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Economic history is mobilized by neo-institutionalists to explain the different paths to development observed in post-colonial countries. Acemoglu and Robinson have considered Haiti as an archetype of colonial institutional legacy to describe why Nations fail. Is this deterministic lecture sufficient to understand the troubled development journey of the first free Black Country? In this research, we show, with empirical and historical evidence, that institutional path-dependence theory is not the best analytical framework for the case of Haiti. Critical juncture theory appears to be more appropriate to capture what is really going on in neocolonial Haiti. We also contribute to the critical juncture theory with long-term historical evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies a (micro)biographical approach to the life stories of two Ottoman orphans sent to Germany to receive vocational training during World War I, Ali and İsmail Dağlı. Coupling family archives, oral and visual sources with state documentation, I elaborate on the post-Ottoman afterlives of German know-how, education, and capital in the social and economic history of Turkey. Biographies of Dağlı brothers show that the successors of both empires restored former channels of circulation of expertise, technology, and labor. Especially seen in the context of Jewish emigration, the life and work history of the brothers elucidate the positive reception of their German education, the importance of their position as "cultural intermediaries," and the extent of Turkish-German business entanglements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines utopian elements in Thomas Stuber's 2018 film In den Gängen. Despite the neoliberal forces that constrain a group of supermarket shelf stackers in the former East Germany, the film's characters exhibit congenial bonds in the face of alienated work. Strikingly, their encounters with machines also convey an other-directedness and improvised conviviality, or energy that enables them to devise bonds in fleeting moments. As much as the film presumes a foreclosed-on socialist utopia, it also depicts a range of contemporary challenges to neoliberalism, including practices of commoning, non-normative forms of relationality, and human-machine interactions that gesture towards a posthumanist selfhood. At the same time, the three main characters' personal circumstances and histories necessarily impact their ability to benefit from these elements. Both age and gender play crucial roles in their individual fates, and not all of them thrive within their caring, other-directed community. Ultimately, In den Gängen suggests the possibility of mundane existences gesturing towards superlative futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1832 Reform Act and the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act reconfigured political representation in English towns from a 'franchise' system (based on rights of corporate freedom) to a property-based ratepaying electorate. This shift also undermined the rights of freemen to urban common lands and resources, which were linked to pre-existing forms of representation. This issue links directly to debates in economic history about use-rights and the preservation of common-pool resources (CPRs). Supporters of Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom argue that such common resources could be preserved because this was the most rational economic choice facing their users. Critics have asserted that the fate of such economic resources was dictated by the historically contingent social, economic and political forces within them, not abstract economic rationality. This article assesses these arguments through a micro-study of the commons in the Yorkshire borough of Beverley between 1835 and 1870. New legislation ensured that these lands were managed in line with Ostrom's principles of transparency and accountability. Despite this, they became entangled in wholesale, organised political corruption, exposed by a detailed Parliamentary enquiry in 1868. The article investigates this contradiction to explore how far 'institutions' could remain autonomous within a highly contested political 'space'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identities and roles of women known as beguines in late medieval Europe have long been the subject of scholarly debate. Classic studies argued that beguines troubled a binary of heretical and orthodox movements, and that they were the object of clerical and lay suspicion. Recent work on medieval religious women has done much to enrich understandings of how diverse their roles could be. The records for the beguines of the central Rhineland, however, have not been the focus of examination in some decades. This paper draws on unpublished and understudied documents to examine how beguines were agents and catalysts of regional movement, and how their symbolic and physical emplacement in urban environments was understood. In doing so, it employs mobility theory, a lens heretofore little used by premodernists. This paper argues that the beguines of Mainz were neither exceptional nor marginal. Rather, they cultivated a distinctive identity while remaining integrated in local social and religious networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the shift of power that occurred in Ottoman Damascus as a result of the establishment of its electricity and tramway network that started operating in 1907. The company, which ought to have been