celles dont on dispose pour l'époque médiévale, comment les marchands de la Hanse adaptent à ce contexte nouveau leurs formes ancestrales d'organisation et de mobilité. La communication s'attachera à montrer, d'abord, comment migrations et moblité sont deux éléments constitutifs de l'identité hanséatique, puis de quelle manière la culture technique des entreprises commerciales hanséatiques constitue une réponse originale aux conditions spécifiques de leur commerce; enfin, à partir de l'exemple des entreprises lubeckoises, comment les entreprises traditionnelles se maintiennent tout en s'adaptant aux conditions nouvelles des XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Tout en conservant leur structure complexe et éclatée, tout en restant fidèles à leur pratique ancestrale de la mobilité, les entreprises lubeckoises pendant et après la Guerre de Trente Ans vont se convertir progressivement à de nouvelles techniques, comme la comptabilité en partie double, et se montrer capables d'opérer des reconversions spectaculaires(par exemple en misant très fortement sur le commerce avec la France au moment de la Guerre de Hollande). Ces constatations vont dans le sens du regard neuf posé sur les "petites" entreprises hanséatiques par une nouvelle génération d'historiens qui s'attache à réévaluer les réseaux des petites entreprises européennes, à la lumière des études consacrées à l'histoire des réseaux commerciaux des autres continents.

The beer trade was a staple of a number of Hanse towns along the south coast of the North Sea and the Baltic. The development of reliable methods to produce beer with hope as the principal flavouring in the early years of the thirteenth century created a durable good that could remain drinkable for up to six months and more. The new additive meant that a lower alcohol content was required to preserve the drink and that in turn translated into less grain needed for each barrel. Hopped beer could cost less to brew and could travel without violent damage to the taste. Hopped beer then became an export product first for Bremen and soon thereafter for Hamburg. In the Baltic Wismar surprisingly was the source of beer for Scandinavia while Gdañsk sent beer throughout Prussia and further east. Beer was bulky so most of the trade went by sea. The towns involved in production set regulations to promote production and even, in the case of Lübeck, built systems to supply water to breweries. Towns also colluded to standardize barrel size to ease interchangeability and increase the chances that brewers would get barrels back to use again. The volume of the trade proved to be considerable. That remained true in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries after population fel. Brewers probably took advantage of consumers having more spare money to spend on what was, among foodstuffs, a relative luxury. Prices indicate that beer held up and that it was a significant source of income for the residents of the major Hanse exporting towns. It was a source of income for the rulers of importing jurisdictions as well. The Hanse had diplomatic bouts with, for example, the Count of Flanders over the taxes on imported beer. At Bruges the building that housed merchants was specially equipped for the storage and easy handling of beer. While the total value of the beer trade may have been impressive the units were relatively small and so apparently no special instruments were required to finance the trade. Difficulties of producing wine in the region of Hanse towns made beer the drink of choice. Brewers in north German towns were able to develop an industry and, in conjunction with shippers, exploited the relatively efficient bulk carrying cargo ships Hanse ports to establish export markets. In the process they eroded the area where wine dominated as a drink. Brewers and merchants trading in beer exploited existing legal and organizational structures, some of which they promoted, to protect and develop their industry. The result was what became by the fifteenth century a standard component of the typical Hanse pattern and practice of trade. As brewers in other parts of northern Europe perfected the art of making beer as good or better than the producers in Hanse towns the trade in beer declined and at the same time so too did the Hanse trading network and Hanse political influence.

Cartels were among the most important phenomena shaping market structures in the 20th century. For a long time cartels were not forbidden. The anti-cartel legislation dates from the 1950s, but even then it took a long time before it was enforced. The attitude towards cartels was remarkably consistent during a large part of the century. In this paper we want to explain the adjustments in Dutch policy towards cartels in the European framework during the 20th century.

In this paper, the Finnish competition policies and legislation over a long time period is analysed. Transforming competition policies and cartel/competition legislation will be illuminated against transformations in the broader economic and institutional context. Antitrust policies and doctrines have been an international phenomenon in the post-war period, but national policies have also been deeply embedded in the local ideological, political and economic context. It is evident that the Finnish competition legislation and the prevailing doctrines and attitudes towards cartels, were closely linked to the Finnish economic and institutional environment. I will discuss the motivation behind transformations in competition policies and the cartel legislation, which groups influenced the process and which were the targets of the reforms.
I will also introduce the meso and micro level in the analysis, to investigate the responses of the corporate sector to institutional transformations will be observed. Competition/cartel legislation is occasionally ineffective, as for example the law of 1958 show. Only by prohibiting cartels, they do not disappear. However, transformations in the legal environment and in competition policies do affect corporate behaviour. In addition, the changing legal framework and transformations in policies and doctrines does not only affect the behaviour of the business leaders and coporate behaviour, but have also effects on the attitudes and views on competition more broadly.
Finally, I will also study the impact from big business and cartels on the legislation. The companies and branch organisations – particularly within big business in the export sector – did not solely adapt and respond to the institutional regime, but, on the contrary, exercised a heavy influence in economic policy and agenda setting in Finland. To what extent and in what way did the interest and lobby organisations, the strong export cartels influence the legislative process? And how did the influence change, as a result of the “big turn” of the 1980s and 1990s?

Australian cartel policy, like many other countries, has been influenced by the attitudes of foreign countries for many years. From the influence of the Sherman anti-trust act at the beginning of the century to legislative changes in the mid 1970s and later, Australian policy makers have frequently responded to external influences. What makes Australian policy development different from policies in Europe or the US over the 20th century, however, has been some of the motivation behind those policies.

This paper will explore the rise and fall of Australia's attitudes toward cartels; from seeming indifference in the 19th century to a strong US inspired anti-cartel approach early in the 20th century. From World War I until the 1950's, however, Australians returned to a period of relative policy indifference toward cartels until UK and US attitudes and policies began to influence local policy developments. Not until the late 1960s, however, were blatant price fixing and collusive tendering practices identified as undesirable.

In addition to the standard arguments of the influence of US inspired anti-trust legislation and the lesser but important influence of British policy, this paper will discuss the importance of Australian attitudes to nation building, their distrust of foreign 'monopolies', the role of interest groups, including labour in accepting price fixing by business, and the importance of viewing anti-cartel legislation in Australia as a component of the 'protectionist' policies associated with early Australian 20th century development.

The Swedish variety of capitalism has been well researched by economic historians as regards factor markets like capital (banking and ownership) and labor (“the Swedish model”). The way the capitalist system worked in the product markets has however gained less attention. A large part of the industrial production took place in firms with markets where price competition was either absent or severely restricted. Tobacco and Spirits were state monopolies. Sugar, Yeast, Dairies and Slaughter houses were controlled by private monopolistic organizations. Breweries and Flour milling had cartels dividing markets into exclusive regions i.e. local monopolies. In the margarine and starch industries, there were price cartels with syndicates. In still others, there were no formal agreements but informal norms of “fair”, i.e. non-price, competition. Productivity growth seems to have been high in the monopolized industries but lower than average in the cartelized ones. Available profitability data show the highest values for the cartelized industries.
The Government made next to nothing to protect the consumer interests while those of the agricultural cultivators were painstakingly taken care of. Governmental action varied from high tariffs and quantitative regulations to active promotion by state grants to organize cartels in the dairy and slaughter businesses. For the Consumer Cooperatives the struggle against trusts and cartels was an important part of the propaganda. The cooperatives had no confidence in state actions but took successful initiatives to production of their own in some parts of the Food industry. Price competition was however not their most important objective. High profits in order to reinforce their solvency and to finance investments in other industries were ambitions that had higher priority.

According with Jeffrey Fear, cartels are not the opposite of competition and “the question is not cartels or competition, but cartels and competition. Historically, cartels provided participating firms a range of market-ordering options” and “they reshape the rules of the game on which competition rests” [J.Fear 2007 and 2008]. Even if we can not exclude a partial working of demand and supply law, economic conditions of interwar period influenced a general tendency toward a “coordinate market”, as it is called by Hall & Soskice, in which “the equilibria [...] are more often the result of strategic interaction among firms and other actors”. [Hall & Soskice, 2001]. Financial difficulties, monetary fluctuations, governments’ policies and the progressive destruction of international trade, however, were at the same time the main cause of the infectiveness of international cartels pushing firms toward un-fair attitudes and competitive behaviours.
Aluminium industry can offer a good case study concerning these general ideas. Aluminium is often considered a sort of “model” of this international cartelisation wave in the historical literature from 1920s, 1930s and 1940s because (a) it was a strong oligopoly about which reports of the period always emphasized the efficacy in controlling production and markets, because (b) aluminium cartels were often described as “fair” or “honest” in regards of consumers that helped the development of the branch and because (c) Louis Marlio, the “president” of aluminium cartels in interwar period, was one of principal international economic experts on cartels, and he enforced the construction of contracts with his intellectual and entrepreneurial savoir-faire. However, the cartelisation could not impede international competition or the development of newcomers and also the efficacy of cartel agreements must be demonstrated.
After a period of competition between an European cartel, settled up in 1926, and the sole American firm (Alcoa), the great crisis of 1929 pushed a new world cartel, conceived with a long duration, long term strategies, and with sophisticated managerial tools for bonding each member’s interests in the new association. However, the new cartel could not prevent during the 1930s neither the overcoming of outsiders (as countries that started to produce aluminium for strategic aims as Russia, Japan or Italy) that reduced international markets of cartel members, nor the emergence of antagonisms between members implicated in nationalistic policies of their governments (as, for instance, autarkic policy of Hitler’s Germany, or Commonwealth preferences of Great Britain, or war stock policy of France).
This paper wants to provide a study of interwar aluminium cartels underlining the external and institutional influences on cartelization and competition. At the same time, the internal organisation of aluminium cartels will be analysed, providing an analyse of inter-firms relations, of contracts’ effectiveness, and of cartels’ general performance in aluminium industry.

According to Hall and Soskice (2001), Switzerland can be classified among the coordinated market economies where non-market mechanisms of coordination between economic actors play a major role. In particular, Switzerland exhibited a high degree of cartelization in the domestic product market. Three major periods can be distinguished concerning the development of cartels in Switzerland: World War I, the depression of the thirties and World War II. However, an anti-cartel tendency manifested itself from the 1950s on, but this dynamic remained very feeble until the 1980s. The Swiss were thus, at that time, declared “the unmatched world champions of cartels” (Schröter 1999: 149)

During World War I, the Swiss Government entrusted professional associations with the distribution and management of raw materials. As a consequence, many unions were formed for this purpose. At the end of World War I, many of these unions were turned into professional associations and developed cartels agreements. The depression of the thirties is the second great period of cartelization in Switzerland: It encouraged entrepreneurs to seek solutions and cartels often seemed more appropriate than ruthless competition. In addition, part of the political left-wing, which was quite opposed to cartels in the 1920s, more or less supported the idea that cartels could solve various problems. Thus, there was very little opposition to the development of cartels in the 1930s. Finally, during World War II, the State delegated certain tasks of coordination and distribution of raw materials and products to professional associations, which promoted discussions between entrepreneurs and the creation of cartels.

From the 1950s on, due to the influence of the international post-war context which was characterized by the emergence of a relatively strong anti-cartel movement (notably in Germany, the European Economic Community and the United States), the Swiss attitude towards cartels began to change. This can be observed with the adoption of the cartel law in 1962. However, considering cartel practices as one of the most efficient tools to restrain foreign competition as well as one of the major means of self-regulation, Swiss business associations succeeded in making the cartel law as harmless as possible: the cartel law remained essentially formal and despite some measures supposed to control the cartel situation in Switzerland (such as the creation of an independent Cartel Commission), the State and its administration did not obtain any effective tools to restrain cartel practices (the law was almost entirely based on private legal measures, no cartel register, no cartel tribunal, the Cartel Commission could only get information about cartels on a voluntary basis, etc.). The private economic sector thus remained largely free to regulate economic competition in Switzerland according to the principle of self-regulation.

This contribution will focus on the cartel issue in Switzerland between 1910 and 1980. It will combine the questions of the practices of the firms/sectors and of the evolution of the legal framework. Two interrelated levels will be taken into account: 1) the domestic coalitions (companies, business associations etc.) which favoured cartels or the decartelization movement; 2) the influence of international institutions and neighbouring countries.

