Small and Medium Powers in Global History: Trade, Conflicts, and Neutrality from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries
Published by EH.Net (April 2020) Jari Eloranta, Eric Golson, Peter Hedberg, and Maria Cristina Moreira, editors, Small and Medium Powers in Global History: Trade, Conflicts, and Neutrality from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries. London: Routledge, 2018. x + 240 pp. $124 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-1-138-74454-7. Reviewed for EH.Net by Tobias Straumann, Department of History, University […]
The Origins of Globalization: World Trade in the Making Of the Global Economy, 1500-1800
Published by EH.Net (July 2019) Pim de Zwart and Jan Luiten van Zanden, The Origins of Globalization: World Trade in the Making Of the Global Economy, 1500-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xvi + 338 pp. $30 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-108-44713-3. Reviewed for EH.Net by Kevin Hjortshøj O’Rourke, All Souls College, Oxford. This is an […]
Clashing over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy
Published by EH.Net (May 2018) Douglas A. Irwin, Clashing over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. x + 860 pp. $35 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-226-39896-9. Reviewed for EH.Net by Alfred E. Eckes, Jr., Department of History, Ohio University. At a time when concerns about trade wars unsettle financial markets […]
The History of the International Tea Market, 1850-1945
Bishnupriya Gupta, University of Warwick Demand for Tea “Tea is better than wine for it leadeth not to intoxication, neither does it cause a man to say foolish things and repent there of in his sober moments. It is better than water for it does not carry disease; neither does it act like poison as […]
The International Natural Rubber Market, 1870-1930
Zephyr Frank, Stanford University and Aldo Musacchio, Ibmec SãoPaulo Overview of the Rubber Market, 1870-1930 Natural rubber was first used by the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin for a variety of purposes. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Europeans had begun to experiment with rubber as a waterproofing agent. In the early nineteenth […]
Economic Histories of the Opium Trade
Siddharth Chandra, University of Pittsburgh The history of opium has attracted the attention of historians for decades, and in a way that the history of few other commodities has. Because a lot has already been written on the opium trade in various parts of the world (for a sampling, see the citations at the end […]
The Economic History of the International Film Industry
Gerben Bakker, University of Essex Introduction Like other major innovations such as the automobile, electricity, chemicals and the airplane, cinema emerged in most Western countries at the same time. As the first form of industrialized mass-entertainment, it was all-pervasive. From the 1910s onwards, each year billions of cinema-tickets were sold and consumers who did not […]
International Shipping Cartels
Richard Sicotte, University of Calgary The international shipping industry has been characterized by a remarkable degree of collusion for more than a century. The two features that are most astonishing are the length of time that some of these cartels have endured, and the wide latitude that regulatory authorities have given them. Firms in many […]
Trade Policy Disaster: Lessons from the 1930s
Published by EH.Net (June 2012) Douglas A. Irwin, Trade Policy Disaster: Lessons from the 1930s.? Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011. xv + 195 pp. $25 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-262-01671-1. Reviewed for EH.Net by Florian Ploeckl, Department of Economics, University of Oxford Occasionally we face a trilemma, a situation where we can only get two out of […]
Institutions and European Trade: Merchant Guilds, 1000-1800
Published by EH.NET (December 2011) Sheilagh Ogilvie, Institutions and European Trade: Merchant Guilds, 1000-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. vi + 493 pp. $38 (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-521-74792-9. Reviewed for EH.NET by Donald J. Harreld, Department of History, Brigham Young University. Why did merchant guilds exist for such a long time in Europe? This is an […]