- History, Economics, Capitalism, Globalization, Intellectual History, History of Political Economy, and 28 moreHistory of Economic Thought, History of Political Thought, Emerging Markets, Economic Development, History of Ideas, Cultural History, Early Modern Italy, Economic History, International Trade, Development Economics, Italian Studies, Renaissance Studies, Early Modern History, Cosmopolitanism, Sovereign Wealth Funds, State capitalism, Happiness Economics, History of Capitalism, Intellectual History of Capitalism, H.P. Lovecraft, Political Economy, Intellectual History of Enlightenment, Liberalism, Early Modern Intellectual History, Colonialism and Imperialism, Enlightenment, Imperial History, and Early Modern Political Thoughtedit
- My research deals with the histories of capitalism and political economy since the Renaissance, focusing particularly... moreMy research deals with the histories of capitalism and political economy since the Renaissance, focusing particularly on the origins and evolution of market societies, as well as on issues of industrialization, imperialism, international competition, and economic development. I am pursuing longer-term projects on Renaissance economics as well as on the history and political economy of sovereign wealth funds.
I am Series Editor of the "Economic Ideas That Built Europe" series with Anthem Press (London and New Delhi) and open to proposals.edit
The terms “capitalism” and “socialism” continue to haunt our political and economic imaginations, but we rarely consider their interconnected early history. Even the eighteenth century had its “socialists,” but unlike those of the... more
The terms “capitalism” and “socialism” continue to haunt our political and economic imaginations, but we rarely consider their interconnected early history. Even the eighteenth century had its “socialists,” but unlike those of the nineteenth, they paradoxically sought to make the world safe for “capitalists.” The word “socialists” was first used in Northern Italy as a term of contempt for the political economists and legal reformers Pietro Verri and Cesare Beccaria, author of the epochal On Crimes and Punishments. Yet the views and concerns of these first socialists, developed inside a pugnacious intellectual coterie dubbed the Academy of Fisticuffs, differ dramatically from those of the socialists that followed.
Sophus Reinert turns to Milan in the late 1700s to recover the Academy’s ideas and the policies they informed. At the core of their preoccupations lay the often lethal tension among states, markets, and human welfare in an era when the three were becoming increasingly intertwined. What distinguished these thinkers was their articulation of a secular basis for social organization, rooted in commerce, and their insistence that political economy trumped theology as the underpinning for peace and prosperity within and among nations.
Reinert argues that the Italian Enlightenment, no less than the Scottish, was central to the emergence of political economy and the project of creating market societies. By reconstructing ideas in their historical contexts, he addresses motivations and contingencies at the very foundations of modernity.
Sophus Reinert turns to Milan in the late 1700s to recover the Academy’s ideas and the policies they informed. At the core of their preoccupations lay the often lethal tension among states, markets, and human welfare in an era when the three were becoming increasingly intertwined. What distinguished these thinkers was their articulation of a secular basis for social organization, rooted in commerce, and their insistence that political economy trumped theology as the underpinning for peace and prosperity within and among nations.
Reinert argues that the Italian Enlightenment, no less than the Scottish, was central to the emergence of political economy and the project of creating market societies. By reconstructing ideas in their historical contexts, he addresses motivations and contingencies at the very foundations of modernity.
Research Interests: History, Economics, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Social Sciences, and 14 moreEarly Modern History, History of Economic Thought, Enlightenment, History of Capitalism, Capitalism, Early Modern Italy, Socialism, Italy, Punishment and Prisons, History of Political Economy, Crime, Pietro Verri, History of Socialism, and Cesare Beccaria
This volume offers a snapshot of the resurgent historiography of political economy in the wake of the ongoing global financial crisis, and suggests fruitful new agendas for research on the political-economic nexus as it has developed in... more
This volume offers a snapshot of the resurgent historiography of political economy in the wake of the ongoing global financial crisis, and suggests fruitful new agendas for research on the political-economic nexus as it has developed in the Western world since the end of the Middle Ages. New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy brings together a select group of young and established scholars from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds—history, economics, law, and political science—in an effort to begin a re-conceptualization of the origins and history of political economy through a variety of still largely distinct but complementary historical approaches—legal and intellectual, literary and philosophical, political and economic—and from a variety of related perspectives: debt and state finance, tariffs and tax policy, the encouragement and discouragement of trade, merchant communities and companies, smuggling and illicit trades, mercantile and colonial systems, economic cultures, and the history of economic doctrines more narrowly construed.