According to Hall and Soskice (2001), Switzerland can be classified among the coordinated market economies where non-market mechanisms of coordination between economic actors play a major role. In particular, Switzerland exhibited a high degree of cartelization in the domestic product market. Three major periods can be distinguished concerning the development of cartels in Switzerland: World War I, the depression of the thirties and World War II. However, an anti-cartel tendency manifested itself from the 1950s on, but this dynamic remained very feeble until the 1980s. The Swiss were thus, at that time, declared “the unmatched world champions of cartels” (Schröter 1999: 149)

During World War I, the Swiss Government entrusted professional associations with the distribution and management of raw materials. As a consequence, many unions were formed for this purpose. At the end of World War I, many of these unions were turned into professional associations and developed cartels agreements. The depression of the thirties is the second great period of cartelization in Switzerland: It encouraged entrepreneurs to seek solutions and cartels often seemed more appropriate than ruthless competition. In addition, part of the political left-wing, which was quite opposed to cartels in the 1920s, more or less supported the idea that cartels could solve various problems. Thus, there was very little opposition to the development of cartels in the 1930s. Finally, during World War II, the State delegated certain tasks of coordination and distribution of raw materials and products to professional associations, which promoted discussions between entrepreneurs and the creation of cartels.

From the 1950s on, due to the influence of the international post-war context which was characterized by the emergence of a relatively strong anti-cartel movement (notably in Germany, the European Economic Community and the United States), the Swiss attitude towards cartels began to change. This can be observed with the adoption of the cartel law in 1962. However, considering cartel practices as one of the most efficient tools to restrain foreign competition as well as one of the major means of self-regulation, Swiss business associations succeeded in making the cartel law as harmless as possible: the cartel law remained essentially formal and despite some measures supposed to control the cartel situation in Switzerland (such as the creation of an independent Cartel Commission), the State and its administration did not obtain any effective tools to restrain cartel practices (the law was almost entirely based on private legal measures, no cartel register, no cartel tribunal, the Cartel Commission could only get information about cartels on a voluntary basis, etc.). The private economic sector thus remained largely free to regulate economic competition in Switzerland according to the principle of self-regulation.

This contribution will focus on the cartel issue in Switzerland between 1910 and 1980. It will combine the questions of the practices of the firms/sectors and of the evolution of the legal framework. Two interrelated levels will be taken into account: 1) the domestic coalitions (companies, business associations etc.) which favoured cartels or the decartelization movement; 2) the influence of international institutions and neighbouring countries.

Sweden is regarded as a co-ordinated market economy. This implies that the interaction between state and industry is crucial for understanding the process of cartelization. Wood products and iron and steel products are classical Swedish export commodities. During the inter-war period they underwent processes of international cartelization. The Swedish forest industry was an active part in the forming of international cartels, while the Swedish iron and steel industry was more of a reactor. This also implied different strategies towards the state. The forest industry organisations were reluctant to allow state interference while the iron- and steel industry was more eager to ask for help from the Swedish state. The need for help was actualised when dumping occurred, but in the end the state was quite passive and private regulation had the upper hand over state regulation.

The paper examines how a Norwegian group of carbide and ferroalloys producers and its Swedish collaborators contributed to the establishing and consolidation of international cartels in the 1920s. During the last decades there have been published many studies of international cartels in the interwar years. Only a few have analysed the process of establishing cartels. Even fewer have studied cartelisation from the perspective of the firm. The paper deals primarily with the Scandinavian groups’ role in the cartelisation of the markets. In addition, it analyses the relations between cartelisation, market structure and strategic behaviour in the European interwar carbide and ferroalloys business.

The decartelisation in many West European countries started in the aftermath of the Second World War. It has been rightly stressed that the growing economic influences from the Anglo-Saxon world after the war put pressure to liberalise the cooperative capitalism that had been a main feature in many European states before and during the interwar period, Sweden included. But it is important to keep in mind that cartel- and trust organisations were an important topic and were closely connected to the discussions concerning monopolistic behaviour. In Sweden, the phenomenon was already on the agenda before the First World War but it was not until the 1920´s that the debate took of and engaged all levels of the political-economic establishment. One of the major reasons for the increased interest in cartels was the growth of monopolistic enterprises and their effects on price levels and competition.

The purpose of this paper is to present the cartel debates in Sweden that precede the competition legalisation in the 1950´s with focus on the evolution of the establishment of the cartel register in 1946. Public authorities as well as interest groups from the trade and industry, the labour movement and the Swedish Cooperative Union & Wholesale Society (KF) were the main participants in the debate. Of importance are also the governmental appointed committees and the inquiries published in official reports.

The paper examines the relationship between the Norwegian State and international cartels in the interwar period. Norway was on the forefront with regard to implementing legislation regulating cartels. The Norwegian authorities used the legislation first and foremost to further two aims in relation to international cartels. The first aim was to promote economic nationalism and to combat foreign ownership; the second was to protect the interests of the export industries. Unlike the Sherman anti trust laws in the United States, the Norwegian laws were not primarily used to support the interests of the consumers. This was not because the State was uninterested in consumer interests; it was more that export interests and national control over industries was deemed to be far more important.

Protection of the property right and governance of trades of the property right by the state are the institutional basis of the modern market economy. However, it could face difficulty to settle the governance of the labor market in this context. While the owner of labor is the worker him/herself, a employment contract provides employer with a claim to discretionary use of and investment in the labor, a residual-control-like right. Under the slavery, the problem did not appeared to exist from the viewpoint of slave owners, because their investment in slaves were protected in the slave market. While the free labor market arguably enhance efficiency through both-sided freedom of contracts, employers' investment and other expenses should be protected by some institutional arrangement. If the state court provides governance that satisfies the condition but does not contradicts the free labor, it would be a solution. Alternatively, the judicial system with the third party enforcement sometimes makes favorable environment for private governance by making the off-path actions less profitable. This paper focuses on this kind of experience in the silk-reeling industry in early twentieth century Japan.

Enslavement and slave trading were the main source of labour recruitment, apart from the slower process of marriage and child-rearing, in the economies of precolonial West Africa. As elsewhere in the world, first-generation slaves in African societies were mostly foreigners. Unlike the forms of slavery practised by Europeans, however, indigenous African slavery was usually assimilative, in that the descendants of slaves tended to be integrated into the society concerned on increasingly more equal terms over subsequent generations, with varying rates and degrees of completion. The conjunction of slave labour and partial assimilation has generated a long-running debate between ‘economic’ and ‘social’ interpretations of the institution in its West African settings. This paper aims to reconcile and integrate these traditionally rival interpretations, and to explore the economic implications. I argue that, in radical ways, it was the interaction of economic and social (and cultural and political) dimensions of slavery that was central to the history of slavery in precolonial West Africa. On the one hand, the growth in the volume of slavery and the specific uses to which slaves were put within the region cannot be explained without reference to the demand for slaves as labourers producing commodities. On the other hand, without organized coercion, and the political and ideological conditions for applying it, there could have been no slavery and no slave trade. Indeed, it will be argued here that, without such coercion, there would have been no market in labour at all in the economic conditions that prevailed in most of West Africa during this era. Moreover, the assimilative tendency in African slavery should be seen both as responding to the political circumstances of the region (the severe constraints on state formation) and, ironically, as underpinning the continuation of the internal slave trade.

British institutions differed from those in Continental Europe and throughout the world in the
eighteenth century, but there is disagreement about their contribution to economic development.
Statutory authorities are one example of Britain’s economic institutions. Parliament granted
organizations monopoly rights to levy tolls and undertake infrastructure projects. This paper
examines whether two types of statutory authorities, turnpike trusts and river navigations, were second-best policies by comparing the social benefits with the social costs. It shows that the
social savings from lower transport costs exceeded the social costs from monopoly, exclusion,
and legal expenditures. It also argues that the alternatives to statutory authorities were generally
worse because they would not have produced the same level of infrastructure investment.

Recent research has stressed the complementarity of and ties between "public" and "private" institutions implied in economic regulations in 19th-century France. I try to describe this complex "co-regulation" in the case of apprenticeship, by focusing on a study of Parisian labor courts.

This paper focuses on the interaction between the changes in production technology and the transformation of labor organization in the coal mining. Along with the introduction of modern technology, the Japanese coal mining indstry experienced drastic changes both in the labor organization and the labor market. Coal mining firms moved from indirect employment to direct employment and built up the internal labor market in which investment in human capital was conducted by each firm, as new skills were required for operating machines newly introduced. At the same time, when traditional skills being less useful, intermediary bodies that had supplied workers with firms disappeared and firms directly came in the labor market to hire freshmen.

The purpose of this paper is to present the history of organisational reforms in Nippon Railway Co., the largest railway company in Meiji Japan, focussing mainly on the relationship between the personnel management and the internal labour market of the company. Through this work, I intend to have some insights into the background and implications of the formation of modern business enterprises in Japan.

Concluding discussant

In the Tokugawa period, market transactions grew explosively and the local markets of Japan were effectively integrated into a national market. This is the common view shared among historians. An important question is how these markets performed.

To evaluate their performance, this paper focuses on the comovement of rice prices between Osaka and Otsu. Applying the Granger causality test, it is shown that the Otsu market reflected the rice prices in Osaka within two days in the early 19th century, and within a day by the mid-19th century.

This change stemmed from the development of communication technology. The rice merchants' appetite for the information had made the comovement of rice prices so rapid that the Otsu market did not need even one trading day to reflect the rice prices in Osaka.

In this paper, the effect of a temporary shock on the industrial agglomeration
was investigated, focusing on the case of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. Using the
ward and county-level data of Tokyo Prefecture, the persistence of the effect caused by
the earthquake was examined. It was confirmed that the effect would finally dissipate,
which is consistent with preceding literature. In addition, this paper investigated the
persistence differences across industries, specifically the differences between the
linkage-intensive industries, and the non-linkage-intensive industries. It was found
that the effect of the temporary shock was more persistent in the linkage-intensive
industries, which suggests that the there was at least an endogenous portion in the
mechanism of industrial agglomeration.

This paper empirically disentangles the important roles of geography in shaping the European city system. To do this we employ a, largely new, database covering all actual European cities as well as potential city locations over the period 800-1800, during which the foundations for the European city system were laid out. We relate each location’s urban chances to its physical, 1st nature geography characteristics, and develop a new empirical strategy to assess the importance of the 2nd nature geography characteristics of the urban system surrounding each location as well. Instead of the, up to now, largely narrative historical accounts on the role of geography in determining the location of cities in Europe, we provide quantitative empirical evidence into the important, and changing, role of geography in creating the European city system. First nature geography is the dominant explanation from the 9th until the 16th century, but, second nature geography gains in importance from the 17th century onwards.

In their classic paper (‘Convergence across States and Regions’, Brookings Papers 1991) Barro and Sala-i-Martin argued that among the factors that were important for understanding the income convergence process across the US states were the existence of regional clubs (they identified 4 regional clubs - East, South, West and Midwest) and the share of personal income originating in the agricultural sector. In this paper we borrow these stylised facts to re-examine the convergence of income across the U.S. states in the postwar period but do so by using a distributional dynamics approach. This approach allows us to examine the empirical cross-sectional income distribution as it evolves over time and also allows us to use this to derive the steady–state solution for this system.

We address a range of questions: has the distribution of US state per capita income exhibited convergence since 1948? What was the pattern of mobility (stratification, polarisation,etc) across states 1948-2007? Given the empirically observed dynamics of this period, what was the projected steady state solution? Did tax matter? We then introduce conditioning factors into the analysis to first examine the importance of geography (captured by the regional clubs identified by Barrro and Sala-i-Martin) and then to analyse the importance of initial conditions (captured by the share of personal income that originated in the agricultural sector).

Our initial results do confirm, in terms of the empirically observed dynamics of US state incomes between 1948 and 2007, that there was convergence but that this was underpinned by low levels of mobility (a result that is not clear in the more traditional regression based literature). We also find that taxation helped this process, especially at top end of distribution. However, more important were geography (in terms of regional clubs) and the initial share of personal income originating in the agricultural sector (the latter was especially important in explaining mobility). Perhaps more surprisingly, we conclude that when considering the steady-state there was no strong evidence of convergence, although again both geography and the initial agricultural share influenced the steady-state solution.

This article aims at exploring historical patterns of industrial location and their determinants, focusing on industrial agglomerations.　
A recent study on the determinants of industrial agglomeration in pre-1931 Britain compared the implications of the Heckscher-Ohlin model and the new economic geography (NEG) model to find the gradual increase of the effect of scale economies (Crafts and Mulatu 2005). Referring to this study, in this article, I observe the location patterns of factories in pre-World War II Japan, using the city and county-level data.
It is revealed that industrial agglomerations were formed in metropolitan areas, and that the main factor which caused the agglomeration was inter-industrial linkage. With this estimation result in mind, since there can be seen several lines in the study on industrial agglomeration, I try to understand industrial location from multiple angles.

