New Books in Economic and Business History

Our Recall this Buck series, back in 2020 and 2021, explored the history of money, ranging from the earliest forms of labor IOUs to the modern world of bitcoin and electronically distributed value. We began by focusing on the rise of capitalism, the Bank of England, and how an explosion of liquidity changed everything.We were lucky to do so, just before the Pandemic struck, with Christine Desan of Harvard Law School, who recently published Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2014). She is also managing editor of JustMoney.org, a website that explores money as a critical site of governance. Desan’s research explores money as a legal and political project. Her approach opens economic orthodoxy to question by widening the focus on money as an instrument, to examine the institutions and agreements through which resources are mobilized and tracked, by means of money. In doing so, she shows that particular forms of money, and the markets within which they circulate, are neither natural or inevitable. Christine Desan, “Making Money“ Ursula Le Guin The Earthsea Novels (money hard to come by, but kinda cute) Samuel Delany, the Neveryon series (money part of the evils of naming, slavery, labor appropriation) Jane Austen “Pride and Prejudice“ Richard Rhodes, “Energy“ John Plotz, “Is Realism Failing?” (on liberal guilt and patrimonial fiction) William Cobbett, “Rural Rides” (1830; London as wen) E. P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century” (notional “just price” of bread) Peter Brown, “Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD” Chris Vanden Bossche, “Reform Acts“ “Sanditon” on PBS (and the original unfinished Austen novel) Still from “Sanditon” Margot Finn, “Character of Credit“ Thomas Piketty, “Capital in the 21st Century“ L. Frank Baum, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” (1900) Leo Tolstoy “The Forged Coupon” (orig.1904) Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Bottle Imp” (1891) Frank Norris, “The Octopus” (1901) D. W. Griffith, “A Corner in Wheat” (1909) Read the episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new account of the Mediterranean economy in the 10th to 12th centuries, forcing readers to entirely rethink the underlying logic to medieval economic systems. Chris Wickham re-examines documentary and archaeological sources to give a detailed account of both individual economies, and their relationships with each other.Chris Wickham offers a new account of the Mediterranean economy in the tenth to twelfth centuries, based on a completely new look at the sources, documentary and archaeological. Our knowledge of the Mediterranean economy is based on syntheses which are between 50 and 150 years old; they are based on outdated assumptions and restricted data sets, and were written before there was any usable archaeology; and Wickham contends that they have to be properly rethought.The Donkey and the Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950-1180 (Oxford UP, 2023) is the first book ever to give a fully detailed comparative account of the regions of the Mediterranean in this period, in their internal economies and in their relationships with each other. It focusses on Egypt, Tunisia, Sicily, the Byzantine empire, Islamic Spain and Portugal, and north-central Italy, and gives the first comprehensive account of the changing economies of each; only Byzantium has a good prior synthesis. It aims to force our rethinking of how economies worked in the medieval Mediterranean. It also offers a rethinking of how we should understand the underlying logic of the medieval economy in general.Chris Wickham is Chichele Professor of medieval history emeritus at University of Oxford.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Globalization in a Glass: The Rise of Pilsner Beer through Technology, Taste and Empire (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Malcolm Purinton charts the spread of Pilsner beer from its inception in 1842 to clearly show the changes wrought by globalization in an age of empire. Its rise was dependent not only on technological innovations and faster supply chains, but also on the increased connectedness of the world and the political and economic structures of empire. Drawing upon a wide range of archival sources from Europe, the Americas, and Sub-Saharan Africa, this study traces the spread of industrial beer brewing in Europe from the late 18th to the early 20th century to show how a single beer style became the global favourite through advances in science, business and imperial power.In highlighting the evolution of consumer tastes through changing hierarchical relationships between the British metropole and colonies, as well as the evolution of business organizations and practices, Globalization in a Glass contributes to ongoing debates about globalization, empire, and trade. It argues that, despite the might and power of the British Empire as a colonizing force, the effects of globalization, imperial trade networks, and colonial migration led to the domination of the most popular Continental European style of beer, the Pilsner, over British-style ales.