The first decade of the twenty-first century, bookended by 9/11 and a global financial crisis, witnessed the clamorous and urgent return of both 'the political' and 'the economic' to historiographical debates. It is becoming more important than ever to rethink the historical role of politics (and, indeed, of government) in business, economic production, distribution, and exchange. The artefacts of pre-modern and modern political economy, from the fourteenth through the twentieth centuries, remain monuments of perennial importance for understanding how human beings grappled with and overcame material hardship, organized their political and economic communities, won great wealth and lost it, conquered and were conquered.
The present volume, assembling some of the brightest lights in the field, eloquently testifies to the rich and powerful lessons to be had from such a historical understanding of political economy and of power in an economic age.
The first decade of the twenty-first century, bookended by 9/11 and a global financial crisis, witnessed the clamorous and urgent return of both 'the political' and 'the economic' to historiographical debates. It is becoming more important than ever to rethink the historical role of politics (and, indeed, of government) in business, economic production, distribution, and exchange. The artefacts of pre-modern and modern political economy, from the fourteenth through the twentieth centuries, remain monuments of perennial importance for understanding how human beings grappled with and overcame material hardship, organized their political and economic communities, won great wealth and lost it, conquered and were conquered.
The present volume, assembling some of the brightest lights in the field, eloquently testifies to the rich and powerful lessons to be had from such a historical understanding of political economy and of power in an economic age.
Research Interests:
Winner of the 2012 Joseph J. Spengler Prize of the History of Economics Society. Winner of the 2012 EAEPE-Gunnar Myrdal Prize of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy. Winner of the 2012 George L. Mosse Prize of... more
Winner of the 2012 Joseph J. Spengler Prize of the History of Economics Society.
Winner of the 2012 EAEPE-Gunnar Myrdal Prize of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy.
Winner of the 2012 George L. Mosse Prize of the American Historical Association.
Historians have traditionally used the discourses of free trade and laissez faire to explain the development of political economy during the Enlightenment. But from Sophus Reinert’s perspective, eighteenth-century political economy can be understood only in the context of the often brutal imperial rivalries then unfolding in Europe and its former colonies and the positive consequences of active economic policy. The idea of economic emulation was the prism through which philosophers, ministers, reformers, and even merchants thought about economics, as well as industrial policy and reform, in the early modern period. With the rise of the British Empire, European powers and others sought to selectively emulate the British model.
In mapping the general history of economic translations between 1500 and 1849, and particularly tracing the successive translations of the Bristol merchant John Cary’s seminal 1695 Essay on the State of England, Reinert makes a compelling case for the way that England’s aggressively nationalist policies, especially extensive tariffs and other intrusive market interventions, were adopted in France, Italy, Germany, and Scandinavia before providing the blueprint for independence in the New World. Relatively forgotten today, Cary’s work served as the basis for an international move toward using political economy as the prime tool of policymaking and industrial expansion.
Reinert’s work challenges previous narratives about the origins of political economy and invites the current generation of economists to reexamine the foundations, and future, of their discipline."
Winner of the 2012 EAEPE-Gunnar Myrdal Prize of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy.
Winner of the 2012 George L. Mosse Prize of the American Historical Association.
Historians have traditionally used the discourses of free trade and laissez faire to explain the development of political economy during the Enlightenment. But from Sophus Reinert’s perspective, eighteenth-century political economy can be understood only in the context of the often brutal imperial rivalries then unfolding in Europe and its former colonies and the positive consequences of active economic policy. The idea of economic emulation was the prism through which philosophers, ministers, reformers, and even merchants thought about economics, as well as industrial policy and reform, in the early modern period. With the rise of the British Empire, European powers and others sought to selectively emulate the British model.