This paper proposes a new mechanism linking size distribution of plants and urbanization in developing economies to detect the location choices and investigates its empirical implications in micro data on manufacturing plants in Japan. In a model with economies of urbanization, smaller plants utilize more production linkages in urban area in terms of number of different types of firms than larger plants, and also success to sell product to local market. In a model with plant-level scale economies, plants have geographic proximity to large market in terms of local population would produce more, and also success to be large plants. First, we find that the number of local (neighbourhood) firms decreases size of plants only for plants located in urban area. Second, we find that the size of local population increases size of plants for plants. This effect is also bigger for plants located in urban area than plants located in less urbanized area. Third, historical trends of urbanization stimulate these two effects, i.e., both of urbanization impacts of plant size and population impact of plant size are larger for area where are also previously urbanized area. These findings support the hypothesis that agglomeration economies of different types of firms only for urban area. These findings support the hypothesis that plants become larger when plants have geographic proximity to larger market.

Plants in clusters are often more productive than those located in non-clusters. This has been explained by agglomeration effects that improve productivity of all plants in a region. However, recent theoretical development of trade and spatial economic theories with heterogeneous firms has shed light on another channel of productivity improvement in clusters, "plant-selection effects". This paper uses plant-level data on the Japanese silk reeling industry in 1909-1916 and distinguishes between these two effects. We identify the plant-selection effect by using the fact that the two effects have different implications on the distribution of plant-level productivity of the two effects. We confirmed that plants in clusters were indeed more productive. At the same time, we found that the widths of distribution of plant productivity in clusters were narrower and more severely truncated than those in non-clusters. Our results imply that the plant-selection effect was at least one of the sources of the higher plant-level productivity in clusters.

Jews were not allowed in Sweden before 1782. After that legislation defined the Jewish minority totally as a special kind of economic men. Sweden needed foreign capital, to get rid of impeding guild regulations, a enhanced turover and know-how from European financial networks. Jews were allowed to to occupy themselves within a limited range of economic activities and to settle down in four cities only. The first Western Jews that immigrated to Sweden accepted the economic role given to them, expanded their economic activities and worked for their emancipation, a goal that was reached in 1870. Swedish citizens of the Jewish confession established themselves during the 19th century as an economic and cultural elite. Many came to belong to Swedish bourgeoisie and contributed to modern economic growth. They were bankers, large scale wholesale dealers, entrepreneurs in trade and industry, publishers, art dealers and philanthropists. The second wave of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire 1850-1914 played another economic role in Sweden than the Western European Jewish immigrants a hundred years before. In spite of contradictions between the two Jewish groups, both exhibited upward social moblity in their economic activities as a central motif. Aside from the traditional traits of Jewish identity, other central dimensions of identity were the cultural, the economic and the cautiousness against anti-Semitism creating a need to overemphasize economic and cultural success.

The modern foreign historiography doesn’t find anything in the religion of the Old Faith” that could explain Old Believers’ extraordinary accomplishments in the economic sphere. The majority of historians consider social position of a persecuted group (the society’s “outcast”) as the main factor of Old Believers’ entrepreneurship forming.
However, the influence of political and legal factors was contradictory. On one hand, the persecution encouraged profitable entrepreneurship, like it was in the rest of the world (in similar cases), to achieve confessional goals – support of communities and etc. But the need to protect themselves from governmental persecution, to ensure the confessional practice through corruption diverted huge amounts from being invested or reinvested in the economy thus weakening the Old Belief management.
The repressive legislation could, not by itself, give life to developed and a powerful system of the Old Believer’s entrepreneurship. That legislation contributed to the transformation of Old Belief into a confessional economic community only in conjunction with other factors.
The Old Belief confessional-ethic system had considerable influence on the formation and development of Old Believer’s entrepreneurship. The updated religious guidelines, religious values, ethic institutions and socio-psychological settings and ideas of Old Believers interacted with other factors, seriously motivating them to resort to active business activity.
Change of the Old Believer’s religious and ethnic norms, in conjunction with personal factors, were settled on the ground of natural social evolution. The processes running in the Old Belief could not have been possible in absence of the relevant economic and socio-cultural processes and the development of the Russian society in general. The Old Believer’s system of values, institutions and ideas witnessed the synthesis of traditions of the orthodox civilization and post-traditional society at a new stage of civilization.

German entreprenurs in St. Petersburg Family and Confessional Structure 1815-191

"From the mid-18th century the export trade of the German entrepreneurial elite constituted the leading ethnic merchant group in Russia's leading port, St Petersburg. It accounted for more than 50% of the major exporters in the port and handled nearly 50% of the export turnover up to the third quarter of the 19th century. In second place up to the mid-19th century was the powerful British merchant elite. Others including Russian merchants were relatively insignificant. German merchants in their ethnic-confessional and cultural characteristics of their family enterprise formed a distinct merchant diaspora. The objective of this paper is to show how and to what extent this structure changed over time. The priority of the diaspora and especially of the various family leaderships was to preserve the cohesiveness and solidarity of their community.

Through inter-marriage there can be discerned first the stability of the community and subsequently then the beginnings of the erosion of that cohesiveness. Whereas in the 18th century over 90% of marriages were within the German merchant community and German protestant families in particular, in the first half of the 19th century this went down to below 50% and at the beginning of the 20th century to about 30%. Family members increasingly gravitated to the safer professions as administrators, officers and doctors or to more intellectual spheres such as working in the universities or the arts. This was accompanied by a reduction in the weighting of germans in the export trade. In the ethnic field the changes had not been so pronounced. There was a fall here too but to only 60 to 70%. Inter-ethnic partners had been increasingly British in the first half of the 19th century, then Russians.

The same tendency is to be observed in the confessional sphere. Marraiges to all protestant - Lutherans, Reformed Church and some Anglicans- fell from over 95% to about 70%. Lutherans at over 65% remained relatively stable.

There is also discernible change in the main occuptational activity. The new generations preferred to engage in their own chosen fields of interest rather than join the family enterprise. Furthermore a growing cosmopolitan attitude is observable among merchant families which brought about more changes to its ethnic character."

In the nineteenth century, many of the Jewish bankers who operated internationally were of German descent and they played an important and innovative role in banking, the foundation of industries and new railway companies. This paper purports to discuss the various networks used by Jewish bankers in the nineteenth century to create cooperation and trust between partners and to minimise transaction costs in their global and local financial relations, where the global links are restricted mainly to the political, economic and cultural space of Europe. Two time-honoured concepts from network analysis, ‘strong ties’ and ‘weak ties,’ will be applied to examine the various connections. Intermarriage within the group of already strongly intertwined international bankers was a strategy to guarantee cooperation and trust, and these marriages made it possible not only to keep capital within the family but also to keep their financial partners abroad in line. In the end, success of these banks remained precarious because solving the problem of continuity was far from easy, as there are no conclusive strategies to guarantee success over several generations.
As far as religion is concerned, the conclusion will be that it was not necessarily intrinsic Jewish values that mattered, but social circumstances, among others exclusion from certain professions that interacted with the economic experiences that were part of the past of Jewish Diasporas in several European countries. In this respect Jewish bankers followed the same principles that many entrepreneurial minorities have followed till the present day.

The history of Old Belief (Staroverie, Staroobriadchestvo) is full of paradoxes, not the least of which is the pioneering role played by Old Believer entrepreneurs in the early economic development of Russia. As one historian has mused, how could “the worshippers of religious immobility, the fanatical enemies of ecclesiastical reforms, the irrational adherents to letter and gesture, appear as energetic modernizers in their very rational economic pursuits”? Attempts to answer this question almost inevitably involve references to Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. This paper will examine the entrepreneurial role of Old Believers in Russia through the lense of the Weber Thesis.

This session aims at summarizing and extending recent research on rural economic development in early modern East-central and Eastern Europe, which in the last twenty years succeeded in overcoming the notion that this area was a compact entity of a ‘second serfdom’. Rather than taking a ‘general backwardness’ and a long-term stagnation of rural societies for granted, studies now focus on regional variation and the concrete economic consequences of regional structures of lordship. The introduction argues that forms of subjection need to be separated from outright ‘serfdom’ conceptually and analytically. A brief summary of the main research results over the past two decades emphasizes that agrarian society of early-modern east-central and eastern Europe was not dominated by ‘serfdom’. On this basis, it will be important to strengthen existing new comparative research approaches towards economic development during the early modern period and towards building a new general model.

The neo-classical and political economy literatures view the post-medieval history of the European peasantry as one of economic dispossession and legal disability. Against this vision, this paper propose a model of early modern European rural history which concentrates foremost on the maintenance and reproduction of the medium-size or large, partly self-sufficient though also market-integrated family farm. Its proprietors figure here, ideal-typically, as working farmers employing as laborers a mix of family members, farm servants, and wage-workers. Such farms must be conceptualized in an historical setting in which European villagers were everywhere subject to seigneurial lordship or landlordism, whether as serfs, manorial subjects, or freemen. So too were landholding family farmers universally, if variously, subject to rents (whether market or feudal rents), taxes, and often conscription too. They occupied their farms under widely differing tenures, with correspondingly varying property rights, though never altogether without some degree of ownership in fixed capital, farm stock, or other mobile goods.
This paper aims, then, to delineate a sphere of comparative history within which such family farms, despite the many ways they differed across Europe, figure as a major stratum of European society which, in the post-medieval half-millenium, did not disintegrate under the advancing tread of capitalism. Instead, many family farmers themselves became successful agrarian entrepreneurs, while others managed at least to survive through market production. Such a stratum of family farmers (or landed peasants) remained, despite the turbulent fortunes of early modern rural society, a major structural feature of European society into the nineteenth century and beyond. This truism of social history has often disappeared into the shadows of economic history.
Some may think the English word yeomanry non-exportable. But if it is understood to refer less to a politically enfranchised freeman agriculturist than to a medium or largeholding family farmer (whatever his legal disabilities) living--in times free of war, epidemic disease, and famine--in socially customary sufficiency, and engaged in market production with opportunities for surplus-accumulation (in one or another form), the experimentation-friendly reader will not step down from this train of thought.

The paper presents a variety of social and economic phenomena which accompanied the process of transformation from rent to demesne economy. Special emphasis is placed on investigating medieval origins of enforced unpaid labour (labour services) and its growing popularity in the early modern period. The paper considers also legal circumstances of serfdom and of the status of serfs as labourers bound to the land. Regional differences in the system of lordship, and economic situation of Polish gentry and peasants are also discussed. The author presents results of the latest research into the origins and development of demesne lordship in early modern Poland, but simultaneously, an attempt is made to challenge some stereotypical images and persistent myths about these issues. It is in this context that the author considers the influence of economic boom at home and of growing demand for grain abroad on Polish economy, the share particular social groups had in a rapidly expanding grain market, and critical moments in the creation and development of Polish demesne lordship with its periods of prosperity and crisis

Since about 1570, Brandenburg can be characterised as being the first area possessing a
complete system of demesne lordship (landlord subjection with corvée, building and extra-ordinary services, compulsory service at the estate and large-scale demesne farms). Nevertheless, its sphere of influence was moderate in comparison with other East-Elbian regions. The territory constituted the east-west link between the German north-west with good peasant property rights (Meierrecht), a few demesne estates and large regions with personal serfdom and an abundant large-scale noble demesne economy. At the same time, it created a north-south bridge between personal serfdom in Mecklenburg and Pomerania and the more moderate landlord system in Central German areas of Saxony and Anhalt. Conditions within Brandenburg reflect this in the gradual shift from undefined demesne estates in the west and south to remains of serfdom in the north and east.

Considered in detail, this state of affairs is of course more complex. Nobles’ estates and princely/royal domains were characterised by large-scale demesne farms and peasant subjection. Domains were in a more favourable situation for keeping workers due to the system of lordship. In urban areas and on (former) church lands, hardly any large estates existed and there were consequently less problems with corvées.

It is undeniable that East-Elbia was backward to a certain extent in comparison with western areas, particularly after the Thirty Years’ War and a decline of rural prosperity from the Altmark, west of the river Elbe to the Neumark, east of the river Oder. However, the east of Brandenburg did not merely continue to exist upon lethargic ‘serfdom’ with no incentive for development.

In this sense, the Brandenburg Bailiwick of the Knights’ Order of the Hospital of Jerusalem is remarkable. It owned four commanderies and three domains of the Order with about fifty villages in the area – particularly in the eastern part. After the Thirty Years’ War, the Lords’ Master, Johann Moritz von Nassau (1652-1679) secured the property of subject peasant farmers in the manner of times former to the war, the large number of feudal village magistrates with secure property rights and peasantry thriving on. Thus, especially in the domains of the Order, a greater number of smaller estates came into being than would have usually been the case in the Neumark. From 1750 onwards, the Bailiwick took part in the colonisation of the Oderbruch area and from 1770 onwards it played a considerable role in the reclamation of the Warthebruch. Not until this time did it construct demesne farms on the new agricultural land. What is, however, most noteworthy is that numerous villages with hundreds of settler families with secure property and personal rights came into existence. Like the royal domains, the domains of the Order constituted a sphere in which improvements inherent in the system, technical-agricultural and social improvements were combined with one another, at the same time creating an increase in productivity and material security.

Demesne lordship and the early modern state in Central Europe. The struggle for labour rent in Lower Austria in the second half of the 16th century.

With regard to the model of an agrarian dualism in early modern Europe the hereditary lands of the Austrian branch of the Habsburg dynasty, particularly the provinces of Lower and Upper Austria, and Styria (as well as Bavaria and some other west-Elbian territories) have been analysed as hybrid forms, where most of the preconditions for the formation of Gutsherrschaft were present in the 16th century but where this development was blocked for one reason or the other. The most prominent cause advanced to explain why this possibility was not realized is the supposed deployment of specific state policies designed to protect the rural subjects from increasing lordly oppression and exploitation. The politics of Bauernschutz by early modern territorial rulers, motivated not at least by concerns about the fiscal potential of the rural subjects, would have aborted the incipient development of commercialized manorialism and tipped the balance of power between subjects and lords in favour of the peasantry.

In my contribution to the session I will draw on the example of Lower Austria to argue that this optimistic interpretation of an either benign or strategically acting territorial ruler (or state) is dubious. This province of the Habsburg hereditary lands lived trough a fierce struggle for the right of the landlords to demand unlimited labour services form its subjects waged between the peasantry, the landed nobility, and the state during the second half of the 16th century. The conflict was accompanied by a pronounced extension of demesne farming in some parts of the province and resulted in an armed revolt of the rural subjects in 1596/97. The role of the state in this struggle was fundamentally ambivalent. On the one hand the government showed itself highly reluctant to recede in front of the demands of the noble landlords for the right to use the labour power of their subjects more intensively in a period of rapidly rising prices for agrarian commodities, on the other hand it devised and implemented measures to raise the revenues from the so-called Chamber Estates – the manors owned by the Archduke/Emperor himself and usually leased to members of the provincial nobility – in a situation of severe financial distress. The measure taken was to impose a uniform standard of labour service on all these manors. It was not intend that these services were actually used in farming given the small extent of the demesne economy on these manors, but was designed to raise the value of these estates and thereby the income from leasing them out. Given the fact that a lot of still surviving source material was produced in the course of these conflicts and manoeuvres, this seems to be a good occasion to revaluate the role of the prince/state in the (non)development of Gutsherrschaft.
Erich Landsteiner
Dept. of Economic and Social History – Univ. of Vienna

The impact of the agrarian system of demesne lordship on the productivity and prosperity of peasant farmers has engaged a lot of researchers through the years. It was already in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries an area of debate among contemporary writers. But due to lack of sources very few comparative analyses of economic outputs between e.g. freeholders and subject tenants have been done. So, our idea of the economic impact of demesne lordship on peasants is to a large extent influenced by contemporary opinions, either from critics or defenders.

The aim of the study is to present broad quantitative analyses of production outputs from peasants inside and outside a system of demesne lordship. In the region Scania (Skåne) in south Sweden about half of the farmsteads belonged to freeholders or crown tenants, while the other half were owned by noble landlords and tilled by subject tenants. In the nineteenth century, the region saw a development full of contradictions, when the rise of the independent peasantry coincided with a new wave of a commercial noble demesne expansion.

The comparative analysis show that while the differences between the peasant groups were quite small in the eighteenth century, although a significantly lower production output for manorial tenants is noticeable already then, the divergence increased in the nineteenth century, in favour of the freeholders.

The paper aims to present an interpretation of the fundamental economic and social characteristics of the feudal estates in the southern Hapsburg lands (today South-Western Slovenia) by adopting a comparative perspective. The work concentrates on the last decades of the 16th and first decades of the 17th centuries. Specific attention is dedicated to the attempt of evaluating the presence, nature and extent of an active landlords’ approach to the economic activities within their estates.

Manors in 18th century Schleswig-Holstein are a challenge to simple dichotomic concepts of progressive and backwards forms of economic organisation. On the one hand they are examples of the most extreme Gutsherrschaft with a very large proportion of demesne land, one of the highest levels of corvee demands from dependant serfs known anywhere in Europe, and an extensive manorial jurisdiction. On the other hand its large scale farming was seen as a model for adjoining territories to the north and east, admired for its productivity and innovation.
Manors in Schleswig-Holstein started expanding demesnes in the 16th century, and the process continued till the early 18th century, when demesnes covered half the land of the manors. In the course of this process corvee burdens on peasants rose dramatically, the second serfdom was introduced, and manor owners gained extensive jurisdictional and administrative privileges. In these aspect the picture of manorial development in Schleswig-Holstein is a classic narrative of Eastern European Gutsherrschaft – perhaps one of the rather few cases where many of these assumptions actually come true.
Nonetheless these large demesnes developed a form of farming that was admired by many, not because it was feudal, but in spite of it. In the early part of the period large farms concentrated on grain growing, but in the course of the 17th century the demesnes combined large scale dairy farming with a special field organisation and rotation, known as the Schleswig-Holstein Koppelwirtschaft. The social organisation was complex. Field work was done as corvee, work in the cowshed and dairy performed by paid workers, but both groups of workers were mostly serfs. The dairy was let to a capalist tenant, but he was dependant on corvee labourers for haymaking, fence works, and bringing out manure.
The system was thus complex and challenging to simple concepts. It combined ‘feudal’ and ‘capitalist’ features, it combined a ‘feudalisation’ with a technical innovation. ‘Reformers’ of the late 18th century who fought corvee, serfdom, and other ‘feudal’ institutions, obviously saw the Schleswig-Holstein as a example of all the things that were to be changed, but imitated many technical features from the same manors.

Presentation of the European Network on the study and ublication of coin finds

Researching about what is fiscal modernization is one of the most remarkable questions in Fiscal and Financial History. There have been a lot of very important historians, sociologists and economists who have tried to answer this question. Perhaps, the most important change in fiscal history has been How did the State begin to raise more and more money in order to support their expenses?
Fiscal history has explored in depth these ideas for decades and decades. Now, new methods and new sources determine the current international research. But the question remains the same: What is modernization in Fiscal History? Why, Where and How did monarchies begin to spend more and more money? How those political systems controlled the fact of collecting taxes when there are not a tax bureocracy along kingdoms?
In this paper we present a first draft of mapping fiscal demarcations in Castile between 1503 and 1525 using GIS technologies. During this period, as several studies have pointed out, the crown didn’t know the fiscal geography exactly. Fiscal system used external agents as tax farmers or cities for collecting taxes. In order to approach at fiscal efficiency of crown, it would be very important to know how monarchy conceived its own kingdom. Thus, this paper will present a first reconstruction of castilian fiscal demarcations with all dates related to tax farmer or headed taxes (encabezamientos). We will divide our paper in three parts:
1) An approximate division of fiscal demarcations taking advantage of Pilar Zabala’s dates. (P. ZABALA AGUIRRE, Las alcabalas y la hacienda real en Castilla. Siglo XVI, Santander, 2000)
2) A first analysis of evolution of regular royal taxes using GIS technology
3) The incidence and importance of tax farmers through these demarcations, where we will define the biggest financiers of crown along all Castile.
In conclusion, we would like to explore both the possibilities and limits of GIS technologies in order to study an historical tax system. In consequence, we will not only offer a preliminary result of all this, but we will focus on methodological problems as well.

Historiography on Spanish colonial trade stresses the essential role played by non-Hispanic mercantile networks in the economic expansion in the Atlantic. Within the Iberian Peninsula proper, colonies of Anglo-Irish, French, Flemish, and Dutch and of other nationalities maintained a prosperous trade from the main urban nuclei. Late in the second half of the XVII century and throughout the Enlightened XVIII century, the old enemies of the Hispanic Monarchy had developed certain sophisticated operations within the framework of trade between Spain and America, from within the very heart of the state monopoly.
In this presentation, I will deal with some of the features of the mercantile and financial networks between different cities in the European Atlantic coast which were implied in the so called Spanish monopoly with America. These networks can be represented in a GIS (Geographic Information System) where new scheme of analysis tools can be used to study the different typology of interconnection between systems and companies in and around the atlantics routes. Through an analysis of such networks, we will try to analyze their mechanisms and the extent of their influence in the Spanish trade with America between 1689 and 1713. I will try to know if these merchants communities can be considered as authentic Self-Organizing Network in order to understand the connections between the networks and how worked in the framework of the Spanish Atlantic system.

In this paper I will examine the correspondence found on board a Spanish merchant ship coming from colonial Peru that was intercepted by two British privateers in October 1779. The correspondence is held in the archive of the British High Court of Admiralty (the National Archives, London). It includes nearly two thousand envelopes containing letters, accounts and various documents sent by a total of 540 people to 926 addressees located in 154 cities, towns and villages scattered throughout Spain and Europe.

This cache of confiscated letters will be used to map the transatlantic networks of the merchants of Lima, which was the second most important commercial center of Spanish America after Mexico City. More specifically, I will discuss the limited geographical reach of the transatlantic networks originating from Lima: 75 per cent of the correspondence was sent to Cádiz and Madrid, whereas only 1.25 per cent was for places outside Spain. This is a feature worth analysing for two important reasons: first because most of the merchandise sent from Spain to Peru was made of textiles of French, British and Italian origin; and secondly because the official channel of the Spanish colonial trade, although in theory a monopoly for Spaniards established in Cádiz, was widely penetrated by foreign merchants and investors.

The problems for the merchants of Lima to establish relationships of trust with European traders and manufacturers (and vice versa) may well have been the reason why no direct correspondence took place between the two. The paper will start off by describing the attempts made by the Norwich manufacturers Richard and John Gurney to trade with colonial Peru in the early 1770s, before moving on to analyse the 1779 correspondence.

En el proyecto DynCoopNet (Dynamic Cooperation Network) se está elaborando un Sistema de Información Geográfica (SIG) espacio-temporal sobre redes de cooperación en las rutas de la Monarquía Hispánica. Este sistema integrará diversas bases de datos históricas, dándolas un significado global, que ayudarán a comprender la dinámica de este complejo sistema, y a responder cuestiones acerca de la evolución de la cooperación de las redes comerciales auto-organizativas de la primera era global (1400-1800). El modelo de datos conceptual que se presenta en este trabajo pone en relación dos grandes bloques de información histórica: por un lado el ciclo de vida de los navíos que intervinieron en las operaciones comerciales de esa época, y por otro lado las relaciones de cooperación que establecieron los diferentes agentes entre sí en localizaciones geográficas concretas.

La materialización del modelo conceptual en una base de datos espacial, y la potencialidad de los SIG, permitirán entre otros, modelar las relaciones de cooperación entre agentes, los flujos comerciales, la dinámica de las redes comerciales y sus grados de cohesión; podrá detectar áreas prioritarias de comercio, analizar la eficacia de cada una de las redes en términos socioeconómicos, identificar qué mecanismos sociológicos entre los agentes mantuvieron altos niveles de cooperación (asociaciones comerciales, relaciones de parentesco, religión, apadrinamiento,…) y posibilitaron la explotación de ciertas áreas comerciales sobre otras, así como la evolución de dichas redes a lo largo de cinco siglos de historia.

El estudio de las redes comerciales del Océano Índico y el Pacífico nos permite conocer sobre que bases se estructuró el capitalismo moderno y las relaciones que se establecieron no solo entre Europa y Oriente, sino también con el sistema comercial del Atlántico y los cambios que provocarían

Analysis of European empires in the Early Modern Age are usually focused on central power strategies and imperial rivalries. It is, on the contrary, our perception that several individuals or groups contributed extensively to these dynamics, at times to an even greater extent than the central power itself. Based on the study of Iberian maritime expansion this paper sustains that a widespread cooperation was in place and linked, through self organized networks, Portuguese and Castilian/ Spanish empires, in which individual initiative was a key factor.
We argue that even if the Tordesillas treaty (1494) divided the overseas world between Portuguese and Spanish Crowns, and even if both states were very keen about political and economical protection of their possessions, the fact is that intense and unstoppable flows occurred between both colonial empires.

In the last quarter of the 15th Century the performance of the genoese family Rey, in the Kingdom of Murcia, not only emphasizes for his action in the business of the alums -topic up to the moment partially studied- but for a certain legal business, especially imports and exports of cereal, that indeed only mask commercial activities that well we might consider to be like illegal from the moment that his economic benefits to fiscal level do not know.
The paper, obviously, does not remain in this so anecdotal aspect but studies up to what point it is possible to manipulate the economy to obtain a few political certain purposes; and as this manipulation is influenced by an exogenous factor to the proper economic system of the territory in question. This influence is declared in the collective of foreign merchants: the familiy Rey.
Conclusions treat on the modernity of the Kingdom of Murcia on not having sheltered colonies but foreign companies, and a possible globalization in the late Middle Age from the royal power to the regional economy trough the political-trade networks.

