This is a definitive new account of Britain's economic evolution from a backwater of Europe in 1270 to the hub of the global economy in 1870. A team of leading economic historians reconstruct Britain's national accounts for the first time right back into the thirteenth century to show what really happened quantitatively during the centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution. Contrary to traditional views of the earlier period as one of Malthusian stagnation, they reveal how the trans...

Unlike most existing textbooks on the economic history of modern Europe, which offer a country-by-country approach, The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe rethinks Europe's economic history since 1700 as unified and pan-European, with the material organised by topic rather than by country. This first volume is centred on the transition to modern economic growth, which first occurred in Britain before spreading to other parts of western Europe by 1870. Each chapter is written by an...

Unlike most existing textbooks on the economic history of modern Europe, which offer a country-by-country approach, The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe rethinks Europe's economic history since 1700 as unified and pan-European, with the material organized by topic rather than by country. This second volume tracks Europe's economic history through three major phases since 1870. The first phase was an age of globalization and of European economic and political dominance that laste...

This unique volume offers a definitive new history of European economies at war from 1914 to 1918. It studies how European economies mobilised for war, how existing economic institutions stood up under the strain, how economic development influenced outcomes and how wartime experience influenced post-war economic growth. Leading international experts provide the first systematic comparison of economies at war between 1914 and 1918 based on the best available data for Britain, Germany, Fran...

How have economic warfare and sanctions been applied in modern history, with what success and with what unintended consequences? In this book, leading economic historians provide answers through case studies ranging from the eighteenth-century rivalry of Britain and France and the American Civil War to the two world wars and the Cold War. They show how countries faced with economic measures have responded by resisting, adapting to, or seeking to pre-empt the attack so that the effects of a...

WINNER OF THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE‘A brilliantly original book’ Financial Times‘One of the masterpieces of modern historical writing’ Daily TelegraphPaul Kennedy’s international bestseller is a sweeping account of five hundred years of fluctuating economic muscle and military might.Kennedy’s masterwork begins in the year 1500, at a time of various great centres of power in...

The first international history of the emergence of economic sanctions during the interwar period and the legacy of this developmentEconomic sanctions dominate the landscape of world politics today. First developed in the early twentieth century as a way of exploiting the flows of globalization to defend liberal internationalism, their appeal is that they function as an alternative to war. This view, however, ignores the dark paradox at their core: designed to prev...

How only violence and catastrophes have consistently reduced inequality throughout world historyAre mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace an...

Now in a fully revised and updated edition, this book remains the standard for concise histories of the European Union. Mark Gilbert offers a clear and balanced narrative of European integration since its inception to the present, set in the wider history of the post-war period. Gilbert concludes by considering the Union’s future in light of the mood of crisis that has taken hold in the EU in the aftermath of the global recession, the refugee crisis, and Brexit.Listen to a New Book...

For over forty years, David Harvey has been one of the world's most trenchant and critical analysts of capitalist development. In The Enigma of Capital, he delivers an impassioned account of how unchecked neoliberalism produced the system-wide crisis that now engulfs the world. Beginning in the 1970s, profitability pressures led the capitalist class in advanced countries to shift away from investment in industrial production at home toward the higher returns that financial products promise...

Welfare states vary across nations and change over time. And the balance between markets and government; free enterprise and social protection is perennially in question. But all developed societies have welfare states of one kind or another - they are a fundamental dimension of modern government. And even after decades of free-market criticism and reform, their core institutions have proven resilient and popular. This Very Short Introduction describes the modern welfare state, ex...

This sweeping history examines two centuries of global trade and warfare, shedding new light on the relationship between economics and conflict.In the nineteenth century, liberals exulted that the spread of commerce would usher in global prosperity and peace, but these dreams were dashed by imperial squabbles, the carnage of 1914–18, and the protectionism, depression, and conflict that followed. In the wake of World War II, the globalists tried again. With the Commu...