In mapping the general history of economic translations between 1500 and 1849, and particularly tracing the successive translations of the Bristol merchant John Cary’s seminal 1695 Essay on the State of England, Reinert makes a compelling case for the way that England’s aggressively nationalist policies, especially extensive tariffs and other intrusive market interventions, were adopted in France, Italy, Germany, and Scandinavia before providing the blueprint for independence in the New World. Relatively forgotten today, Cary’s work served as the basis for an international move toward using political economy as the prime tool of policymaking and industrial expansion.
Reinert’s work challenges previous narratives about the origins of political economy and invites the current generation of economists to reexamine the foundations, and future, of their discipline."
Research Interests: History, Intellectual History, Economic History, German Studies, Economics, and 18 moreDevelopment Economics, History of Ideas, History of Economic Thought, Italian (European History), Italian Studies, Enlightenment, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Italy (Early Modern History), Intellectual History of Enlightenment, Eighteenth-Century French Studies, History of Political Thought, Early Modern Italy, Scandinavian Studies, 18th Century France, Early modern Germany, 18th Century Germany, Enlightenment Scandinavia, and The Scandinavian Enlightenment
Although no less an authority than Joseph A. Schumpeter proclaimed that Antonio Serra was the world’s first economist, he remains something of a dark horse of economic historiography. Nearly nothing is known about Serra except that he... more
Although no less an authority than Joseph A. Schumpeter proclaimed that Antonio Serra was the world’s first economist, he remains something of a dark horse of economic historiography. Nearly nothing is known about Serra except that he wrote and died in jail, and his ‘Short Treatise’ is so rare that only nine original copies are known to have survived the ravages of time. What, then, can a book written nearly four centuries ago tell us about the problems we now face? Serra’s key insight, studying the economies of Venice and Naples, was that wealth was not the result of climate or providence but of policies to develop economic activities subject to increasing returns to scale and a large division of labour. Through a very systematic taxonomy of economic life, Serra then went on from this insight to theorize the causes of the wealth of nations and the measures through which a weak, dependent economy could achieve worldly melioration.
At a time when leading economists return to biological explanations for the failure of their theories, the ‘Short Treatise’ can remind us that there are elements of history which numbers and graphs cannot convey or encompass, and that there are less despondent lessons to be learned from our past. Serra’s remarkable tract is introduced by a lengthy and illuminating study of his historical context and legacy for the theoretical and cultural history of economics.
At a time when leading economists return to biological explanations for the failure of their theories, the ‘Short Treatise’ can remind us that there are elements of history which numbers and graphs cannot convey or encompass, and that there are less despondent lessons to be learned from our past. Serra’s remarkable tract is introduced by a lengthy and illuminating study of his historical context and legacy for the theoretical and cultural history of economics.
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This volume recasts our understanding of the practical and theoretical foundations and dynamic experiences of early modern imperialism. The imperial encounter with political economy was neither uniform across political, economic,... more
This volume recasts our understanding of the practical and theoretical foundations and dynamic experiences of early modern imperialism. The imperial encounter with political economy was neither uniform across political, economic, cultural, and religious constellations nor static across time. The contributions collected in this volume address, with undeniable pertinence for the struggles of later periods, the moral and military ambiguity of profits and power, as well as the often jealous interactions between different solutions to the problem of empire. The book presents a powerful mosaic of imperial theories and practices contributing to the creation of the modern world and to the most pressing concerns of our time.
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Copyright © 2016, 2017, 2018 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800545-7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to... more
Copyright © 2016, 2017, 2018 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800545-7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to www.hbsp.harvard.edu. This publication may not be digitized, photocopied, or otherwise reproduced, posted, or transmitted, without the permission of Harvard Business School. R E B E C C A M . H E N D E R S O N
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Using materials from the important collection of Medici manuscripts donated to Harvard Business School by Harry Gordon Selfridge, this paper explores the geopolitics of the transformation of raw wool into finished cloth, and the role... more
Using materials from the important collection of Medici manuscripts donated to Harvard Business School by Harry Gordon Selfridge, this paper explores the geopolitics of the transformation of raw wool into finished cloth, and the role played in that process by Medici entrepreneurs, their guild, and their government. It aims to show that the history of political economy cannot truly be understood without business history. Successful business practices used by Medici entrepreneurs were first theorized by Giovanni Botero and others as what would become an “Italian model” in political economy, a model that had a profoundly wide-ranging impact, and that puts the lie to the commonplace in the history of ideas that the Italian Renaissance, so precocious in other fields, was silent on the topic of political economy.
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Using internal debates and surviving account books, this article traces the eighteenth-century history of the Norwegian glass industry, created to exploit Norway's immense natural resource wealth, and of the chartered company that... more
Using internal debates and surviving account books, this article traces the eighteenth-century history of the Norwegian glass industry, created to exploit Norway's immense natural resource wealth, and of the chartered company that would later become Norway's iconic Christiania Glasmagasin. The investors in the company, many of them among Norway's “founding fathers,” were individually responsible for its losses and it operated, remarkably, at an annual loss for nearly five decades. The article asks why, beyond the anticipation of a royal import ban on foreign glass, private investors might have continued to accept such losses. It focuses on tensions between cameralist and liberal ideologies in the creation of an important national industry, and on older (and perhaps more sustainable) ways of thinking about profitability.
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Research Interests: History, European History, Economic History, Economics, Middle East Studies, and 14 moreRenaissance Studies, Business History, History of Capitalism, Capitalism, History of the Mediterranean, History of Accounting Thought, Commerce, Social Science Research Network, Middle Ages, Insurance, Italian History, History of Business Management, Merchants and Businessmen, and Merchants and Merchant Colonies
This paper sketches the intellectual history of the Research Center in Entrepreneurial History, founded at Harvard in 1948, which helped established the contours of business history as a discipline. This history was shaped by the rivalry... more
This paper sketches the intellectual history of the Research Center in Entrepreneurial History, founded at Harvard in 1948, which helped established the contours of business history as a discipline. This history was shaped by the rivalry between N. S. B. Gras, the “father of business history,” and Arthur H. Cole, which defined still extant polarities in the field of business history. It provides context for the emergence of the figure of the “entrepreneur,” conceived of as an ambiguous and potent force of creative destruction, and of entrepreneurship as business history's preeminent and vital dynamic. The paper focuses on German émigré Fritz L. Redlich, who was central to the Center's work, and whose “creative entrepreneur” was conceived in explicit relation to the daimon, the godlike, frighteningly ambiguous, and often destructive power of inspiration and creativity.
Research Interests: Entrepreneurship, Economics, Creativity, Business History, History of Political Economic Thought, and 15 moreHistory of Capitalism, Friedrich Nietzsche, Capitalism, History of Economics, Adam Smith, History of Political Economy, Business and Economics, Demons, Harvard University, Creative Destruction, Harvard Business School, Economics and History, Daimon, History of Economic Analysis, and History Political Economy
Unique among the world’s countries, the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan had abandoned the traditional policy goal of increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in favor of pursuing Gross National Happiness (GNH). Famously, Bhutan ranked highly... more
Unique among the world’s countries, the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan had abandoned the traditional policy goal of increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in favor of pursuing Gross National Happiness (GNH). Famously, Bhutan ranked highly on lists of the happiest countries in spite of a tumultuous history, low life expectancy, a dismal literacy rate, a small and undiversified economy, and low GDP per capita. Everyone, it seemed, from tourists and Hollywood screenwriters to leading development economists, looked to Bhutan for enlightenment and perspective on crises both personal and global. GNH had become the country’s brand and suggested a possible future for capitalism. Was Bhutan on to something? Was there really a tradeoff between growth and happiness, and, if so, was it acceptable? In early 2014, Bhutan’s newly minted Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay was faced with these questions as he deliberated on whether to approve a massive new Bhutanese-Indian hydropower collaboration that experts argued would provide energy, foreign exchange, and invaluable jobs, but which also risked undermining the country’s brand as well as its happiness.
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‘Commerce’, the archbishop of Aix, de Boisgelin, wrote in a 1785 commentary on Montesquieu, ‘seems to have a propensity to create one single empire of all empires, one single people of all peoples, to found one single, immortal nation... more
‘Commerce’, the archbishop of Aix, de Boisgelin, wrote in a 1785 commentary on Montesquieu, ‘seems to have a propensity to create one single empire of all empires, one single people of all peoples, to found one single, immortal nation which has no other name but that of mankind’.1 More than two centuries later, we like to think that commerce is indeed a uniting force between peoples, creating if not an ‘immortal nation’ called ‘mankind’, at least a ‘global community’. Trade, we assume, is the antithesis of warfare; it creates prosperity for all parties involved, rendering conflict impossible, polities more stable, and governments largely redundant. On the one hand there is the discord of empires; on the other there is peaceful commerce — warfare is the tool of the former, political economy that of the latter.
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Research Interests: History, European History, Intellectual History, Economic History, Macroeconomics, and 13 morePolitical Economy, History of Economic Thought, Expertise, History of Capitalism, Capitalism, History of Economics, Early Modern Italy, Italy, Mercantilism, The Kingdom of Naples, Authority, Reason of State, and Merchants and Merchant Colonies
This paper sketches the intellectual history of the Research Center in Entrepreneurial History, founded at Harvard in 1948, which helped established the contours of business history as a discipline. This history was shaped by the rivalry... more
This paper sketches the intellectual history of the Research Center in Entrepreneurial History, founded at Harvard in 1948, which helped established the contours of business history as a discipline. This history was shaped by the rivalry between N. S. B. Gras, the “father of business history,” and Arthur H. Cole, which defined still extant polarities in the field of business history. It provides context for the emergence of the figure of the “entrepreneur,” conceived of as an ambiguous and potent force of creative destruction, and of entrepreneurship as business history's preeminent and vital dynamic. The paper focuses on German émigré Fritz L. Redlich, who was central to the Center's work, and whose “creative entrepreneur” was conceived in explicit relation to the daimon, the godlike, frighteningly ambiguous, and often destructive power of inspiration and creativity.
Research Interests: Entrepreneurship, Business History, History of Political Economic Thought, History of Capitalism, Friedrich Nietzsche, and 15 moreCapitalism, Paul Tillich, History of Economics, Adam Smith, Irrationality, History of Political Economy, Schumpeter, Business and Economics, Demons, Harvard University, Creative Destruction, Harvard Business School, Economics and History, Daimon, and History of Economic Analysis
N.S.B. Gras, the father of Business History in the United States, argued that the era of mercantile capitalism was defined by the figure of the “sedentary merchant,” who managed his business from home, using correspondence and... more
N.S.B. Gras, the father of Business History in the United States, argued that the era of mercantile capitalism was defined by the figure of the “sedentary merchant,” who managed his business from home, using correspondence and intermediaries, in contrast to the earlier “traveling merchant,” who accompanied his own goods to trade fairs. Taking this concept as its point of departure, this essay focuses on the predominantly Italian merchants who controlled the long-distance East-West trade of the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Until the opening of the Atlantic trade, the Mediterranean was Europe’s most important commercial zone and its trade enriched European civilization and its merchants developed the most important premodern mercantile innovations, from maritime insurance contracts and partnership agreements to the bill of exchange and double-entry bookkeeping. Emerging from literate and numerate cultures, these merchants left behind an abundance of records that allows us to understand how their companies, especially the largest of them, were organized and managed. These techniques can also be put in the context of premodern attitudes toward commerce and the era’s commercial-political relations. The Commercial Revolution anticipated the Industrial Revolution by over half a millennium and laid the groundwork for today’s world of global business
Research Interests: History, European History, Economic History, Middle East Studies, Renaissance Studies, and 12 moreBusiness History, History of Capitalism, Capitalism, History of the Mediterranean, History of Accounting Thought, Commerce, Middle Ages, Insurance, Italian History, History of Business Management, Merchants and Businessmen, and Merchants and Merchant Colonies
The early twentieth-century weird writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft is today best remembered for his genre defining style of academic noir pulp fiction. Yet in focusing on certain tropes of his work, such as the many memorable monsters he... more
The early twentieth-century weird writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft is today best remembered for his genre defining style of academic noir pulp fiction. Yet in focusing on certain tropes of his work, such as the many memorable monsters he created to populate his stories, from the infinite effervescence named Yog-Sothoth to the dreaded cephalopod Cthulhu, scholars have overlooked a deeper terror structuring practically all of his writings, the chillingly resonant fear that, amidst the chaos of globalization, miscegenation, and economic decline, ‘Anglo-Saxon’ civilization would surrender to lesser races. Fundamental to this fear was his understanding of atavism – of evolutionary throwbacks, survivals and regressions – in modern industrial society, and his extraordinary stories were only one expression of a contemporary culture involving eugenicists, political economists, and prominent authors of the Gothic and ‘weird’ traditions between the 1890s and the 1930s. Lovecraft himself in effect penned a number of economic manuscripts on the crisis of the Great Depression, and this article contextualizes his ideas in relation to his wider writings as well as to contemporary traditions of economics and eugenics, drawing a new picture of one of the greatest horror writers of all time.
Research Interests: Intellectual History, Cultural History, American Studies, History of Economic Thought, History Of Eugenics, and 17 moreLiterature, Fascism, Great Depression, History of Political Thought, History of Economics, Literary History, Norwegian History, H.P. Lovecraft, Pulp Fiction, Edgar Allan Poe, Horror Literature, History of Political Economy, Nazism, Eugenics, Horror, Cthulhu, and Cthulhu Mythos
The historiography of political economy is currently undergoing a cultural turn, as abstract histories of economics on the model of Joseph A. Schumpeter’s History of Economic Analysis give way to more nuanced studies of economic ideas in... more
The historiography of political economy is currently undergoing a cultural turn, as abstract histories of economics on the model of Joseph A. Schumpeter’s History of Economic Analysis give way to more nuanced studies of economic ideas in their specific historical contexts. My essay contributes to this historiographical movement by contextualizing the economic theories and policies formulated by the members of the Accademia dei pugni in Austrian Lombardy in the 1760s and 70s. Particularly, it focuses on the practical exigencies of their Lombard context and the respective pulls of their disparate and sometimes conflicting patriotisms, whether religious, cultural, political, or economic. Austrian models of economic reform such as Philipp Ludwig Wenzel von Sinzendorf’s plan for an economic recovery influenced Milanese reformers much like a the reception of French, Spanish, and British economic ideas did, and the unique institutional context in which political economists such as Pietro Verri, Cesare Beccaria, and Sebastiano Franci operated goes a long way towards explaining their seemingly idiosyncratic contribution to the discipline, at once aware of how freer international trade was revolutionizing the world and eminently sensitive to the need for an active economic policy to safeguard Lombardy in an age of ruthless economic competition. Though the Accademia dei pugni historiographically has been considered an incubator of both ‘mercantilism’ and ‘economic liberalism’, a more careful contextualization of the group’s work unveils a coherent political economy that, though hard to fit into historical stereotypes, was not simply torn between theory and practice, ‘laissez-faire’ and ‘protectionism’. In effect, they made one of the greatest contributions to the development of political economy in the eighteenth century.
Research Interests: Intellectual History, International Trade, Enlightenment, Intellectual History of Enlightenment, History of Political Thought, and 13 moreEarly Modern Italy, Austrian History, History of Political Economy, Lombardia, History of Milan, Tariff and Non-tariff Barrier, Pietro Verri, Coffee Culture, Tariff Policy, Italian Coffee Culture, Customs Unions, Illuminismo, and Cesare Beccaria
This essay analyzes what is likely Benjamin Franklin's best known text, “Father Abraham’s Speech” from the last ever edition of Poor Richard’s Almanack (1757), and it maps, on the basis of a new bibliography available on the affiliated... more
This essay analyzes what is likely Benjamin Franklin's best known text, “Father Abraham’s Speech” from the last ever edition of Poor Richard’s Almanack (1757), and it maps, on the basis of a new bibliography available on the affiliated website waytowealth.org, its global diffusion up to 1850, demonstrating its extraordinary and so far largely unknown popularity in the European world and, ultimately, well beyond it. The text, eventually known as "The Way to Wealth," was, doubtlessly, one of the cardinal vehicles of a recognizably capitalist ethos in the modern world and its legacy continues to color our understanding of “American capitalism.”
Research Interests: Intellectual History, History of Ideas, Digital Humanities, Globalization, History of Economic Thought, and 11 moreBook History, History of the Book, Enlightenment, History of Capitalism, Translation History, Intellectual History of Enlightenment, Intellectual History of Capitalism, History of Translation, History of Political Economy, Benjamin Franklin, and History of Translations
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During the summer of 1784, the Danish statesman Peter Christian Schumacher (1743–1817) decided to go on a Grand Tour. It would not be his first such tour, but whereas he before had ventured out to learn “languages, politics, and... more
During the summer of 1784, the Danish statesman Peter Christian Schumacher (1743–1817) decided to go on a Grand Tour. It would not be his first such tour, but whereas he before had ventured out to learn “languages, politics, and statistics,” he now wished to study the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. In terms of current scholarship on the Grand Tour, Schumacher’s general sentiment is less surprising than his proposed itinerary. For rather than heading for Paris, Bordeaux, London, or Birmingham, along the principal arteries of the European economy, he resolutely went south, across Germany, Switzerland, and northern Italy, making purposeful stops in the reformist states of Baden, Venice, and Tuscany. The current Anglophone narrative of the Grand Tour privileges British and French travelers questing for Arcadia in Italy and continental observers spying on British technological achievements. The ways in which travel contributed to the emulation of economic and administrative practices between the minor states of Northern, Central, and Southern Europe are therefore seldom explored.
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A review of John Robertson's The Case for the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples, 1680-1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
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Research Interests: American History, Economic History, Translation Studies, Globalization, History of Economic Thought, and 9 moreBook History, History of the Book, History of Capitalism, Capitalism, History of Political Thought, History of Economics, Intellectual History of Capitalism, History of Political Economy, and Benjamin Franklin
East Timor became an independent nation in 2002, following a quarter-century-long struggle against Indonesian occupation. Since 2005, the country’s main source of wealth—oil in the Timor Sea—had been captured in a Petroleum Fund modeled... more
East Timor became an independent nation in 2002, following a quarter-century-long struggle against Indonesian occupation. Since 2005, the country’s main source of wealth—oil in the Timor Sea—had been captured in a Petroleum Fund modeled on Norway’s sovereign wealth fund. The country’s leaders were hoping that the income from the Fund and further investment in the oil sector would kick start other parts of the economy. Meanwhile, half the population still lived on less than US$1 a day. With speculation that the Fund might run dry by 2025 and an oil field tied up in an international territorial dispute with Australia, the time was ticking for the government to re-examine its priorities in building the nation.
Research Interests: Development Economics, International Business, Indonesian Studies, International Political Economy, Indonesia, and 16 moreEconomic Development, Timor-Leste Studies, Oil and gas, Post-Conflict State Building, Sovereign Wealth Funds, ASEAN, East Timor, Norway, International political economy of oil and gas, Timor-Leste, Emulation, ASEAN Studies, Timor Leste, Asean Economic Community, Cockfight, and Kylie Minogue Studies
The newly elected Indonesian President Joko Widodo, better known as Jokowi, faced unique challenges in the early months of 2015. After centuries of colonial mismanagement and a brief Japanese invasion during World War II, Indonesia’s... more
The newly elected Indonesian President Joko Widodo, better known as Jokowi, faced unique challenges in the early months of 2015. After centuries of colonial mismanagement and a brief Japanese invasion during World War II, Indonesia’s period of political independence had been defined by the authoritarian regimes of Sukarno (1957-1967) and Suharto (1967-1998). Though a functioning democracy was instituted in the wake of the turmoil resulting from the Asian Crisis of 1997-1998, Jokowi represented the first elected president not to have ties with previous regimes. His bold agenda—stretching from investments in maritime infrastructure to industrial policies and an effort to make Indonesia a global “Mecca” for Islamic finance—reflected this transition, and revolved around a conscious wish to break with Indonesia’s torn past. Would Jokowi’s policy proposals ultimately work? Would Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, finally live up to its potential?
Research Interests: Economic History, Islamic Economics, Southeast Asian Studies, Genocide Studies, Indonesian Studies, and 29 moreEmerging Economies, Colonialism, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Post-Colonialism, Islamic Banking, Islamic Finance, Islamic Economics and Finance, Sharia, Emerging Markets, ASEAN, East Timor, Industrialization, Imperialism, Usury, Dutch East India Company, Shariah, Sharia Economics, Suharto, ASEAN Studies, Dutch Empire, State capitalism, Pancasila, Asean Economic Community, Sukarno, Dutch Imperial and Colonial History, Colonialism and Imperialism, Islamic Law and Usury, and Jokowi
The continent of Europe seemed in the spring of 2015 to be in a weaker position relative to other world regions than it had in centuries. Though comparatively small, it had long played a disproportionate role in world history, to the... more
The continent of Europe seemed in the spring of 2015 to be in a weaker position relative to other world regions than it had in centuries. Though comparatively small, it had long played a disproportionate role in world history, to the extent that the modern world system of states itself in large parts had been created in the wake of European imperialism. This case examines the deep history of Europe’s so-called “Great Divergence,” the means by which it achieved “modern economic growth,” and the consequences of this moment for the past, present, and future of capitalism.
Research Interests: European History, Economic History, Development Economics, Homer, Comparative History, and 25 moreEconomic Growth, Comparative Political Economy, Colonialism, History of Capitalism, Capitalism, Economic Development, History of Imperialism, Decline and Fall of the Western Empire, The Industrial Revolution, Chinese history (History), Industrialization, Imperialism, Achilles, Industrial Revolution, State capitalism, Great Divergence, Deep History, Commercial Revolution, Silvio Berlusconi, Cows, Economic Decline in the Middle East, The Great Divergence, Giraffes, Colonialism and Imperialism, and Great Divergence Debate
In early 2013, Norway was by many accounts the world’s most developed country; it topped various indices for everything from democracy to happiness, had a comprehensive welfare state, and massive oil revenues endowed it with a... more
In early 2013, Norway was by many accounts the world’s most developed country; it topped various indices for everything from democracy to happiness, had a comprehensive welfare state, and massive oil revenues endowed it with a substantial, and growing, Sovereign Wealth Fund. The governing coalition, anchored in the historically near-hegemonic Labour Party, had embraced peacemaking activities abroad and increasingly freer immigration policies at home, pursuing an aim of “liberal multiculturalism” that had invited both accolades and increasingly hostile criticism. After a dramatic episode of domestic terrorism leaving 77 citizens dead, some Norwegians had come to doubt the government’s project. Where many hoped these were mere growing pains of a future multicultural order, others argued Norwegian politicians had gotten lost on the way to Utopia. Added to these tensions was the overarching and divisive question of what Norway would live off after the oil, and ultimately whether its unique model would prove sustainable.