This article reopens the classic debate about the relationship between the city and the countryside in medieval/Renaissance Italy. It examines city-countryside relations in Siena in the second half of the fourteenth century and compares them with what we know of Siena≈s northern neighbor, Florence. It argues that Sienese policy was moderate and even-handed and, despite similar pressures, less harsh than that of the Florentines. The difference is explained by the fact that Siena was economically far less potent and thus ever mindful that its own fate was intrinsically linked with that of the countryside.

The Economic History Association is an interdisciplinary organization of widely varying interests. The Association has several times considered the relationships between Economic Theory and Economic History, but it has paid little attention to that between the applied field of Business Administration and Economic History. It is appropriate to do so now because significant special interests have arisen within and around Economic History in recent years which have been of particular interest to students of Business Administration. I refer to the studies in Business History, Entrepreneurial History, Economic Development, and Innovation. Like Economic History, Business Administration is interdisciplinary, at least in part, and relies considerably, though at the applied level, on the same fundamental social sciences that interest economic historians. Also we have seen an outpouring of histories of individual enterprises, as American business, once more proud of its accomplishments and increasingly conscious of the value of public relations, has sat for its portrait. At the same time, in the field of Business Administration there has been a growing recognition of the importance of the long-range view in appraising administration, and of the use of the social sciences to improve its quality. It therefore is time to attempt some integration of these strands of thought.

We use a genealogical data base to question the idea that the frontier was a “safety valve” for Americans in the years of the founding of the republic. Our findings about the relative wealth of members of nine families show how the frontier affected their migration patterns. We find that it was the middle class, not the poor, who seemed to make best use of the opportunity of the frontier.

Protection of a domestic manufacturing industry to encourage its expansion through import substitution is equivalent (in the absence of equal protection for agriculture) to a “tax” on agriculture to support the development of the industrial sector. To call this policy of biasing the intersectoral terms of trade to favor industry a typical strategy of underdeveloped countries would be, if anything, to understate its universality. The arguments for and against such a strategy are well known, and an approximation of the benefits to the industrial sector can be gleaned from the national accounts of many countries. What remains hidden in the accounts, however, is the cost to the agricultural sector as a result of its being forced to trade at less favorable terms of trade than those provided by the world market. The purpose of this paper is to work out a simple methodology for measuring this cost and then to attempt an estimate of the cost in a particular case.

The slowness with which British firms adopted Scientific Management and Fordism has often been noted.The paper argues that in Britain, management had difficulty controlling labor effort norms after 1870. The state intervened to resolve the issue and in the process became a major proponent of industrial democracy. It is argued that the early interest in industrial democracy retarded the adoption of American methods that assumed a greater degree of managerial control over factory organization.

The subject of unemployment in general came into its own in the age of mercantilism. Mercantilist authors saw in unemployed who might be set to work a source of additional economic power. The subject of accessibility to employment, though always of concern to social philosophers, commanded greater attention as the medieval economy gave place to the modern.

The question whether business, or capitalism, has been a force for peace or for war has been one of some historical interest. Before 1914 there were few to challenge the thesis of the great liberal-capitalist ideologists—Comte, Spencer, Fiske, to name only outstanding specimens —that the triumph of free enterprise meant the end of war, or its progressive decline; that the businessman would make a world in which the arts of peace permanently displaced those of war. But after the World War there naturally arose schools which sought to establish that capitalism carried within itself the seeds of ferocious wars. The thinking of a disillusioned generation was powerfully influenced in this direction. The loosely drawn but vehement indictment of capitalism as partner of Mars can be read in such typical pieces of the ʼ30s as H. N. Brailsford's Property or Peace (New York: Covici, Friede, 1934) and C. H. Grattan's Preface to Chaos (New York: Dodge Publishing Co., 1936). But these Marxist theories have been subjected to devastating criticism.

In the eighteenth century, industry, though still a minor factor in the total economy of the Habsburg monarchy—over 80 per cent of the people lived on the land—was the object of special attention from statesmen and theorists. To them industry connoted progress and showed great promise of being the handmaiden to the evolving power of the modern state. The great teacher in this respect was Colbert, and since the late seventeenth century the rulers of the Habsburg monarchy, as those of other states, had at least paid lip service to his ideas. The static nature of society, however, all too often prevented them from putting Colbert's mercantilist principles into practice.

