We provide decadal estimates of GDP per capita for the Russian Empire from the 1690s to the 1880s, making it possible for the first time to compare the economic performance of one of the world’s largest economies with other countries. Significant Russian economic growth before the 1760s resulted in catching-up on northwest Europe, but this was followed by a period of negative growth between the 1760s and 1800s and stagnation from the 1800s to the 1880s, leaving late-nineteenth century Russia further behind the West than at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Seymour Drescher's comments center on whether British traders exporting slaves from Africa directly to non-British territories in the Americas were able to load more slaves per ton after 1788 than the slave-ton ratios imposed by British laws. The bone of contention here arose originally from attempts to estimate the volume of the trade. I argued that the British traders did load considerably more slaves per ton after 1788. Neglecting this factor would lead to a significant underestimate of the volume. Drescher disagreed and offered comments in Econocide; I replied in Forced Migration. In discussing the profits I found the subject still relevant: I argued that loading considerably more slaves than British laws allowed enhanced profits of the larger firms with access to non-British territories. On this Drescher here takes issue.

During the century which culminated in the First World War, Great Britain was the principal source of capital supply for countries that drew upon foreign resources. Until 1940 her claims as creditor remained substantially greater than those of any other nation. Investments grossing from forty to fifty billion dollars have been made in the course of her virtually continuous process of capital outlay abroad. The outstanding total in 1914 amounted to twenty billion dollars, yielding an annual income of about one billion, which was nearly one tenth of the national income of the United Kingdom. This was the result of a process of accumulation which reached its greatest intensity during the periods 1868–1875, 1884–1893, and 1905–1912, when annual public issues of foreign and colonial securities averaged 6 or 7 per cent of those outstanding. During the latter period, at least, more than half of all British investment of new capital was being made abroad.

This article deals with the interrelations between the economyand the government of the expanding Spanish empire in the era of overseas expansion during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Specifically, it attempts to show how the government reacted to the phenomenon of the growing empire. In a full treatment it would be necessary to show how the various Spanish territories of the Peninsula were unified by the process of the “reconquista” and by the marriage policy of the Catholic Icings; how during the sixteenth century Navarre and Portugal were joined; how the overseas expansion of Spanish power, beginning in the late Middle Ages, continued during the sixteenth century; and how Spain, as a consequence of Hapsburg marriage policy, built an important bridge of possessions from the Netherlands to Italy. Obviously, these questions cannot be dealt with in detail in one article, but they form the background for the following discussion.