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Bridging the Divide: Working-Class Culture in a Middle-Class Society (ILR Press, 2021), Jack Metzgar attempts to determine the differences between working-class and middle-class cultures in the United States. Drawing on a wide range of multidisciplinary sources, Metzgar writes as a now middle-class professional with a working-class upbringing, explaining the various ways the two cultures conflict and complement each other, illustrated by his own lived experiences.Set in a historical framework that reflects on how both class cultures developed, adapted, and survived through decades of historical circumstances, Metzgar challenges professional middle-class views of both the working-class and themselves. In the end, he argues for the creation of a cross-class coalition of what he calls "standard-issue professionals" with both hard-living and settled-living working people and outlines some policies that could help promote such a unification if the two groups had a better understanding of their differences and how to use those differences to their advantage.Bridging the Divide mixes personal stories and theoretical concepts to give us a compelling look inside the current complex position of the working-class in American culture and a view of what it could be in the future.John Lepley is a union activist in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and can be reached at jwalterlepley@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Indian Ocean world has a rich history of socio-economic and cultural exchanges across time and space. Connecting the Indian Ocean World Across Sea and Land (Routledge, 2023) and its companion, Merchants and Ports in the Indian Ocean World (Routledge, 2023), explore these connections around the wider Indian Ocean world. The book examines the many overlapping linkages that existed from the early modern period and into the colonial era. It offers a clear understanding of the economic networks that extended across the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic during the 19th century. With a critical historical lens, the volume discusses themes like the opium trade in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago - the biggest opium trade market at the time; the Safavid mission to Siam; and the economic relationship between Pondicherry and West Africa, via France. Rich in archival material, this book will be of interest for scholars and researchers of Indian Ocean history, maritime history, Indian history, economic and commercial history, South Asian history, and social history, anthropology, and trade relations in general.Radhika Seshan is former head and retired professor of the Department of History, Savitribai Phule Pune University, and is now visiting faculty at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Pune, India. Her work has been primarily in the areas of economic history, particularly maritime and urban history of early modern India. Author of three books, she has edited or co-edited many others, and her most recent publication is Wage Earners in India 1500–1900: Regional Approaches in an International Context, co-edited with Jan Lucassen (2022).Ryuto Shimada is associate professor, Department of Asian History, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo. The author of The Intra-Asian Trade in Japanese Copper by the Dutch East India Company during the Eighteenth Century (2006), he has published extensively in Japanese and in English on aspects of the networks of the Indian Ocean world in the early modern age.Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University, Near Eastern Studies Department. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners’ feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The global economy has become increasingly, perhaps chronically, unstable. Since 2008, we have heard about the housing bubble, subprime mortgages, banks “too big to fail,” financial regulation (or the lack of it), and the European debt crisis. Wall Street has discovered that it is more profitable to make money from other people's money than by investing in the real economy, which has limited access to capital—resulting in slow growth and rising inequality. What we haven't heard much about is the role of natural resources—energy in particular—as drivers of economic growth, or the connection of “global warming” to the economic crisis. In The Bubble Economy, Robert Ayres—an economist and physicist—connects economic instability to the economics of energy.Ayres describes, among other things, the roots of our bubble economy (including the divergent influences of Senator Carter Glass—of the Glass-Steagall Law—and Ayn Rand); the role of energy in the economy, from the “oil shocks” of 1971 and 1981 through the Iraq wars; the early history of bubbles and busts; the end of Glass-Steagall; climate change; and the failures of austerity.Finally, Ayres offers a new approach to trigger economic growth. The rising price of fossil fuels (notwithstanding “fracking”) suggests that renewable energy will become increasingly profitable. Ayres argues that government should redirect private savings and global finance away from home ownership and toward “de-carbonization”—investment in renewables and efficiency. Large-scale investment in sustainability will achieve a trifecta: lowering greenhouse gas emissions, stimulating innovation-based economic growth and employment, and offering long-term investment opportunities that do not depend on risky gambling strategies with derivatives.Robert U. Ayres, an American-born physicist and economist, is Emeritus Professor of Economics and Political Science at INSEAD, the international graduate business school. He is the author or coauthor of many books, including (with Benjamin Warr) The Economic Growth Engine: How Energy and Work Drive Prosperity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who are the English upper class? In The Fall and Rise of the English Upper Class: Houses, Kinship and Capital Since 1945 (Manchester UP, 2023) Daniel Smith, a lecturer in sociology at Cardiff University, offers an analysis of the role and power of the upper class in English society. Drawing on, and critiquing, sociology, anthropology, literary and cultural studies, and psychoanalysis, the book uses a vast range of methods and examples to tell the story of the continued dominance of English elites. With examples ranging from fashion and bookshops, through fee-paying schools, to memoirs and money, the book is essential reading across the social sciences and humanities, and for anyone interested in understanding Britain’s current social, economic, and cultural crisis.Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many a scholar and policy analyst has lamented American dependence on cars and the corresponding lack of federal investment in public transportation throughout the latter decades of the twentieth century. But as Nicholas Dagen Bloom shows in The Great American Transit Disaster: A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight (U Chicago Press, 2023), our transit networks are so bad for a very simple reason: we wanted it this way.Focusing on Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, and San Francisco, Bloom provides overwhelming evidence that transit disinvestment was a choice rather than destiny. He pinpoints three major factors that led to the decline of public transit in the United States: municipal austerity policies that denied most transit agencies the funding to sustain high-quality service; the encouragement of auto-centric planning; and white flight from dense city centers to far-flung suburbs. As Bloom makes clear, these local public policy decisions were not the product of a nefarious auto industry or any other grand conspiracy--all were widely supported by voters, who effectively shut out options for transit-friendly futures. With this book, Bloom seeks not only to dispel our accepted transit myths but hopefully to lay new tracks for today's conversations about public transportation funding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Philip Stern places the corporation―more than the Crown―at the heart of British colonialism, arguing that companies built and governed global empire, raising questions about public and private power that were just as troubling four hundred years ago as they are today.Across four centuries, from Ireland to India, the Americas to Africa and Australia, British colonialism was above all the business of corporations. Corporations conceived, promoted, financed, and governed overseas expansion, making claims over territory and peoples while ensuring that British and colonial society were invested, quite literally, in their ventures. Colonial companies were also relentlessly controversial, frequently in debt, and prone to failure. The corporation was well-suited to overseas expansion not because it was an inevitable juggernaut but because, like empire itself, it was an elusive contradiction: public and private; person and society; subordinate and autonomous; centralized and diffuse; immortal and precarious; national and cosmopolitan―a legal fiction with very real power.Breaking from traditional histories in which corporations take a supporting role by doing the dirty work of sovereign states in exchange for commercial monopolies, Stern argues that corporations took the lead in global expansion and administration. Whether in sixteenth-century Ireland and North America or the Falklands in the early 1980s, corporations were key players. And, as Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism (Harvard UP, 2023) makes clear, venture colonialism did not cease with the end of empire. Its legacies continue to raise questions about corporate power that are just as relevant today as they were 400 years ago.Challenging conventional wisdom about where power is held on a global scale, Stern complicates the supposedly firm distinction between private enterprise and the state, offering a new history of the British Empire, as well as a new history of the corporation.Thomas Kingston is an early career scholar and a voracious reader (183 books in 2021). You can find his website at www.thomasekingston.com or reach him on twitter @thomasekingston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wartime is not just about military success.  Economists at War: How a Handful of Economists Helped Win and Lose the World Wars (Oxford University Press, 2023) tells a different story - about a group of remarkable economists who used their skills to help their countries fight their battles during the Chinese-Japanese War, Second World War, and the Cold War. 1935-55 was a time of conflict, confrontation, and destruction. It was also a time when the skills of economists were called upon to finance the military, to identify economic vulnerabilities, and to help reconstruction. Economists at War focuses on the achievements of seven finance ministers, advisors, and central bankers from Japan, China, Germany, the UK, the USSR, and the US. It is a story of good and bad economic thinking, good and bad policy, and good and bad moral positions. The economists suffered threats, imprisonment, trial, and assassination. They all believed in the power of economics to make a difference, and their contributions had a significant impact on political outcomes and military ends. Economists at War shows the history of this turbulent period through a unique lens. It details the tension between civilian resources and military requirements; the desperate attempts to control economies wracked with inflation, depression, political argument, and fighting; and the clever schemes used to evade sanctions, develop barter trade, and use economic espionage. Politicians and generals cannot win wars if they do not have the resources. This book tells the human stories behind the economics of wartime.Alan Bollard is a Professor of Economics at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He formerly managed APEC, the largest regional economic integration organization in the world, and was previously the New Zealand Reserve Bank Governor, Secretary of the New Zealand Treasury, and Chairman of the New Zealand Commerce Commission.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices