Lombardy underwent an agricultural revolution (and a connected process of general economic growth) in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The basis for this transformation was a series of fundamental institutional changes. These latter—consisting most importantly of the transfer of control over the land into new hands—must in turn be attributed essentially to the policies of the Visconti and Sforza dukes who, through direct or indirect means, encouraged, initiated, facilitated, and acquiesced in the processes by which the change took place.

Though the economy of Italy has been transformed in the one hundred years since its uninfication, the various regions have experienced quite different degrees of development. Southern Italy, including Sicily and Sardinia, all of which comprises 40 per cent of the land area and, today, about 37 per cent of the population, has lagged far behind the North.

George Macesich, “Sources of Monetary Disturbances in the United States, 1834–1945,” Journal of Economic History, September 1960, pp. 407–434.

p. 410. Last line of Section II should read “deflation” instead of “inflation.”

p. 416. Last line on page should read “… hence they do not conform …”

p. 424. Roman numeral IV should appear over second paragraph.

Greek colonization had a long and varied history; it had begun indeed had already accomplished its first great period of expansion before the first Greek historians wrote; it continued in different forms intermittently throughout the classical period, had a second great era under Alexander the Great and the early Hellenistic monarchies, and again persisted with modifications after Rome became mistress of the eastern Mediterranean. The result we all know: the Greek polis, that closely integrated self-governing community of citizens, became the dominant political unit and political ideal of the Mediterranean world, and left its indelible imprint, for good or ill, on the Western World.

Central banking institutions during the past quarter-century have been almost free of the constraints that inhibited their actions during the nineteenth century. The special conditions under which earlier central banking institutions were formed and operated frequently have been lost to view; and while contemporary observers have come to regard the first two Banks of the United States sympathetically, the functional evolution of these institutions within the framework of specie standards has been largely neglected. The period between the end of the Second Bank and the organization of the Federal Reserve System is subsequently treated as the Dark Ages of monetary policy, better forgotten than deplored.

In this paper, which examines the business operations of the Anzin Mining Company during the Restoration, the record of a single firm has been used to assess recent interpretations of the nature of French entrepreneurship in the nineteenth century. These interpretations portray French industry in its formative period developing around “small units, small volume, and small horizons.” “Cautious management, obsolescent plants, and high profits” have been cited as main features which came to characterize the business operations of even the largest firms. It has been pointed out also that maximization of profits was not a fundamental aim of the French entrepreneur, nor did he indulge in the competitive business practices common to American industrial development. In France, security and continuity of the firm were as important to the entrepreneur as profits, and the acquired rights of the small or marginal firm were respected and preserved. The family character of most French enterprises has been emphasized in explanation of these phenomena. Close identification of family name and family honor widi business holdings prescribed a minimizing of risks in the family firm, as well as consideration for the welfare of other family enterprises. Finally, in order to allow these conditions to endure, French entrepreneurs favored a high protective tariff.

One of the main points at issue between economists from advanced and those from underdeveloped countries is the role of foreign trade in economic development. The former see in the expansion of foreign trade the main motive power of development, while the latter pin their hopes on other sectors, notably manufacturing. The answer would seem to be that foreign trade is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of development. Economic growth of underdeveloped countries can be achieved most smoothly if they can build up a substantial export trade that is sufficiently closely linked to the rest of the economy to exert upon it some form of multiplier effect so that a rise in exports leads to a more general and diffused expansion. In other words, over a long period of development, foreign trade is the engine that provides the motive power, but this engine cannot move the economy unless it is provided with adequate transmission lines. Or, to change the metaphor, other branches of the economy can be vivified and developed by grafting on to them some of the capital created and the skills generated in foreign trade.