public, in the ownership of Ottoman-Syrian investors, ended up being owned by a Belgian consortium. The central argument in the article is that the Damascene elite families rationally refrained from the risk of establishing the Electricity Company but paid the price of losing control over power and light in the city. An informal network of Ottoman officials and Belgian businessmen, led by the second secretary of Sultan Abdülhamid II, the Damascene İzzet Pasha, orchestrated the buyout. Therefore, Damascus's encounter with its first electric grid, which was naturally complex in the first place, was also subjected to the tensions of outsourcing a local-municipal power to an external network that the Central Ottoman Government imposed. This article is an outcome of research on the electrification of Damascus, based on the papers of the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works from the Ottoman Archive and the company's records from Belgium's National Archive, the Ottoman-Syrian press, and the British and American consulates' archives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the significance of economic history in understanding ancient Mesopotamia. It points out the imbalance in research focus, with more attention given to literary and religious genres rather than economic models and theories. The article reviews a recent volume on the Mesopotamian economy, which examines the concept of "household" and analyzes economic functions and resource management over time and space. It suggests the use of new economic theories and approaches, such as those proposed by Keynes, North, and Ostrom, to gain fresh insights into the early Mesopotamian state's economy and its impact on society. The article emphasizes the importance of considering the role of individuals and households in economic activities and calls for clearer definitions and more accurate descriptions of economic terms. It encourages researchers to explore new paths and directions in writing economic history. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on the significant impact of Robert W. Fogel and Stanley Engerman's "Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery," which gained attention both academically and in the popular media upon its publication in 1974, coinciding with heightened public interest in racial issues following key civil rights events.

Indian politics tried to benefit from the competition between the two Cold War Blocs by gaining beneficial terms for economic cooperation and assistance. At times, Soviet and Central and Eastern European designs could prove more successful on the ground than their direct competitors from the West. This paper analyses cooperation schemes in the steel sector and scrutinises the reasons why this was the case. Economic cooperation between East and South was vibrant and could be mutually beneficial during the whole period of the Cold War, thereby calling into question a narrative of steady decline inherent in state socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the opening decades of the twenty‐first century certain cities around the world emerged as hubs of entrepreneurial innovation. This paper explores this urban economic change phenomenon through in‐depth and comparative qualitative analysis. It focuses on the recent contemporary history of New York, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, Tokyo and Shanghai prior to the global COVID pandemic. Based on an analysis of the drivers, mechanisms and processes of change, it is found that these cities acted as places of possibility for many individuals who previously may have been unlikely to engage in entrepreneurship. The cities were found to have established new development paths through entrepreneurial innovation stemming from co‐creation network dynamics, with key human agents playing pivotal roles. Common elements include the rise of venture capital, the growth of entrepreneurial cultures, and institutional policy changes. Notably, entrepreneurial innovation was found to be closely tied to changes in large corporates. This innovation evolved through the proliferation of new infrastructure such as co‐working spaces and innovation incubators, with each city being utilised as a test‐bed for new ideas. Finally, the emergence of a darker side to entrepreneurial innovation is found in terms of growing urban inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows how to remove attenuation bias in regression analyses due to measurement error in historical data for a given variable of interest by using a secondary measure that can be easily generated from digitized newspapers. We provide three methods for using this secondary variable to deal with non-classical measurement error in a binary treatment: set identification, bias reduction via sample restriction, and a parametric bias correction. We demonstrate the usefulness of our methods by replicating four recent economic history papers. Relative to the initial analyses, our results yield markedly larger coefficient estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a review of the book "Can heterodox economics make a difference? Conversations with key thinkers" by Phil Armstrong. The book consists of interviews with economists who have important contributions to make about heterodox economics, even if they do not necessarily identify themselves as heterodox. The interviews shed light on the relationship between heterodoxy and methodology, how heterodoxy is seen by mainstream economists, and the possibility of heterodoxy becoming widely accepted in social debates and policymaking. The book also explores the role of mathematics in heterodox economics and discusses the potential social impact of heterodox approaches. [Extracted from the article]

This paper offers a history of the 'Kaldor-Hicks' concept of economic efficiency from its European birth in the 1930s to its American resurgence in the 1970s to its widespread implementation in the Global South by the early twenty-first century. While philosophers, economists and legal theorists have written widely about Kaldor-Hicks – global-minded intellectual historians have not. As a result, scholars have yet to place its creation, dissemination and ascendency into a broader historical context or examine the reasons behind its global spread. As this paper will demonstrate through the rise of cost–benefit analyses based on 'willingness to pay' metrics, while Kaldor-Hicks efficiency was invented by neoclassical economists in the late 1930s, its ascent to policy dominance is part-and-parcel of the neoliberal revolution of the past half century. Linking the history of economic thought with the rise of global neoliberalism, this paper demonstrates how Kaldor-Hicks efficiency emerged as a central pillar of a new, interventionist, wealth-maximizing and market-based form of depoliticized technocratic governance that not only marginalizes distributive concerns but actively exacerbates the problem of global inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout history, schools of economic thought have defined political economy—or economics—and its object of study in multiple ways. This paper reflects on the definitions of economics by schools of economic thought and also proposes the concepts of value and scarcity as key concepts to explain the differences between them. The most important findings of the paper are: (a) the ontological and epistemological characteristics of the concept of value and scarcity have shaped the definitions of economics; (b) the boundaries of the study object of economics have been expanded since today's mainstream economics deals with multiple topics as diverse as crime, education, development, health, etc. However, the methodological tools used in mainstream economics have been narrowed since approaches such as the philosophical, ethical, historical, and institutional approaches have been left behind; (c) the part of reality that mainstream economics can grasp have left behind important issues of the contemporary world, such as gender, social, and environmental issues. A clear understanding of the scope and boundaries of economics could help to define more realistic research questions for economic science, and it would help to define new economic paradigms that address the contemporary issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial income disparities have increased in the US since 1980, a pattern linked to major social, economic, and political challenges. Yet, today's spatial inequality, and how it relates to the past, remains insufficiently well understood. The primary contribution of this article is to demonstrate a deep polarization in the American spatial system—yet one whose character differs from that commonly reported on in the literature. The increase in spatial inequality since 1980 is almost entirely driven by a small number of populous, economically important, and resiliently high-income superstar city-regions. But we also show that the rest of the system exhibits a long-run pattern of income convergence over the study period. A secondary contribution is historical: today's superstars have sat durably atop the urban hierarchy since at least 1940. Third, we describe six distinctive pathways of development that regions follow between 1940 and 2019, with certain locations catching up, falling behind, and surging ahead. We explore the role played by initial endowments in driving locations down these pathways, finding population, education, industrial structure, and immigrant attraction to be key distinguishing features. These insights are enabled by a fourth contribution: methodologically, we use group-based trajectory modeling—an approach new to the field that integrates top-down and bottom-up views of the evolving national spatial system. We conclude by exploring implications for the mid-twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Francis Ysidro Edgeworth's unduly neglected monograph New and Old Methods of Ethics (1877) advances a highly sophisticated and mathematized account of social well-being in the utilitarian tradition of his 19th-century contemporaries. This article illustrates how his usage of the 'calculus of variations' was combined with findings from empirical psychology and economic theory to construct a consequentialist axiological framework. A conclusion is drawn that Edgeworth is a methodological predecessor to several important methods, ideas, and issues that continue to be discussed in contemporary social well-being studies. • Provides an account of Francis Ysidro Edgeworth's psychological and economic views, and how his interlocutors influenced him. • Discusses his methodology in the monograph New and Old Methods of Ethics. • Illustrates his usage of mathematical methods in physics for the application of social well-being research. • Contributes to the history of well-being research by way of 1870's economic thinking. • Present methods and issues in social well-being methodology have precedent in the 1870's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds upon recent scholarship emphasizing the importance of Gregory the Great's Register as a key text of the Carolingian and post‐Carolingian library, exploring by contrast its peculiarly limited reception in England. It first surveys what little evidence we have for its citation by English ecclesiastics (post‐c.1000, mostly via Wulfstan); it then examines the single text in a pre‐Conquest manuscript usually catalogued as a letter from the Register, showing that this has been reworked as an anonymous admonitio to judges (probably bishops). It concludes by reflecting on the implications of this limited reception for our understanding of the later Anglo‐Saxon church – a community otherwise well‐invested in Gregory's memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The word cocio (i.e. petty merchant or broker in classical Latin) was a rare term that after a long absence in written Latin reappeared in several Carolingian texts. Scholars have posited a medieval semantic shift from 'merchant' to 'vagabond'. But this article argues that this consensus is erroneous. The Carolingian cocio continued to refer to petty commercial agents, that is, to small merchants. Furthermore, the term's appearance in capitularies and its subsequent medieval vernacular afterlife together suggest that the term was borrowed from (unattested) proto‐Romance usage. A corrected history of the early medieval use of cocio illuminates the relationship between spoken and written Latin as well as aspects of social, religious, and economic history in the Carolingian period, and speaks to the promise of language to shed light on economic realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El artículo discute el fenómeno del retorno de migrantes venezolanos que huyeron debido a la crisis en su país. Examina si este retorno es significativo, quiénes están regresando y en qué condiciones. Aunque el número exacto es incierto, se estima que alrededor de 300,000 venezolanos han regresado desde 2020 debido a la vulnerabilidad y dificultades en los países de acogida.

Laura Wilson's article, "Beyond Tobacco Road: Enriching the Field of Sharecropping Studies," explores the often overlooked topic of sharecroppers in southern literature. The author argues that sharecroppers, who were marginalized and exploited, have not received enough attention in studies of southern literature. The article analyzes various literary works that depict sharecropping and its impact on economic, social, and political issues in the South. It also discusses the historical power dynamics of sharecropping and its influence on modern America. The text examines the portrayal of sharecroppers during the Great Depression, critiques the problematic representation of their voices by certain writers, and explores narratives of sharecropper unionization and the transition from sharecropping to mechanization. Additionally, the article examines modern representations of the plantation and emphasizes the ongoing impact of sharecropping on inequality and injustice in the United States. [Extracted from the article]

This essay presents a critical analysis of Özgür Orhangazi's Türkiye ekonomisinin yapısı (The structure of the Turkish economy). The book examines the last four decades of the Turkish economy, accounting for its place in the global capitalist system and focusing on the radical effects of the liberalization of capital mobility in 1989. Moreover, the book describes the growth model of the Turkish economy over the last two decades, consisting of three components: high dependency on foreign capital inflow, debt accumulation, and construction-oriented growth. This review finds that the book lacks in its examination of the internal dynamics of capitalism in Turkey, especially concerning the evolution of the two branches of the Turkish bourgeoisie: construction capital, which is the extension of commercial capital; and industrial capital, which has made its mark on the history of capitalism in Turkey. Class struggle inside the bourgeoisie has in fact shaped the last century of economic and political history in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1930s are historically recognized as the decade of the 1929 Crash and the years of economic non-stagnation for the US government and those of several European countries. The so-called "Keynesian" policies, despite being successful experiences, were continuously "attacked" ever since John Maynard Keynes launched his General Theory (GT). The success of the GT may be attributed to the significant reduction in unemployment at the time, mainly due to an increase in public investment spending. This is because the main device available for public administration to reduce a high unemployment rate, when an economy is in a cyclical state of recession/depression, is public investment, preferably investment in basic social capital. Having made this preamble, the main objective of the article is to discuss the importance of financing public investments in the capitalist economy and its economic and social effects, having as a basis for this the history and the economic theory of John Maynard Keynes. For this, it is crucial to adopt an exploratory, qualitative and bibliographic approach as a methodological procedure. It may be concluded that the only egress to stimulate private investment in times of crises, apart from measures to support consumption through social programs for the unemployed, is government investment. This is because government investments are autonomous investments, i.e., they do not depend on interest, nor on income. Furthermore, autonomous investment decisions, especially in the construction of public works with huge economic (roadways, ports, railways) and social (schools, hospitals and housing) repercussions, tend to break the barrier of distrust in relation to the future and promote a dynamic effect on the economy and society as a whole. Keynes, therefore, emphasizes the importance of governmental intervention to stabilize the economy. The importance of Keynes's economic theory lies in the fact that his ideas brought a new perspective to economic theory and helped shape the economic policies implemented in many countries to this day. His contributions paved the way for a better understanding of economic dynamics, whether in the public or private sector, in stabilizing the economy, especially in times of crisis, and in promoting social welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Great Divergence" is the historical process that gave rise to the persistent gap in the per capita income between different regions of the world, about two centuries ago. Conventional explanations attribute its origin to the exceptional features of European societies. In this article I synthesize the challenges to this position and argument that ignores the importance of coercion and its relationship with technological innovation, institutions and culture. Coercion was not a sufficient condition for the Great Divergence, but it was necessary for the formation of persistent economic gaps between regions of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This summary is about a special issue of the journal Europe-Asia Studies that focuses on the relationship between ideology and economic policy in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia. The essays in the special issue explore various aspects of this relationship, including the impact of the Kosygin reforms, the Soviet Union's engagement with international finance, the adaptation of World Bank development policies, and the critique of "capitalist realism" in Russian studies. The essays highlight the complex and contingent nature of Soviet economic development and its connection to ideology and sovereignty. The special issue aims to contribute to the understanding of socialism and capitalism in the context of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. [Extracted from the article]

On Sunday, November 13, 2022, the cultural section of the 'Il Corriere della Sera' devoted its main article to the first volume of Gianni Toniolo's latest opus, Storia della Banca d'Italia. Formazione ed evoluzione di una banca centrale, 1893–1943. The article characterized the book as an 'extraordinary economic autobiography of the country', and Toniolo as 'undoubtedly the greatest of Italian economic historians'. That very day Gianni Toniolo died in Rome at the age of eighty. To review Toniolo's work and life, even in the limited space these pages allow, is to go back over a period of Italian and international economic historiography, from the 1970s to the present day, to which Toniolo made vital and original contributions in a number of different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the energy transition and geopolitical challenges faced by Cuba in its pursuit of a low-carbon economy. The author explores the contradictions between Cuba's socialist political project and its efforts to achieve a sustainable and low-carbon economy. The article highlights the importance of energy conservation and efficiency in Cuba's energy program, as well as the role of infrastructure and the geopolitical context in shaping the energy transition. While the book fails to outline Cuba's current energy sources, it provides valuable insights for policymakers and challenges existing assumptions about energy transitions. [Extracted from the article]

"In a New Light: Histories of Women and Energy," edited by Abigail Harrison Moore and R. W. Sandwell, aims to address the gender imbalance in narratives about the history of energy. The authors argue that women have been largely absent from historical accounts of energy history due to a male-centric approach and the sources researchers focus on. The book explores the significance of women in energy history, particularly their role in decision-making regarding new energy sources. It highlights women's involvement in various fields related to energy, such as candle lighting, electrical energy technology implementation, decorating services, and technical expertise. The authors use a range of sources, including oral histories, to incorporate marginalized perspectives into the narratives of energy history. However, the book's focus is primarily on western Europe and North America, with limited case studies from other regions of the world. The book also emphasizes the importance of memory and oral history in understanding past events and raises questions about the future of energy and the shift toward green energy. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses two books, "Fueling Mexico: Energy and Environment, 1850–1950" by Germán Vergara and "Electrifying Mexico: Technology and the Transformation of a Modern City" by Diana J. Montaño, which explore the history of energy in Mexico. Vergara's book focuses on the diverse transformations of the Mexican energy system and the increasing use of fossil fuels, while Montaño's book examines the sociocultural dynamics of electricity in Mexico City. The books highlight the historic specificity of Mexico's energy development and the impact of international enterprises in the Mexican energy sector. Both studies emphasize the complexity and richness of Mexico's energy history, challenging simplistic narratives of modernization. [Extracted from the article]

"The Origins of Global Economic Governance" by Jamie Martin explores the early development of international economic governance from the 1910s to the 1940s. The book highlights how the World Wars, self-determination movements, and economic crises during this period blurred the lines between national and international affairs. It discusses the emergence of international economic institutions and their impact on state sovereignty, as well as the debates surrounding the democratic legitimacy of institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The author argues that these institutions transformed the exercise of sovereignty in a new international order based on principles of self-determination. The book provides a comprehensive analysis of the historical context and offers potential avenues for further research in the field of international economic governance. [Extracted from the article]

The paper is concerned with war in the history of economic thought. It looks at disputes about abstraction versus historicism over the long 19th century, in relation to war and the state. It then looks at the historical setting in which Léon Walras and others developed their ideas of political economy. It concludes with reflections on the presence or absence of the state in modern economic history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The roundtable, convened to celebrate the 25th ESHET conference, asked how the history of economic thought can become relevant for actual economic policy. Schefold begins with methodological remarks and illustrates the general theme by showing how the policies of ordoliberalism involve a dialogue between postulates formulated in the past and revaluations made necessary by new conditions. Von Weizsäcker proposes an economic policy based on a new Hicksian reconstruction and extension of Böhm-Bawerks theory. Maes shows how modern central banks do historical research which may induce them to take some distance from ongoing research and to avoid a "this time is different" view. Boianovsky provides highlights of the history of development economics and its policy implications. Feldman uses history of economic thought to find solutions for recurrent balance-of-payments crises affecting peripheral economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is known that almost none of the researchers from various disciplines who have worked in the field of business history have identified themselves as business historians. Perhaps the most noteworthy among these studies are the endeavors undertaken by economists with the aim of bringing economic theory and business history closer together. This study aims to assess the efforts of economist Joseph Schumpeter in establishing a connection between Business History and Economic History through his book titled Business Cycles. The study begins by first addressing the theoretical framework of the Concept of Economic Cycles. Subsequently, Schumpeter’s book İktisadi Devreler is examined, and the examples he provides from business history are evaluated in the contexts of cotton textiles, railways, steel, automobiles, electric power, factories, corporations, and the modern financial system. The study also explores the relationship between the methodology used by Schumpeter in his book and Business History. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper challenges mainstream theories of Latin American development, showing their theoretical weaknesses and pointing to their role in ideologically mediating the region's 'truncated' capitalism. To that end, the paper presents an alternative view of Latin American development that starts by considering capitalist social reproduction as a worldwide process and regional/national politico-economic development as mediations in the structuring of global capital accumulation. Latin America's specific variety of capitalism is understood to have emerged from its original transformation by expanding European capital into a place to produce raw materials under favourable natural conditions. On the one hand, this has reduced their price and that of the labour-power directly or indirectly consuming them; on the other, it has resulted in a flow of surplus-value towards the owners of those natural conditions of production. The historical development of Latin American societies has expressed the partial overcoming of that antagonistic relationship between rent-paying capital and rent-appropriating landed property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent debates among historians and in public have concerned the links between German colonialism and imperialism before the First World War and the Nazi regime and its crimes. While a maximalist position on German colonial continuities is unsustainable, the possibility of important imperial legacies stretching into the Nazi period and the argument for a German colonial Sonderweg , or "special path," are not logically coextensive. This article explores the transformation of Wilhelmine German liberal imperialism by focusing on commercial interests in Hamburg. It argues that empire's strongest legacy was its absence, an absence that created ambivalent possible futures and blurred the line between liberal and illiberal avenues to German power and international order. This blurriness offers an end-run around problematical attempts to narrate Nazism as little more than an extreme expression of global patterns and around untenable notions of German exceptionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines research in the area of leadership and the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) by scoping literature through a systematic approach. The purpose of this study is to identify trends and gaps relating to issues addressed, theoretical and conceptual approaches, methodologies, geographical representation of research, and future research directions in the area. In all, 45 articles were sampled through a predetermined selection criteria and analysed using descriptive statistics. The results indicate that four major issues investigated in multiple sectors dominate the area. Besides, a number of theories were found to have been used in understanding the topic, while in terms of methodology, there appears to be a fair distribution of papers using qualitative and quantitative approaches but an imbalance between cross‐sectional and longitudinal designs. Again, most of the studies were conducted at the meso and micro levels and were produced in Asia, Europe, Africa, North America, Australia, and South America in that ranking order. Overall, it was realised that because of the emerging nature of the 4IR phenomenon, research work in the area is now rising, requiring further research output to address the gaps identified through this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mercantile history of Charlotte Amalie and Gustavia, free ports in the Danish (1672–1917) and Swedish (1784–1878) Caribbean, have existed outside of the standard purview of both national and transnational historiographies, despite the considerable attention they received by eighteenth century political and economic thought. Due to their unique legislative character, they cannot be situated easily within available historical frameworks. In contemporary politico-economic opinion and eyewitness accounts, the Scandinavian free ports were equated to other free trade regimes insofar as they were conceived as a means of commercial rivalry against other nations. The liberal laws of free ports were styled as consistent with Enlightenment theories of equality and industry, even though they did not represent anything novel in the permeable commercial world of early modern colonialism. Interloping, as the practice of trespassing commercial privilege was commonly referred to, was a key feature of the transit trade operating out of these free ports. The utility of the free port trade was highly contingent upon shifting alliances and patterns of conflict. Operating across the peripheries of other empires, Scandinavian free trade designs in the Caribbean were beneficial for various actors, including but not limited to the parent states themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay traces a thread between the Novak's philosophical and theological contribution and the economic and ethical reflection on the commons. Although present embryonically, these interconnections have not been taken into consideration so far. This convergence will be presented through three interrelated stages: a sound theological background, Scholastic reasoning and the evolution of the idea of common goods. From these points some interesting insights will emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contends that common representations of the history of the British economy and economic policy in the 'Golden Age' period (circa 1950–73) as a story of 'failure' rely overwhelmingly on one measure, that of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth. Drawing on the foundational criticisms of this metric made by Simon Kuznets, it is argued that, for this period of British economic history, shortfalls in measured GDP growth in comparison with other rich countries are a very poor measure of changes in economic well-being in the UK. If we follow this argument and discard the belief that one metric can summarize trends in such well-being, the notion of 'failure' in this period should be set aside in favour of a more nuanced, multidimensional assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Economic History Association announced the winners of various prizes at their Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Notable winners include Cormac O'Grada and Morgan Kelly for the Arthur H. Cole Prize, Hannah Postel for the Allan Nevins Prize, Lukas Rosenberger for the Alexander Gerschenkron Prize, Carol Heim for the Jonathan Hughes Prize, Leigh Gardner for the Lindert-Williamson Prize, David Todd for the Gyorgy Ranki Prize, Price Fishback for the Gallman-Parker Prize, James Fenske for Excellence in Refereeing, and James Kung for Exceptional Service. The association also announced the theme for their 2024 meeting, which will focus on globalization throughout history. Additionally, they awarded grants and fellowships to young scholars in the field of economic history. [Extracted from the article]

This essay draws political theory into dialogue with recent work in economic history and the history of capitalism to develop an account of the unique injustice produced by capitalist slavery in the antebellum United States. Prevailing approaches to thinking about slavery in political theory tend to disembed it from its broader socioeconomic context, which has led theorists to overlook some of the distinctive horrors associated with capitalist slavery in particular. In response, I develop a theory of capitalist slavery as expropriation, conceived as violent domination harnessed to the imperatives of capital accumulation. Capitalist slavery-as-expropriation encompasses two analytically distinct moments: the moment of confiscation, in which human lives and capacities are enclosed via commodification, and the moment of conscription, in which enslaved labor is mobilized via routine violence. Though enslaved people were not market subjects, this framework reveals the extent to which they were nevertheless subject to the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article maps and analyses the different meanings of the EU's resilience narratives in its neighbourhood policy towards authoritarian regimes. While a large part of the existing literature has placed an emphasis on the role of resilience in EU foreign policy more generally, the specific use and representations of resilience in EU policy towards authoritarian regimes remains ill-explored. However, it is specifically in the context of the EU's relations with authoritarian regimes, that references to resilience, and especially 'state resilience', are highly problematic. Focusing on the EU's neighbourhood policy and the case of Belarus, we present a discourse analysis of the different uses of the term resilience in the official discourses of key EU institutions. In a first-order critique, we examine how the EU's narratives construct resilience, and in particular for whom, what, when, where, and why. We show that the EU's resilience discourses are inherently state-centric and present highly contradictory goals of resilience-building. In a second-order critique, we demonstrate the problematic political implications of the EU's usage of the term resilience, including the omission of 'everyday forms of resilience and resistance' from the EU's narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Divided towns are specific urban units that were once single cities before their subsequent division through the drawing of new state borders based on arbitrary political decisions. The specific nature of such towns thus originates primarily from their common history and their location on a border. This article focuses on two examples from Central and Eastern Europe, one situated on the Polish-Czech border (Cieszyn and Český Těšín) and the other on the Polish-German border (Słubice and Frankfurt an der Oder), in order to provide a comparative analysis of cross-border cooperation. Based on an analysis of secondary data and literature, we explore the factors deemed most essential in the literature for the integration of and cooperation between divided towns today – namely historical legacies, cultural and political factors, (a)symmetries and border/periphery locations – to investigate what similarities and differences can be observed in the analysed towns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The resilience approach has recently emerged as a new topic of EU foreign policy debates and research. This paper adopts a complexity theory perspective to analyze the operationalization of the resilience approach in the EU response to crisis in Ukraine during 2014–2021. Building upon this theory, this paper distinguishes between resilience-as-quality of a complex system and resilience-as-thinking about a complex system. The empirical analysis focuses on the complexity features of non-linearity and self-organizing localization of EU interventions undertaken in the framework of the Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace (IcSP). It concludes that the emerging system of intervention displays some complexity qualities, yet the EU crisis response follows the linear and top-down logic embedded in the project-based practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last decade has seen the concept of resilience gradually positioned at the centre of the way the European Union (EU) seeks to deal with endogenous and exogenous challenges, threats or risks. Originating primarily from natural sciences, resilience has provided an elegant and attractive option for the EU to revise its agenda. The so-called 'resilience turn' has come to permeate almost every aspect of the EU's discourse. In this context, the article aims to analyse the nature of the policy change underlined by the way the concept of resilience has permeated the approach developed by the EU towards the eastern neighbourhood and foreign policy more broadly. Change evaluated by focusing on two key aspects that underpin the EU's foreign policy: the scope of the EU's foreign policy, EU's understanding of the world order, with a particular focus on the role of geopolitics. The main finding of the article is the emphasis on resilience has induced only limited transformations in the EU's practice and ideas, leading to the transition to a new business as usual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text provides an overview of the work and impact of historian Ranajit Guha and the Subaltern Studies project. Guha, known for his focus on the experiences of the poor and oppressed, edited the first six volumes of the series and authored books on topics such as peasant insurgency in 19th-century India. The project aimed to shift historical research in South Asia from elites to the perspectives of the subaltern, challenging prevailing assumptions and emphasizing the importance of ideas and beliefs in shaping history. While facing criticism, the project gained international recognition for its analysis of power dynamics and forms of oppression. Guha's later work explored the role of literature in reflecting the experiences of ordinary people and questioned the concept of World-History. [Extracted from the article]