Peter A. Schenck, Surveyor of Customs and Inspector of Revenue for the Port of New York, must have felt slightly exhilarated when he left his office on the evening of December 30, 1807. He had that day wielded for the first time the two-edged sword placed in his hands by Congress for the destruction of British maritime arrogance. Nay more, he had struck at least seven times, by seizing that number of shipments of British goods which had arrived in two vessels ten days before. In a few days Nathan Sanford, the District Attorney, would file seven separate libels in the Federal District Court on behalf of the United States vs. twenty-two bales of woolen cloth, two cases of hats, eight boxes linen cloth, sixteen boxes of linens, one case of woolen hosiery, two cases of plated ware, and two boxes of woolen hosiery. The goods would doubtless be condemned, for Sanford was a clever lawyer and the district judge was not, like the fellow up in Massachusetts, unfriendly to Jeffersonian policies. Later the United States marshal, Peter Curtenius, would have them sold by auction outside the Tontine Coffee House; the court and marshal's costs—totaling about $120 in each case—would be paid, and the balance, where there was any, would be shared equally between the customs staff and the Treasury. If this process could be repeated often enough, John Bull might soon be willing to come to terms.

The theme of the 2005 annual meetings of the Economic History Association has been War and Economic History: Causes, Costs and Consequences. In this essay I will address this theme by briefly examining the ways in which cliometricians have viewed one particular conflict—The American Civil War—over the past four decades. The first part of my essay deals with the attack, which began at the end of the 1950s, mounted by a group of “New Economic Historians” on the existing explanation of the war; the second part deals with my own adventures as I try to make sense of the economic and political factors that produced the conflict we call the Civil War.

This paper examines the impact of the Bank War on the economic events of the 1830's. An economic model of the antebellum money market is developed and tested. Specifications for money demand and supply are drawn from contemporary monetary literature and empirically estimated. Next, the historical hypotheses are tested by exploring the structural stability of the model. The results clearly indicate that: the Bank War affected the economy because it altered the pattern of financial behavior; wildcat banking was not characteristic of the post-Bank period; and finally, the Panic of 1837 was the result of a severe monetary contraction.

Studies of the postbellum South have neglected the development of the capital goods industry within the region. The argument of this note is that where the capital goods industry was limited or not present, economic development was inhibited. Within the South, I focus on regional differences in the development of the industry. Evidence is presented that indicates that the development of the capital goods industry and the pattern of inventive activity (as measured by patents) varied considerably within the South. One key finding is that the plantation Old South had fewer patents per capita compared with the nonplantation South.

It is impossible within the confines of a short paper to provide an adequate survey of the main works in Marxist economic history. The most that can be done is to introduce a limited number of issues that best illustrate the contributions of Marxist scholars. The topics covered in this paper include feudalism and the decline of serfdom, the transition to capitalism, the crisis of the seventeenth century, the English Civil War, and the rise of factories. An attempt is made to integrate these subjects into a more or less chronological account of European history.

Analysis of balance-of-payments components with Spain and Spanish America helps account for spectacular economic gains to the United States in the neutrality years and for the subsequent turn to net deficit positions during the 1810s. Excess export values at constant prices with Spain and favorable terms of trade with Spanish America decisively contributed to large surpluses on commodity account through 1795–1813. Most cycles in merchandise trade are consistent with greater demand elasticities for exports than for imports.Net earings on freight, insurance, and mercantile profits boosted overall returns from the Spanish Empire at the very times when they were most needed to finance the re-export trade and to settle deficits elsewhere.

The thesis that long-term price movements in medieval and early modern periods were the results of changes in the supply of precious metals has been questioned by a number of historians who believe that fluctuations in population provide a more fundamental explanation. These men point out that if changes in the supply of money were primarily responsible, the secular rise and fall of prices would have been approximately the same for all commodities. Actually, agricultural prices rose and fell faster and more sharply than did the prices of industrial goods. It is claimed that these price changes and the lack of synchronization between them can be satisfactorily explained by changes in the size of population: