This paper analyses the rise of Swedish trade and shipping in the Mediterranean in the eighteenth century. It focuses on three factors that shaped Sweden’s role in the area: foreign policy interest, foreign trade policy (mercantilism), and commodity demand and supply. The foreign policy interest is represented by attempts to build an alliance with the Ottoman Empire against Russia. An outcome…
In Europe, in the Middle Ages, ostrich feathers were used for the decoration of military headgear, as a representation of the high lineage of the possessor and his military virtues. They were imported from the coasts of West Africa, from Egypt and Syria into Italian and Spanish ports and from there exported to England and continental Europe. Venice, at the end of the fourteenth century, began t…
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This text offers a comprehensive and nuanced view of the economic development of Spain since 1850. It provides a new set of historical GDP estimates for Spain from the demand and supply sides, and presents a reconstruction of production and expenditure series for the century prior to the introduction of modern national accounts. The author …
This book addresses the issue of how a country, which was incorporated into the world economy as a periphery, could make a transition to the emerging state, capable of undertaking the task of economic development and industrialization. It offers historical and contemporary case studies of transition, as well as the international background under which such a transition was successfully made (or…
This open access book modifies and revitalizes the concept of the ‘developmental state’ to understand the politics of emerging economy through nuanced analysis on the roles of human agency in the context of structural transformation. In other words, there is a revived interest in the ‘developmental state’ concept. The nature of the ‘emerging state’ is characterized by its attitude t…
This open access book is the first to provide an analysis of the Dutch paper industry over a period encompassing six centuries. Responding to a trend of renewed scholarly interest in paper industries and production, the book seeks to illuminate the factors behind this relatively small national industry’s centuries-long survival.
The aim of this book is to analyze Japan's high-growth economy, in particular to clarify the kinds of changes in people’s lives that were generated by high growth. The present volume focuses not on the macro-economic mechanisms that expanded the scale of the economy, but on the micro-economic changes that were effected in everyday life. The emergence of a mass consumption society as a result …