In the aim of the DynCoopNet Project, the Portuguese team will focus the attention studying cooperation among Iberian trade networks in the XVI and XVII centuries. For our purpose we have been using the information collected in the Simón Ruiz archive, namely the bills of exchange and commercial correspondence. In our brief presentation we pretend to prove the advantages of these data sources in the reconstruction of a merchant network, as well as showing cooperation mechanisms. Secondly, we’ll demonstrate our methodology consisting in an agent-based database (TimeLink) and how we extract data regarding spatial information. TimeLink can also deal with geo-tagged data in order to export it to GIS software. Finally we would like to drive the attention to our expectations on this kind of visualization method and on what it can bring to our project main questions.

In this paper, I present a method for the study of populations of maritime ship masters using visual analytics tools. This method is founded in evolutionary thinking and aims to provide a framework for the historical study of maritime transportation as an integral economic activity, rather than as a spin-off effect of trade. The method presented in this paper consists of three techniques and covers three levels of analysis.
The three levels of analysis are mico, meso and macro and are defined as such in accordance to the general analytical framework of evolutionary economics elaborated by Dopfer and Potts (2008). The three techniques that constitute the method are database operations, computational aggregation and the use of visual analytics tools. All three techniques are closely related and deemed to provide synergistic analytical results.
In the paper, visual analytics tools covering all three levels of analysis will be described, tested and explained using the large variety of maritime-historical resources that is currently being made available by the Navigocorpus programme, subsidized by the French National Research Agency.

This paper deals with the idea of cross-cultural trade networks. A growing amount of studies situated in fields such as global history, Atlantic history or imperial history focus on human interaction as the fundamental notion in the construction of historical spaces. It stresses human agency, but not exclusively on an individual basis. Historical force is instead given to groups of individuals, and different types of relationships. Trade networks, both mono- as well as cross-cultural take an important place in such narratives. If webs of human interaction are to function as perhaps the main analytical category in large-scale histories, it is important that the inner mechanisms of such informal organizations are researched. Especially in the case of cross-cultural connections, issues of trust, creditworthiness and reputation are central. These issues can be analyzed based on the frequent business correspondence maintained between different merchants. The sending of letters did not only serve as a tool in concrete business transactions, but was used to divulge information, enhance one’s reputation and establish regularity and stability. Secondly, they served as the main vehicle to become engaged in complicated strings of credit and money remittances. As such, business correspondence not only shows how trust was generated socially, but also economically. This allows for a quantitative and concrete analysis of long-distance and long-lasting commercial relationships.

During the last two decades, a growing number of economic and social historians have used the records of friendly societies and other organisations with health insurance schemes to investigate the history of sickness and morbidity. This paper seeks to build on this work by utilising the individual sickness records of members of the Hampshire and General Friendly Society to reconstruct the sickness histories of more than 5000 working-class men in central-southern England between circa 1871 and 1950. During the course of the paper, we intend to examine the following issues: the seasonality of sickness claims; changes in the 'age-of-onset' of chronic morbidity; changes in age-specific morbidity rates; the causes of sickness claims; and the relationship between specific causes of sickness and the ages at which people fell ill. The paper will also raise important questions about the ‘cultural inflation of morbidity’ and the relationship between changing patterns of morbidity and the history of health care.

It is the aim of this paper to explore the determinants of friendly society membership in late nineteenth-century England through an examination of the miners' permanent relief fund movement (which insured against industrial accidents).
It is argued that neither level of risk, nor level of earnings nor the availability/non-availability of other sources of relief provides an adequate explanation of miners' decisions to join/not to join the movement.
It is suggested that membership can be explained best by the attitudes and behaviour - the culture - of coal miners and coal owners in individual coalfields.

In the academic narrative of the origins of the welfare state in Britain, friendly societies have played a mixed role. The societies' almost complete exclusion of the poor has led many historians to discount their role in the political transformations of the early 20th century (Thane 2004). Further, most historians have tacitly accepted the argument made by Gilbert (1965) that the friendly societies were increasingly insolvent into the late 19th century and that any political impact the societies had in shaping early pension legislation was related to their increased financial stress. Related to this claim is the common argument that the friendly societies, with their quasi-moralizing, cultish rules and non-actuarial pricing systems, were irrational institutions that were unable to compete with emergent commercial insurance providers and eventually state provisions.

This argument, though supported by secondary sources from the period, has never been quantitatively scrutinized. This paper, inspired by the path-breaking work of Emery and Emery (1999) on North American friendly societies, seeks to partially remedy this gap. It does this in two ways. First, using data from the AOF and IOOF archives, it computes two empirical tests of financial viability for each society lodge: the implicit share of risk loading and the probability of ruin. These values improve upon the conventional literature by more precisely defining financial insolvency and by more accurately capturing the financial decisions facing lodges. Second, in order to test the hypothesis that societies were irrational institutions, the paper performs demand regressions to isolate the determinants of friendly society membership. These computations, though inherently limited in scope, will provide a cliometric test to historians' strongly-held convictions about the financial and economic rationality of the friendly societies.

The introduction of Obligatory Heath Insurance and the National Health in Spain took place during the 1940’s. Until this time, the Mutual Benefit Societies and other private associations had a great relevance in organizing precautionary measures for workers and their families.
The aim of this presentation is to analyse the evolution of the medical assistance provided by The “Sociedad Católica Protectora de Obreros “La Conciliación” between 1902-1936.”La Conciliación" was founded in Pamplona in 1902, as a mixed society, made up by worker, employer and protector members. Until 1936 La Conciliación” evolved from a mixed Mutual Aid Society into a Workers’ Association and, finally, into a Mutual Insurance Association. During these years, the main objectives of La Conciliación were to be a mutual illness, laboral arbitration (to claim about wages and work hours), and unemployment protection society. "La Conciliación" continued to exist until the 1980’s.
This entity is classified among the mutual benefit societies. They were voluntary associations whose members participated in management and administration. Profits belonged to the members as a whole and were distributed following statues or regulations.
The main services offered by the Society until 1936 were: labour mediation, assistance for the member and his family through economic subsidy, medical attendance, pharmaceutical service (beginning in 1910), the Chronic Fund (beginning in 1914) and the midwifery service (beginning in 1914); post-mortem aid (beginning in 1918); it also had a Savings Bank and a cooperative (between 1912 and 1922). Until 1933, it organised educational and recreational activities in addition.
To analyse the evolution of the medical assistance provided by "La Conciliación", we can underline two aspects: firstly, until 1936, at least a third of the workforce were members of La Conciliación, whose records show over 1,000 members. On the other hand, the length of time the organization lasted (1902-1977).
We have used the papers and minutes of the Society and the local press between 1902-1936.

According to standard economic theory, asymmetric information characterizes many insurance contracts. Empirically, results have been mixed, with health economists finding evidence of asymmetric information but specialists in the economics of contracts generally not. Using historical data, this paper takes a more direct approach in three ways. First, it tests for the presence of moral hazard and adverse selection in a straightforward type of insurance contract. In short-term disability insurance, a cash payment to replace lost wages enabled sick or injured workers to take time off work, and it may have encouraged them to do so when otherwise healthy. Second, this paper avoids much of the endogeneity problems of recent studies because insured workers had no choice in their contract’s premium and benefit structure. Third, insurers understood the importance of asymmetric information and included countermeasures in these contracts. This paper estimates the strength of such countermeasures. This study concludes that evidence for the presence of adverse selection was stronger than that for moral hazard, but that both were present and that insurers’ countermeasures against each effectively reduced claims.

The main objective of this paper is to analyse what factors conditioned the configuration of the different models of sickness coverage on the two sides of the Atlantic, the viability of voluntary systems or the presence of the social state? Yet it is possible, however, that both alternatives are the two sides of the same coin. In other words, was it the growing presence of the state in social matters which led to the non-viability of other forms of voluntary protection in European countries? In order to deal with these questions, this paper analyses the case of Spain, one of the last capitalist countries to approve a state sickness insurance, despite the fact that the alternative networks of voluntary cover did not meet the needs of the population.

The aims of this paper is to show the development of the Friendly Societies (in Italy called “Società di Mutuo Soccorso”, hereafter SMS) in the Eastern Lombardy (province of Brescia and Bergamo) from the birth of the Italian State to the start of the first world war. In this period in the Eastern Lombardy the number of the SMS greatly increased: in 1860 SMS were 7 and in 1914 they were nearly 500. In the same time their members grew up from 3,500 to 37,000 (and this figure is underestimated because it is impossible to calculate the member of many SMS).
The analysis of the statutes of the SMS and the elaboration of the data concerning the census of the Italian SMS took from 1862 to 1904 allow to verify a lot of aspects of the activity of the SMS. This paper particularly shows the different types of the SMS and the benefits they granted to their members. Moreover it makes in evidence how, in the Eastern Lombardy, the SMS created a welfare system which substituted the Italian state whose welfare did not exist until the 20th Century. Finally it illustrates the difficult relations existing between the SMS (particularly the catholic and socialist ones) and the Italian government who was disposed to finance the SMS only if it had a wide control on their activity.

The main objective of this paper is to analyse what factors conditioned the configuration of the different models of sickness coverage on the two sides of the Atlantic, the viability of voluntary systems or the presence of the social state? Yet it is possible, however, that both alternatives are the two sides of the same coin. In other words, was it the growing presence of the state in social matters which led to the non-viability of other forms of voluntary protection in European countries? In order to deal with these questions, this paper analyses the case of Spain, one of the last capitalist countries to approve a state sickness insurance, despite the fact that the alternative networks of voluntary cover did not meet the needs of the population.

The increasing costs of drugs and medical treatment during the first half of the twentieth century generated a growing demand for health insurance among the middle income groups in the Netherlands. Due to the height of their income most middle class families could not join the already existing sickness fund schemes. Soon a bustling private health insurance market emerged. Contrary to sickness funds which provided an insurance scheme based on service benefits, these private health insurance companies offered indemnity insurance with (different levels of) cash reimbursement for the costs of medical care. Though there was some market segments services by sickness funds and private health insurance companies, they coexisted relatively peacefully.
This changed with the rise of statutory health insurance. The Sickness fund Decree of 1941 imposed a system of social and private health insurance in the Netherlands, separated by an income-ceiling. The social health insurance schemes were to be carried exclusively by recognized sickness funds, private health insurance was left in the hands of private insurance companies. Though this division of the health insurance market greatly favoured the sickness funds, they almost immediately started to search for ways to penetrate the private health insurance market.
Shortly after the end of WWII sickness funds established joint venture insurance companies to penetrate the private health insurance market. These private health insurance companies, called Bovenbouwers (‘superstructures’), used the cheap agency system and administrative facilities of the sickness funds and therefore could maintain low premiums and liberal conditions. Within the course of a decade the market share of the bovenbouw-insurance increased from 8% to 40%, mostly at the expense of the market share of commercial health insurance companies.
This eventually lead to the odd situation that during the 1980’s the chairman of the national sector-organization of sickness funds and vice-chairman of the Sickness fund Council at the same time was the treasurer of the largest private health insurance company in the Netherlands. Through the bovenbouw-insurance, sickness funds had a major weight on the private health insurance market, triggered by the introduction statutory health insurance. This paper will attend to the influence of sickness funds, and their particular ‘insurance-ideology’, on the development of the private health insurance market and the emergence of ‘health insurance-ethics’ in the private sector. In what ways did the clash of sickness fund insurance and private health insurance shape the private health insurance sector until the end of the dual system of social and private health insurance in 2006.

Thanks to developments in copper mining during the colonial period Zambia was one of the richest
economies on the African continent at the time of independence. This status eroded in the postcolonial period as Zambia, according to most available estimates, experienced negative GDP per
capita growth over the postcolonial period on average. Meanwhile Botswana, one of the
poorest economies at independence, rose to become one of the richest economies today, largely owing to developments in diamond mining.
Dominant explanations of African economic performance emphasise the role of economic policy
and institutions when explaining differences in growth or income levels. A historian, Meredith,
probably represented popular consensus on when he summarized Kenneth Kaunda, the president of
Zambia for 25 years as having a left “a catastrophic record of mismanagement”. Meanwhile
Botswana’s economic success the economists Acemoglou et. al. summed up the record of
policymakers in Botswana as: “There is almost complete consensus that Botswana achieved rapid
growth because it managed to adopt good policies”. This paper compares the economic performance of Botswana and Zambia in the 20th century. It examines the two economies through the colonial and postcolonial period with the aim of evaluating the relative importance of structural and institutional causes of economic growth and
development. It finds that between 1945 and 1965 Zambia experienced a mineral boom, quite
similar to the boom Botswana experienced between 1975 and 1995. It is the contrast of the
institutional contexts and the timing of these booms that has led scholars to conclude that
underlying growth dynamics of these economies are completely different. Connecting postcolonial
and colonial periods of economic expansion and contraction, this paper emphasises the importance
of vantage point in economic historical evaluation.