During the seventeenth century the Dutch had possessions in almost every continent, but their main interest was and continued to be the Malay Archipelago, now known as Indonesia. The search for these islands, known to be the source of spices, had launched die Age of Discovery with the explosive effect of opening the whole world to the countries of Western Europe. The Portuguese and Spanish had divided the world between themselves by the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494). Their aim was twofold: exploitation of newly discovered lands and a crusade to spread the Christian faith. England and the Dutch Republic, both Protestant, refused to abide by this arbitrary division, which had been sanctioned by die Pope. Both countries defended the principle that “the sea was as free as the air.”

In october 1959 a small group of scholars met under the auspices of the University of Chicago's Research Center in Economic Development and Cultural Change to discuss problems of research in Asian economic history. Papers prepared by two participants explored work already done in Indian economic history. It was felt that these two papers might be useful to others, those concerned with Indian economic history and those interested in comparative analysis.

The economic historian is well aware of the philanthropic origins of savings banks. Both in Western Europe and the United States they were initially established by public spirited individuals as a depository for the funds of small savers. It is not so widely appreciated that such banks were encouraged officially as a part of social policy in England during the nineteenth century. In an age in which self-help and individual thrift were conceived as the only solutions for lower-class poverty and distress, a means of spreading such virtues was sure not to go unnoticed. Brought forward in those critical years at the end of the Napoleonic wars, “here was the first constructive and practical proposal for counteracting the growing pauperization of the community, restoring independence to the masses, stopping the growth of the poor rate, and giving the ordinary man and woman some interest in the financial stability of the country.”

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Japan was just emerging from a long period of internal strife and was beginning to settle down under a centralized feudal system introduced by the newly established Tokugawa government. In the following period of peace, economic development was very rapid. Along with commercial development and the monetization of important sections of the economy, a system of credit institutions evolved, notably in Osaka, which by the end of the century was not inferior to those existing in Europe at that time. The financial innovations and developments of the first half of the century were systematized in the latter half, and the resulting credit system became an indispensable part of Japan's economic life. In particular it played an important part in facilitating the spurt in Japan's economic development which occurred roughly between 1690 and 1740.

Most historical generalizations must be approached with a wary eye; Kliuchevskii's dictum that “the history of Russia is the history of a country in the process of colonization” is no exception. Taken unjudiciously this dictum grievously compresses time, focuses attention on only a single historical dynamic, lends to the historical process a pre-ordained character which is indeed usually absent. The historian's critical apparatus is dulled, and the delicate nuance and important variant are neglected. Moscow, it has been argued, was a chosen town to lead the southward and eastward expansion of the Great Russian people because of her physical location on the edge of the Valdai hills giving her control of the crucial waterways of European Russia. (Why not, for the same reasons, Vladimir or Rostov, Suzdal or even Uglich?) Muscovite expansion forms the central thread of Russian history, determining the economic and political structure of the state. It was the expansion which fixed and defined the necessity of the “service state,” which in turn subjugated all classes and groups to the all powerful tsardom. (Why not the reverse—the “service state” defining the expansion—and why did not an independent merchant class come to control the expansion, and the towns and politics of Muscovy?) To pursue the argument to a logical conclusion, die modern audioritarian state in Russia (bodi Soviet and Tsarist) is essentially a continuation of old Muscovy. As the latter expanded and colonized, so must the former. (The role of the Party and the Marxist dialectic, by this line of argument, has no fundamental historical significance.)

Anyone interested in the historical anlysis of the emergence of a wage labor force in the early stages of industrialization will find much of interest in Rashin's study of the Russian case. The value of this study, an expansion and elaboration of a work published in 1940, lies in both over-all and sector estimates of the growth and composition of the work force, and in detailed data on specific aspects of the movement from the land to the factory.

Given the present state of the study of Chinese economic history, this survey ought either to be limited to a single paragraph—or else it should comprise a monograph of several hundred pages. Thirty pages of selected titles may leave the reader with a false impression that these are the cream of a very large crop; on the other hand, within this space I can barely adumbrate the thousands of potential sources—printed and in manuscript, ephemeral and lasting—that will eventually have to be digested before the economic history of China will be definitively written.

A meeting of historians on “Colonialism and Colonization” certainly raises a terminological problem. Colonization is a great and old subject of historical study. The word “colonialism,” on the contrary, seems to me to have come to us from the international rostrums where diplomats and propagandists wage the psychological wars of today; and to my taste it has that Basic English quality of an international vocabulary ready-made for simultaneous translation, where the suggestive power of words is in inverse relation to their accuracy. In its current use it seems to be a synonym of imperialism or, more generally, of domination of one country by another, or by the rulers of another country. But imperialism, at least, says what it means: the policy of building and holding together an empire, a unit of domination which transcends the national state. Foreign domination is a self-defining expression apt to describe all degrees of dependency, from straight political and military to economic or even cultural ones. What, then, is the use of forging yet another term?

One should distinguish from the start between the economic interpretation of imperialism and economic imperialism. The one is an explanation, an essentially monistic explanation, of an historical phenomenon. The latter is an aspect of the phenomenon itself: if imperialism is the dominion of one group over another, economic imperialism is the establishment or exploitation of such dominion for continuing material advantage. The definition assumes that economic imperialism is more than simple, once-for-all pillage; rather that it tries to cultivate relationships that yield a recurrent harvest of profit, as the ground its corn. Moreover, it makes no distinction between dominion established for economic motives and dominion that, for whatever reasons established, is maintained and exploited primarily for material ends. Finally, it does not confine imperialism to cases of formal rule or protectorate, but includes that “informal” dominion that is often far more effective and lucrative than direct administration.

Lance E. Davis, writing in the March 1960 issue of The Journal of Economic History, found that comparatively low interest rates were paid by eight “Massachusetts-type” cotton textile mills on loans from 1840 to 1860. These firms were voracious borrowers throughout the period, and the textile industry as a whole was a major user of credit. Davis attributed the continued low interest rates primarily to well-enforced usury laws and to the influence of nonprofit lending agencies, with occasional references to effects of the New York money market (not important before 1853). Many other factors—for example, the Tariff of 1846, removing protection from important classes of cotton textiles, die general business cycle, technological changes, alternative investments in railroads and other industries, the relation of increased savings to increased investment demands—should all be explored for an adequate explanation. Of these factors, only the general business cycle is taken up by Davis in a brief reference. The purpose of this note is to suggest that interlocking directorates between financial and textile firms rather than usury laws were probably chiefly responsible for the low rates paid.

Although Germans have made major contributions to the study of historical economics and the discipline of economic history, the pioneer work on the enterprise, that lies beneath them all, has been done by Americans. Such continental newcomers to the field as the journals Histoire des Entreprises or Tradition, and the Hamburg Research Center in Entrepreneurial History (Wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Forschungsstelle e. V.) are only now catching up with an important set of data which have been ignorantly neglected. Their approach to economic history, mainly through entrepreneurial history, has the great strengdi of forcing a reconciliation between actual entrepreneurial behavior and the implications of rigorous historical analysis. But it also has evident limitations. The problem of social and economic placement of entrepreneurs, seeking to determine the general effect of their policies, hinges upon quantitative generalization that cannot be derived from particular histories of enterprises remaining within the framework of the firm. One of the major aims of this paper is to show the Hamburg Research Center's recognition that an increasing part of the interest in the history of the enterprise should focus on broader questions that transcend the limits of monographs on firms, questions diat relate business development to economic change.

The character and revolutionary potential of Russian factory labor in the early phases of industrialization have been a source of controversy for over two generations. While no longer a matter of the utmost consequence, the problems of analysis and the conclusions involved in this debate have retained their significance not only for the study of the Russian revolutions but also for our contemporary experience with labor in underdeveloped countries. The following pages, dealing with the crucial years around 1900, intend to apply a modern approach to an ancient subject, starting with the question of the relationship between peasants and workers in the Russian factories and advancing to the problem of the “exploitation” of the workers by the “capitalists.”