How did living standards in Ghana develop in the long run? The obvious constraint for a long-term perspective is the limited amount of good data and a consistent measure of human well-being. This is especially the case for the period of colonial rule. Using anthropometric techniques we explore the evolution of living standards and regional inequality in Ghana from 1880 to 2000.
Ghana provides an extremely interesting case study. Major economic and social changes took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The development of the agricultural export economy, already under way since the decline of the Atlantic slave trade, was consolidated by the adoption of cocoa, of which Ghana became the world’s leading producer. Cocoa farms, and European-owned mines, eventually attracted extensive migrant labour. Railways and lorries revolutionised transport. Medical knowledge spread. Our findings suggest that, overall, living standards improved during colonial times and that a trend reversal only occurred after the economic crisis in the 1970s. This fact is challenging prominent explanations of colonial legacy and allows insights into the institutional argument for growth.

We find with survey data that the increase in height stature experienced by successive cohorts born in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana during the late colonial period (1925-1960) is almost as high as the increase observed in France and Great-Britain over the 1875-1975 period, even when correcting for the bias arising from old-age shrinking. In contrast, the early post-colonial period (1960-1985) is characterized by stagnation or even reversion, not only in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana but also in other countries in Western Africa. We argue that the selection effects linked for instance to measuring the height of women rather than of men, then of mothers rather than of women, and most importantly the interactions between height and mortality cannot give account of these figures. We then disaggregate these national trends by parental background and district of birth, and match individual data with district-level historical data on export crop (cocoa) expansion, urban density and colonial investment in health and educations. We provide evidence that a significant share of the increase in height stature may be related to the progresses of urbanization and of cocoa production.

Colonial tax systems have shaped state-economy relationships in the formative stages of many present day nation states. This paper surveys the variety in colonial tax systems across 34 dominions, colonies and protectorates during the heydays of British Imperialism (1870-1940). It compares and discusses per capita tax incidences and the source composition of colonial public revenue and assesses the results on the basis of different views in the literature regarding the function and impact of colonial fiscal regimes: is there a clear distinction between ‘extractive colonies’ and ‘settler colonies’ in relative tax rates and the source composition of taxation? How ‘extractive’ were colonial taxes in the ‘extractive colonies’ of British Africa, Asia and the Caribbean? The main argument of the paper is that there is little evidence for the view that ‘excessive taxation’ or a specific source composition has been a crucial characteristic of ‘extractive institutions’ in non-settler colonies. Moreover, the paper finds a strong positive correlation between colonial tax incidences and long term post-colonial GDP growth rates. This nuances the Acemoglu et al. (2001, 2002) hypothesis and calls for a further decomposition of the term ‘extractive institutions’ as such. The Engerman-Sokoloff-Zolt hypothesis (2000, 2006) that specific distributive relations shape fiscal policies in American settler societies may be extended to some parts of Sub Saharan Africa.

That economic history and institutional economics share common grounds is evidenced by the works of Acemoglu et al (AJR) tracing the roots of underdevelopment, which are identified in terms of institutional inefficiencies, back to early colonial times. Although this should be welcomed by economic historians, who often grumble about the narrow time horizon of economists and their tendency to prescribe universally applicable policy blueprints regardless of historical context, questions may be raised about the explanatory power of this approach for understanding differential growth and poverty reduction paths of today’s developing countries.
The case of Vietnam, represented by the different development paths between Tonkin and Cochin-China, shows the complexity involved in analyses of the impact of colonialism. Population density was not the organizing principle behind the settlement of French colonialists. Nor did it significantly determine the level of extraction as predicted by AJR’s theory. On the contrary, we show that the presence of several agents, local and foreign, with their own vested interests led to very different outcomes in the North as compared to the South. While the North, an extremely densely populated area prior to French colonization, remained in a high level equilibrium trap and sought tax evasion via population under-representation, the South through French investments, extended the land frontier and allowed for commercialization and economic growth, which became the main revenue of the French authorities. However, at the time of independence inequality in land distribution had reached startling proportions and had become not only a burning political issue but also a hindrance to economic transformation. In the Mekong Delta only one fourth of the farming families owned all they land they were cultivating and secure property rights in land were held by a small minority. These results point at the need to reexamine what is meant by extractive institutions versus institutions for private property.
If we were to apply the interpretation of AJR's theory of the development of colonial Vietnam, one would have to argue that the French did just perpetuate extractive institutions in Tonkin, while in the South they established a “wrong type of capitalism”. Such an analysis does not capture the processes of change which are left unexplained. In this paper we redirect attention to the factors and processes that generated inequality in colonial times, and to the interaction of colonial and local institutions as well as to the importance of market mechanisms.

We examine the current pattern of inequality in late 20th century South Africa and then look for its historical roots with a particular focus on the position of the Coloured population. Growing inequity in access to education and labour legislation was informed by a hardening of race-based social categorization during the 19th century. Further institutionalization of racial categories amid the growth of the public sector and regulation during the first half of the 20th century cemented a pattern of inequality that has survived in a modified form to this day. We attempt to monitor the position of the Coloured population through this long-run process using available evidence on social, economic and physical well-being.

We investigate the historical roots of poverty, with particular reference to the experience of Africa during the twentieth century. Like the recent studies by Acemoglu et al (2001, etc) we find that institutional inheritance is an important influence on current underdevelopment;unlike them , however, we find that the influence of policies on institutions is highly significant, and that, in Africa at least, a high representation of European settlers in land ownership and policy-making was a source of weakness, not strength. We argue this thesis, using mortality rates as our main index of well-being, with reference to two settler colonies (Kenya and Zimbabwe) and two peasant export economies(Uganda and Ghana). Our findings suggest that, in Africa, settler-type political systems tended to produce highly inequal income distributions and, as a result, patterns of public expenditure and investment in human capital which were strongly biased against small holder agriculture and thence against poverty reduction. In contrast, we argue that peasant-export type political systems produced more equal income distributions whose policy structures were less biased against the poor. As a consequence, liberalisation during the 1980s and 1990s produced asymmetric results, with poverty falling sharply in the 'peasant export' and rising in the settler economies. These contrasts in the evolution of poverty in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, we argue, can only be understood by reference to differences between the two systems whose roots lie in political decisions taken a hundred years previously.

A long-run view of inter-country inequality in living standards is provided for a large sample of countries in Western Europe, the European Offshoots, Japan –OECD, for short- and Latin America. A long term rise in real per capita income inequality is found. The deepening gap between OECD and Latin America was the major factor beneath this increase. Inequality in non-economic indicators of well-being (longevity, education, and human development) fell in the long run but a gap between OECD and Latin America remained by 2000. Polarization took place in the Western World during the second half of the twentieth century.

The received narrative on the origins of rural poverty in South Asia attributes poverty to the disruptive effects of the nineteenth century globalization, especially the destruction of traditional handicrafts and consequent pressure upon agriculture. Whereas the decline of craft industries is explained in the standard view with reference to cost-competitiveness of Indian production, a non-standard view speculates that fall in agricultural yield in the late eighteenth century due to Mughal decline added to the decline of the crafts by raising the cost of wage goods. These stylized stories predict a fall in real wages in agriculture. In this paper, I consider the evidence on long-term trends in real wage and standard of living of the agricultural worker to shed some light on the historical roots of rural poverty.

The main finding of the paper is that real wages from the last third of the eighteenth century until the mid-twentieth do not show a distinct trend at all, which leads us to conclude that (a) neither de-industrialization nor fall in agricultural yield can sufficiently explain the origins of poverty, and (b) poverty was not created in the eighteenth century but derived from a long-term structural feature of dry-land agriculture, namely, low and variable land yield. Confirming this hypothesis, agricultural wages varied significantly according to regional resource endowments. These patterns began to change from the end of the nineteenth century with increased mobility and migration of agricultural workers.

The aim of the paper is to expand our understanding of Chilean economic long-run growth in two fundamental dimensions. First, it provides a traditional growth accounting view identifying factor contributions and total factor productivity. Second, it offers a framework as an organizing scenario for exploring consistency between opportunities and institutions, on the one hand, and factor contribution to growth on the other.

This paper has three parts. In the first part we present econometric evidence showing that increases in the international demand for enslaved Africans induced a reallocation of resources in Africa towards slave production and away from other economic pursuits. In the second part of the paper we use this econometric evidence to help specify theoretical models of conflict and cooperation in Africa before and after the slave trade. Our goal is to reveal the conditions under which the induced reallocation of resources also produced several negative externalities thought to impede long-term development in Africa. These include constraints on the growth of African states, increases in ethnic and social stratification, and predation. In the third part of the paper we test the predictions of these models against the history of the Asante Empire (present-day Ghana). We find that the models explain Asante’s origins and expansion extremely well, including the Asante Alliance, the causes and timing of territorial expansion, and the “southern problem.” We argue that the models reveal long-term consequences of slave production that apply to many African economies, not just Ghana.

Primary products, or export commodities as they are called, have far greater price volatility than do manufactures or services. In addition, Third World economies that specialize in such products have high export concentration and thus do not spread their risk, yielding even greater volatility in their terms of trade. Recent economic analysis has shown that price volatility of this sort has been very bad for long run growth in poor countries over the past four decades or so. Has it always been that way? This paper confirms that it has been so since 1700, and it helps explain the Great Divergence.

The specialization in exporting primary products is frequently deemed harmful for long-run development, because it increases volatility of terms of trade and thus of the GDP. One would expect modern economic growth to solve the problem by changing the composition of trade. This paper tests this hypothesis with a new series of Italian terms of trade from 1861 to 1939, a period which spans the first stage of the industrialization of the country. The results do not tally with the hypothesis. The change in composition improved marginally the terms of trade, but it did not help much in terms of volatility.

This paper looks at the evolution of the terms of trade between commodities and manufactures since 1870, when steam navigation permitted international price equalization. Besides an updated statistical analysis of the relative price series for 24 commodities and eight indices pioneered by Grilli and Yang, we include other products that became more prominent during the 20 the century. For those products, we calculate a new price index, since 1962, that provides a detailed evolution of the more relevant products still traded today. As our previous analysis showed, and as the Economist Commodity Price Index history reveals, there has been a significant long-run deterioration in their barter terms of trade. However, this decline was neither continuous, nor was it distributed evenly among individual products, however. The data identifies new breaks and characteristics of the series that have accompanied the long term stepwise deterioration in aggregate real prices for raw materials.

The localization of the industry in Chile between the ends of the 19th century and 1967, is related with the evolution of the regional distribution of the mining GDP. In the same way, this is extremely determined by the evolution of the nitrate and cooper prices cycles. After the Pacific War, the provinces of the “Norte Grande” leaded the export boom of the nitrates until the end of the First World War. The result is the highest figures in the concentration of the regional mining GDP. During the twenties, the beginning in the growth of the cooper production changed this pattern. This was more spatially diffused than the nitrate one (Antofagasta in the north and O’Higgins, Santiago and Aconcagua in the centre). The collapse of the world markets during the Great Depression affected all the mining exports. Afterwards, the nitrates never recovered their importance but the cooper became the new leading product. The result during the thirties and the forties was a decrease in the concentration figures of the mining production localization, until the expansion of the oil production in Magallanes (in the south), in the sixties.
On the other hand, the localization of the industry shows a different pattern. The first period was characterized with higher dispersion of the industry, coinciding with the nitrate cycle. After 1911, started an intense process of concentration which was reinforced during the GD and the thirties, and remained concentrated until the fifties. At the same time, the imports substitution process between the Second World War and the seventies changed the industrial structure of the country. Between 1957 and 1967, the public policies oriented to the regional development acted as a centrifugal force for the industry localization and increased the dispersion of their space distribution.

This paper develops a model of the terms of trade and money supply determination under a currency board system to analyze industrialization in pre-World War II Malaya. Still a largely empty land in the 1870s, Malaya provides a global periphery variant to the late nineteenth-century de-industrialization hypothesis. Specialization in tin and rubber production for world markets fostered industry where previously little had existed. I argue, however, that even in the 1930s industrial development in Malaya still fell well short of what might have been expected in a country of rapid economic growth and relatively high per capita income. Dutch disease effects arising from volatile primary commodity export prices and currency board requirements limited the potential for industrialization in Malaya. Weak financial development and severe credit contraction in times of economic downturn led to sharp falls in demand in the Malayan economy and left local entrepreneurs unable to borrow from the banks.

Our objective is to concentrate on analysing the evolution of the terms of trade for products comprising agricultural and food trade in the second half of the last century. We therefore attempt to evaluate in what direction the real prices of these products have moved. In line with the abovementioned literature, which emphasises that the behaviour of the terms of trade for primary products has varied significantly, depending on the products and period in question, we have attempted to perform a highly disaggregated analysis for the set of products of agricultural origin, with the aim of excluding raw materials not of this nature.
We have constructed 56 new series of price indices for specific agricultural products which were traded internationally between 1950 and 2000 and are representative of all the groups comprising such trade . Additionally, to obtain real prices, the series of agricultural prices has been deflacted by an index for international trade prices which includes the important changes in the prices of not only manufactures but also of other goods, such as energy products, which had such a great influence upon the shocks occurring in the period under study. In summary, we are specifically working with the evolution of the real prices of agricultural products and food.
We shall analyse the presence of two structural ruptures in non-stationary series, and in addition establish endogeneously the years of structural rupture . We shall study when this deterioration occurred and its nature.
This set of analyses is aimed at characterising the different behaviour of the product groups which comprise international agricultural trade, determining in which of them the greatest deterioration took place and approximating the possible causes, both economic and institutional. The study concludes with an analysis of the economic regions or countries most affected by the deterioration in the real prices of agricultural and food products during the final quarter of the XX century.

From 2002 to 2007 Latin America registered one of the highest average growth rates in three decades. Aggregate demand decomposition into the three major sectors of the economy (external, government and private) shows that the growth trajectory is explained, mainly by the favorable performance of the external sector. Since the late 1990s, Latin America has been able to reduce its current account imbalance, and from 2002 onwards, managed to achieve a surplus. The improvement in the external sector conditions is attributable to a great extent, to a price commodity boom that benefited a subset of Latin American countries, namely those that specialize in the exports of commodity products and which comprise mainly South American economies and Mexico. The commodity boom allowed some of these countries to post surpluses in the fiscal and/or the balance-of-payments current accounts. The commodity boom reinforced an export and production structure that is traditionally natural resource oriented. During this boom period, an analysis the ten leading traditional Latin American exports products on a country-by-country basis, classified by major categories shows that most of these economies have reinforced/intensified their commodity export specialization. The commodity boom is explained in part by the increased demand for primary products from Asian countries and, in particular, China, and speculation in commodity futures. The increased demand for primary products from China, and speculation in commodity futures are determined by financial factors and more specifically by the so called financial global imbalances. This episode, whereby, commodity prices, and the ensuing export specialization pattern, responds to financial factors is not unique to the most recent sustained growth period in Latin America. In the nineteenth century (in the last three decades of the nineteenth century) Latin American economies also witnessed a commodity export boom driven in part by a wave of foreign investments starting in 1870.
The paper analyzes the role played by finance in the commodity booms and in shaping export specialization (trade) in Latin America in the 19th and 20th century. It argues that finance drives trade and not the other way around and draws the conclusion that modifying the pattern of export specialization of Latin American economies requires a change in the availability and structure of finance.

The effects of the First Globalisation on economic growth and income distribution in the New World figure prominently in the recent literature about the economic history of the late 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. This paper reviews the stylized facts that characterized the economic development of selected settler economies (Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, New Zealand and Uruguay) from 1870 to the Second World War in terms of growth, inequality, structural change, land frontier expansion, capital flows and prices. Besides, it discusses some analytical approaches –in the “Staple Theory” tradition– useful for understanding the evolution of the economic performance and inequality in natural resource-abundant economies.

This paper tries to reveal the chenging nature of the Colombo Plan or the transformation of the features of the Plan from capital aid programme to technical assistance, and to reconsider its implication on international order of Asia in the 1950s and the 1960s.

This paper will be to make clear the background of the formation of the Colombo Plan through the Commonwealth Foreign Ministers Conference in Colombo in 1950. This plan was very important to think about the reconstruction of the new international order in Asia, because it was the comprehensive and valid plan to improve and develop the Asian People’s living standards against the spreading Communism. There were the much heavier conditions of Great Britain as the old hegemony power and the United States as the new leader to reconstruct the international order corporately from 1940s to the first years of 1950s. When Great Britain sometimes opened the British Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conferences, they thought about the another conferences in the ministers levels, i.e. the British Commonwealth Finance Ministers Conference and the British Commonwealth Foreign Ministers Conference. Great Britain had the matters to resolve in the near future such as the sterling balances, the Japanese Peace Settlement as the head of the British Commonwealth. In Asia, the countries had not the full money and system to develop their national states, while there occurred the menace of the Chinese communism. India remained as the new member of the British Commonwealth and Australia eager to absorb the Southeast Asia in her new markets had the casting board in the Conference.

Historians have produced few analyses of precisely how host countries and territories reacted to or were affected by the Colombo Plan, once it became operational after 1951. This paper will focus upon the British Southeast Asian colonial territories, which today constitute the independent nation states of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. It assesses why the Plan had limited impact upon Commonwealth Southeast Asia. Principally, this was due to colonial status as well as the non-materialisation of US funding for the Plan. Only in the field of technical co-operation – particularly with the ‘White’ Dominions, and later Japan – did the Plan make a significant contribution to the late-colonial development effort. Even here, however, there were limitations on the scope and impact of aid schemes.

The new Soviet leadership was determined to reverse Moscow's previous policy of neglect of the Third World as a part of its new strategy of detente and peaceful coexistence. Khrushchev sought to strengthen Soviet positions in Asia and, with this purpose, to develop economic relations with the countries in the Asia-Pacific. The Soviet leaders' primary goal in assisting and trading with such countries as India, Indonesia and Burma was to solidify their neutralist sentiments and to increase Soviet influence there by strengthening feelings of sympathy and gratitude toward the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union cooperated with Asian countries through bilateral channels as well as through the United Nations aid programs, such as EPTA. Soviet efforts in developing economic relations with Asian countries and providing them aid and technical assistance and support brought Moscow visible results in strengthening its positions and influence in the region and increasing a favorable image of the Soviet Union as an impartial and sympathetic partner sincerely wishing to help. Yet, by the early 1960s, Soviet policy toward the Asia-Pacific experienced serious setbacks related to Moscow's quarrel with China and the development of Sino-Indian conflict.

The paper examines the US policy toward the Colombo Plan in the Cold War context.
I. Washington's Initial Reaction to the Colombo Plan. II. Japanese Membership, the Colombo Plan, and the US Cold War Strategy. III. The Soviet 'Economic Offensive', the Colombo Plan, and the Rise and Fall of the 'Baldwin plan'. IV. Hosting the Colombo Plan Meeting in Seattle.
Eisenhower administration officials could not agree on the scale, method and organization of a large-scale economic assistance program as proposed in the Baldwin plan which aimed at countering Moscow's economic and political challenge to extend its influence in South and Southeast Asia through exploitation of economic and political weakness in the area. On the other hand, the Colombo Plan acquired an increasing importance, particularly in relation to Japan's role in the US Cold War strategy, in the mid-1950s and thereafter during the Eisenhower administration. The significance of the Colombo Plan as one of the key components of holding back Communism in Asia reached a high point when Washington decided to host the meeting in Seattle.

Around the mid-1950s Japan started to quest for its new international role as a country that was transformed into a non-military economic power. But the room for Japanese activities in the most adjacent area, North-East Asia, was much limited: being subservient to the United States, Japan kept distance from China, and Japanese-Korean relations were very chilly in the wake of the break-up of the Japanese empire. Under these circumstances it was South-East Asia that emerged as an area in which Japan could try its hands.
Britain, which still wielded strong power in this area, could not help being sensitive to Japan’s move. Around that period as the result of the prolonged conflicts under the “Emergency”, Britain was forced to quicken the pace of granting independence to Malaya. Facing such acceleration of the process of decolonization in South-East Asia, the British decision-makers intensified their efforts to find new ways of maintaining Britain’s influence in this area and shifted emphasis to economic and non-military methods.
Bearing in mind these postures of Japan and Britain, in this paper I want to examine Anglo-Japanese relations in South-East Asia from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s.

This paper will explore the changing dynamics of British overseas aid relations with regard to the transition from colonial to sovereign status in Southeast Asia and Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s, at a time when arrangements diversified bilaterally and multilaterally. It will be argued, in the simplest terms, that a marked transformation occurred in the nature in which Britain approached development finance rather than in its quantity. The established system of colonial development finance disintegrated from 1957 while the subsequent aid to sovereign states responded to a different logic. In this abridged version of the paper, the topic of loan finance will be given particular attention.

In the decade from 1965-1975 a range of events and processes intersected that together profoundly changed the international economic and political landscape in East and Southeast Asia. Individually, many have been dealt with in detail by historians, but with a few exceptions little effort has been made systematically to relate the economic with the political. This paper deals with the interaction between several of these influences to show the relationship between the collapse of the international monetary system and changing geopolitics in the region. This perspective also has important implications for the development of aid programmes during this decade and how they were delivered. Political/strategic events such as the UK decision to withdraw its military presence from East of Suez, the Cultural Revolution in the PRC and the separation of Malaysia and Singapore all had implications for the monetary relations of East Asian economies. Conversely, the reaction of states to these events was influenced by the shifting international monetary context, in particular the collapse of the Bretton Woods pegged exchange rate regime. The paper concentrates on Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore, which from 1945-1972 were all part of the sterling area group of countries that pegged their exchange rate to sterling, denominated their reserves in sterling and enjoyed freer access to the London capital markets than countries outside the sterling area. All three were large holders of sterling assets as foreign reserves and as backing for their local currency and this tied them tightly to British policy during the collapse of the international monetary system as sterling lost value in terms of other currencies. Concentration on these states (two newly independent and one still a colony) also elucidates the role of imperialism in the ‘post-imperial’ era of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The sterling problem of the late 1940s and early 1950s dominated British and American thinking about the Colombo Plan – the scheme for economic assistance to the countries of South and South East Asia initiated at the Commonwealth Foreign Ministers meeting in January 1950. The meanings of the provisions for future economic co-operation envisaged at Colombo were profoundly ambiguous, and can be interpreted in several different ways. The leaders of the newly-independent countries of South Asia expected considerable help with economic development. The American administration had decided by 1949 that it needed an active policy to secure acceptable economic and political regimes in Asia, but this precluded becoming too deeply involved with British-led institutions. British policy-makers had considerable hopes that providing external aid for economic development in South Asia would tie India and Pakistan more closely to London’s diplomatic goals, and persuade the United States to help solve the problems of Asian poverty and British indebtedness. But London was not able to use the Colombo proposals to entice Washington into funding the sterling balances, or providing additional dollars for the British economy. In the end, the Colombo Plan for the South Asian Dominions did little more than regularise the re-payment of the war-time debts they had built up in London, and at the cost of requiring Britain to supply unrequited exports that threatened her own economic recovery.

This paper explores the development of United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) from its establishment to the mid-1960s. ECAFE was established in 1947 but remained a consultative body; it lacked funds for projects and had very few operational tasks. Therefore, ECAFE’s character and history should be evaluated by investigating its development and the policy of both regional and non-regional countries, in particular, Britain, the US and Soviet. In the beginning part, the birth of the Commission is outlined. Then three areas of its activities are addressed: inland transport, economic development planning and regional trade promotion. In the latter half, referring to the Asian members’ growing interest in regional cooperative measures, the impacts of regional changing economic and diplomatic situations from the mid-1950s on the Commission are analysed.
Putting on a broader perspective of the transformation of the post-war Asian political and economic order, ECAFE’s character and development can be evaluated from three viewpoints. First, ECAFE was engaged in the higher realms of international diplomacy and dominated by the climate of the region. Especially, ECAFE was coloured by Cold War rivalry. For newly independent Asian countries, the membership seemed to bolster their diplomatic position. Japan considered the membership as the first step of getting back to an international arena. Furthermore, the Commission provided occasions of hosting international gatherings. Some hosting governments used the opportunities for enhancing their prestige. Second, ECAFE was a meeting place of Asian countries which were struggling for state building through developing national economy as well as seeking a place in international politics. The regional countries’ economic development strategy was mainly based on ‘the savings-investment gap model’; economic development depends upon the amount of savings secured from the total national products. However, it was imperative for Asian countries to have external aid, capital inflows or trade surplus that would supplement the shortage of internal savings. Therefore, in ECAFE, regional members intensively discussed the tension between international trade, currency or aid problems and their economic development. Regional collaborative measures were expected to break a bottleneck in the development policy. Third, the presence of non-regional members was one of features of ECAFE. In particular, Britain’s involvement is worth noting. Britain, whose influence was large during the formative years, tried to utilise colonial economic relations to support the post-war reconstruction. However, after the mid-1950s, the British government came to recognise the changing diplomatic and economic scene in Asia: the ideological and economic offensive of Soviet and Communist China, the beginning of Japan’s resurgence, and US growing interest in regional economic development and assistance in contrast to the decline of Britain’s abilities and resources. The ideological battle of the Cold War, the complicated process of dismantling colonial economic relations and the membership of non-regional states gave the development and activities of ECAFE several features that were not seen in other UN regional commissions.

The Colombo Plan provided practical assistance in two forms - capital aid and technical cooperation. For technical cooperation, assistance was given to South and South East Asian countries in three forms — training places, experts and equipment. In addition, the UK tried to extend the field of technical assistance to India by offering to establish and staff engineering universities, that is, the Delhi Engineering College (later IIT in Delhi ) which was regarded by the UK as the major Indian project under the Colombo Plan.
　Although the UK provided significant technical assistance for India under the Colombo Plan Technical Corporation Scheme from its inception, UK sponsorship for the establishment of the IIT in Delhi was obtained later than that of the Soviet Union, West Germany and the US. Five IITs were established with the assistance of these four nations – IIT Kharagpur with all of their aid in 1951, IIT Bombay with the Soviet Union aid in 1958, IIT Madras with West Germany aid in 1959, IIT Kanpur with the US aid in 1960 and IIT Delhi with the UK aid in 1963. We will consider international aid for the establishment of higher technical institutes, the IITs in India, mainly on the relationships between the UK Government, British industry and the Government of India in the establishment of the IIT in Delhi.

Economic assistance from abroad is regarded essential today for the developing countries to develop their economies. But it was not the way of thinking in early post-war years. Rather, as far as India is concerned, India seemed to rely on its own resources to develop its economy. Furthermore, developed countries too, as preoccupied with their post-war reconstructions, thought in the same way regarding the issue of post-colonial countries. Then how did the way of thinking regarding foreign assistance to the developing countries change? Was there any gap in the process of changing perception? This research is to look into these questions through an examination of the process in which the developed states started the international efforts to aid India when the latter faced the foreign exchange crisis during its Second Five-Year Plan. It reveals the facts that they were not prepared for the nature of economic assistance needed by the developing states whose development programs proved to be commercially unsustainable, that the lending countries had shared reasons to prevent India from going bankrupt, and that the economic Cold War played the minor role compared with the problems of lenders’ own balance of payments, though the decision of the lenders to continue their commitment to the assistance for another Five-Year Plan was more affected by the Cold War as the new administration led by John F. Kennedy was installed in the United States.

This paper examines the evolution of Ottoman economic institutions during the early modern era. It shows that the Ottoman state and society showed considerable ability to reorganize as a way of adapting to changing circumstances in Eurasia from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. This does not mean that Ottoman institutions came to resemble those that gave rise to capitalism. The paper argues instead that Ottoman society and Ottoman bureaucracy brought about institutional change in selective areas, in military technology and organization, in public rather than private finance, for example, and such selective institutional change enabled the Ottomans to maintain their rule and the empire to survive a much longer period.

In addition to an analysis of the fiscal policies and institutions in Mughal India, this paper will deal with the monetary policies and institutions at work during the Mughal period. This is not only because there were strong interrelationships between the fiscal and the monetary domains, but also because between the two, these domains significantly affected nearly all areas of economic endeavour, including internal as well as international trade.

Institutions are studied both as a "top-down" and a "bottom up" phenomenon. Seen from the bottom up, the economic institutions of the Dutch Republic appear well adapted to the needs of a market society. Viewed from the top down, the state's role in institutional development appears oddly stunted. The Republic has long been criticized as insufficiently nationalistic and resistant to centralizing reform. This paper assesses the validity of both the (excessive) praise and (overly) critical dismissivness to which Dutch institutions have been subjected by historians.

Because our session seeks to compare how economic institutions are determined and why they vary across countries, this paper sketches the political economy of institutions in early modern France, including those that affected money, land holding, factor markets, trade and manufacturing, and taxation and public finance. The perspective is synthetic and wherever possible comparative. It also explores possible links to economic growth.

he Tokugawa shogunate, which ruled early modern Japan from 1603 to 1868, provided considerably effective judicial system with the commodity market and the short term local government bond market. Under the governance, the impersonal trades expanded rapidly in the commodity market and the specific financial market, and the national economy was integrated. On the other hand, the shogunate did not provided the farm land market with third party enforcement, and tried to regulate the labor mobilization. This led to an early modern economy where the commodity market and the public financial markets were well integrated while the land and the labor market were segregated and were governed by local communities in the personal manner with long-term relationship.

Using the British case as a comparator for an ideal type Weberian state my short presentation will offer a stage theory of fiscal state formation in the West and the East. I will pursue the meta question of why confederated republics (such as Venice and the Netherlands) and centralized monarchies (e.g.Britain) constructed effective fiscal and financial institutions long before composite monarchies (like France and Spain) and the underfunded weak agglommerated empires of Habsburg Austria, Romanov Russia, Mughal India, Qing China and Ottoman Turkey. I will conclude by provoking discussion of the assertion that new institutional economic history without a theory or general narrative of state formation is about as tenable as medecine without cardiology.

One might see Venice as a city where rulers exercised the political power, administered justice and were largely engaged in economic activity. This should have brought about severe social and political strains in the city. A caste of rulers exercising political and judicial powers would have heavily been able to affect the economic sphere, not being subject to legal constraints. This however did not occur, at least until the sixteenth century. It is instead probable that the very identity between political rulers and economic protagonists laid at the base of the Venetian economic growth. This autocratic model, nevertheless, does not suffice to account for the Venetian success: one has to set it against a context where the ruling group was able to largely distribute profits generated from international trade.

Looked at in comparative perspective, among the most striking features of Qing political economy are the combination of highly commercialized agriculture with the strength of peasant land use rights -- both through smallholding and through various forms of secure tenancy – and the very small share of the population dependent on wage-earning. This paper begins by analyzing some reasons for this pattern, focusing on the intersection of customary land rights, agricultural practices and community organization in China’s wealthiest regions. It argues that in the Yangzi Delta in particular, different types of property rights – both of them tradeable and heritable – were guaranteed in different ways. Subsoil rights were tied to payment of land taxes and protected by the state. Surface rights, though sometimes also protected by the state, and frequently transferred by formal contract, also rested in part on recognition by communities; this recognition, in turn, often rested on the cultivator’s participation in community projects (including the maintenance of local works for water control).

Having outlined this system, the paper then argues that it interacted with both the Qing fiscal system and prevalent patterns of family formation to create a highly productive and commercialized agriculture and large-scale development of rural industry, and to keep the rate of urbanization surprisingly low despite a large agricultural surplus. Consequences for internal migration and inter-regional trade are also discussed. The final part of the paper seeks to explain why, after two centuries in which these institutions provided both social stability and moderate prosperity, the system came apart catastrophically in the 19th century

This paper proposes a trans-national perspective for the study the political economy of the Early Modern Spanish Empire. It suggest to interlinking two different institutional logics: the local proto-national rationale of the different polities within the composite monarchy and the international dynastic rationale. The emphasis is put on the impossibility of the Hapsburg Spanish Empire to build a coherent mercantilist proto-national policy on the grounds of a system of global networks and clashing mercantile “national” interests. The outcome of this was huge protection costs of which the kingdom’s economies received small benefits and a conflictive negotiation between the Crown and the social actors of each area, which consecrated inefficient property rights. This, rather than absolutism on which recent literature has put the accent, were the main reasons for economic decadence in the 17th century.

Our paper is focused on the function of French investment banks as “pathbreakers” to accompany and stimulate the rebirth of French economy after WWII.

First we’ll find out why investment banks escaped to the move of nationalisation which was achieved in 1944-1946 and which involve Banque de France, banks and insurance companies. The balance of powers, the networks of influence, the commitment of investment bankers to the rebuilding of France within an internationalised economy, and the issue of the connections to be re-established with the City and the US bankers and financiers will be at stake through our scrutiny.

Second, whe sall assess the strenghes and weaknesses of investment banks (Paribas, Banque de l’union parisienne, Rothschild, Lazard), precise the emergence of new competitors (Banque de l’Indochine, the Francès group, etc.), and as a consequence we shall determine the strategy followed by these players. We shall for example precise the effects of the nationalisation of numerous big companies and the dwindling of the financial market on their issuing and brokering activities.

Third whe shall consider the evolution of the portofolios of strategic activities and skills within the “classical” investment banking services. We shall gauge their ability to regain momentum in favour of corporate customers (merchant banking, corporate banking), either nationally or internationally.

Fourth we shall reconsider the “pathbreaking” activities of investment bankers on the international market of structured finance, as a leverage force of French industrial investments abroad.

Fifth, we shall reconstitute the competitive edge of investment banks on the imperial/colonial market, and argue about the priorities fixed, either “obsolete strategies” or the involvement of colonial sectors into internationalised and modern business models.

Sixth, we shall tackle the issue of investment bankers as “pioneers” about the new credit and financial products and techniques which were being either transferred mainly from the US or engineered in Paris, as a way to find out new sectors of activity to balance those being assumed by the public institutions, or as a way to establish bridges on promising activities in connection with real estate development, the restart of outlets for bourgeois building, and the construction of the society of affluence.

The rise of investment banking, from the late nineteenth century onward, has been put into relation with the issue of financing industrialization, especially as capital and technological intensive new industrial undertakings and public utilities are concerned. In fact, the financing of modern industries emphasised a dilemma, namely how to make capital investments stable and ‘permanent’ as a whole, while coping with the unwillingness by the single investor to commit to ‘illiquid’ investment purchases. A solution to that could be found in the organization of proper markets in which these investments might be easily traded. Investment banks fulfilled the function of solving that dilemma, because by acting as intermediaries between borrowers and lenders, and as such performing delegated monitoring over borrowers, they were able to enhance investors’ confidence, and thus to rise new capital and to allocate it to new industries and investments; moreover, by creating and issuing tradable securities representing those investments, and organizing secondary markets wherein to trade them, they increased the willingness by individual investors to purchase capital assets. In Italy, these functions were performed by universal banks until the crisis of the early 1930s swept them away, imposing a restructuring of the entire financial and credit system. Thus, a new legal and institutional framework emerged after the second world war, aimed at guaranteeing higher degrees of stability trough the imposition of banks’ specialization and a stricter control over the credit and financial system. The paper retraces the peculiar features of the Italian postwar financial system trying to figure out how the ‘liquidity dilemma’ had been addressed during the decades of the fastet and highest economic growth Italy has experienced ever.

The paper considers the evolution of investment and merchant banking in Italy after the Second World War. In particular, it deals with the special role played by Mediobanca, a well internationally connected institution and the only real merchant bank in Italy for a long time. From the late 1940s Mediobanca actively supported the few largest firms, issuing bonds or equity capital, providing advisory assistance for M&As, consulting for long-term strategic alliances, assuring ownership or management turn-over vis-à-vis difficulties or crisis. From the mid-1950s Mediobanca was able to connect major Italian firms with international financial centres, mainly thanks to its legendary ceo Enrico Cuccia. From 1956 Lazard Frères & Co. and Lehman Brothers of New York, as well as the Belgian Sofina and the German Berliner Handels-Gesellshaft, became influential shareholders of Mediobanca. Outstanding technical expertise and unique international connections were relevant competitive advantages. In the 1960s Mediobanca financed a number of firms operating in the most dynamic and innovative sectors of those years, while designing some international long-term alliances (like Montecatini and Shell, Fiat and Citroën, Pirelli and Dunlop). Within an overregulated banking system, Mediobanca seems to act as a path-breaker for the largest manufacturing groups. From the late 1960s large industrial firms needed more external financial support whilst the Italian banking system proved to be unable to provide an adequate allocative efficiency. After the oil crises of the 1970s the Italian economy became more fragile in reacting to changes in factors’ prices and technological upheavals. In the ensuing decades, indeed, following a rather conservative attitude, Mediobanca organised a number of rescues and reorganisations of manufacturing firms providing a nonetheless valuable financial assistance. This paper will cope with this issue by analysing balance-sheets’ data and industrial sectors aggregated by capital and technology intensity from the late 1940s to the early 1990s. Quantitative data suggest that Mediobanca ceased to be a genuine 'path-breaker' by sustaining the most innovative and dynamic sectors and turned into a 'follower' of the evolutionary trajectories of major manufacturing groups and sectors.