In the last thirty years, there have been fierce debates over how civilizations develop and why the West became so powerful.The Measure of Civilizationpresents a brand-new way of investigating these ...questions and provides new tools for assessing the long-term growth of societies. Using a groundbreaking numerical index of social development that compares societies in different times and places, award-winning author Ian Morris sets forth a sweeping examination of Eastern and Western development across 15,000 years since the end of the last ice age. He offers surprising conclusions about when and why the West came to dominate the world and fresh perspectives for thinking about the twenty-first century.
Adapting the United Nations' approach for measuring human development, Morris's index breaks social development into four traits--energy capture per capita, organization, information technology, and war-making capacity--and he uses archaeological, historical, and current government data to quantify patterns. Morris reveals that for 90 percent of the time since the last ice age, the world's most advanced region has been at the western end of Eurasia, but contrary to what many historians once believed, there were roughly 1,200 years--from about 550 to 1750 CE--when an East Asian region was more advanced. Only in the late eighteenth century CE, when northwest Europeans tapped into the energy trapped in fossil fuels, did the West leap ahead.
Resolving some of the biggest debates in global history,The Measure of Civilizationputs forth innovative tools for determining past, present, and future economic and social trends.
Nel panorama europeo la Toscana si segnala per il fatto di ospitare i più importanti archivi di società mercantili, bancarie e manifatturiere per la storia economica dei secoli XIII-XV. Soltanto tra ...Firenze e Prato si conservano circa 2.500 libri di conto, una cifra che eccede di gran lunga le disponibilità di tutto il resto dell’Italia e dell’Europa messe insieme. Il presente saggio fa il punto sulle edizioni di registri contabili aziendali pubblicati nell’ultimo mezzo secolo, con accenni anche ai decenni precedenti, in modo da mettere in risalto il ruolo ricoperto nella storia economica tardo-medievale dalle fonti contabili prodotte dai mercanti delle città toscane.
This survey focuses on prices as they were advertised by the Paris printer and bookseller Robert Estienne in nine booksellers’ catalogues published between 1541 and 1552. 1,801 entries in total were ...entered onto a database; it has been possible to identify 77% of these from references to them in bibliographies, catalogues or other, mainly online, tools (in particular the Universal Short Title Catalogue, USTC). After exclusion of incomplete or doubtful data, 1,087 entries were selected for statistical analysis, in order to attempt to reveal overall trends as well as some of the main factors influencing prices of ‘first-hand’ (i.e., not second-hand), unbound books. These factors include the year of publication, the ‘age’ of editions, bibliographical format and use of any specific founts, such as Hebrew and Greek. Our analysis shows that prices of the majority of the editions mentioned more than once across different catalogues remained stable. In 13% of the cases for which enough data is present, prices varied. The results of this survey help us to understand something about the general price levels of books in Paris in this period, which in turn will help us develop a deeper understanding of the book trade on a wider scale in both time and space.
The difficulties associated with the creation of a large database of book prices include giving effective answers to questions such as how prices were formed during the various steps of the ...production process (sedimentation of production costs, costs related to the sale) or what the nature of the assigned value is (estimated in the case of used books, or of stock inventories, or the result of special conditions offered to specific customers, etc.). But first it is necessary to reflect on the interpretation given to the figures provided by the heterogeneous documentation which supports the creation of such a database. The many reference currencies in which these prices are expressed, depending on the monetary area of action of the economic operators (printers, booksellers, customers) are likely to confuse and mislead if their exact meaning is not clearly understood. This problem becomes even more urgent when, for example, the primary sources are the private notes of a collector who recorded how much he had paid for a book, or when two different currencies in place or in time have the same name. This aspect is also crucial in comparing different places and markets. Was the price expressed in money of account or in coined money? In domestic or foreign currency? Is it possible to relate two prices expressed in different currencies? The purpose of this paper is therefore to explore in greater depth some of the economic-monetary aspects of Renaissance Europe in order to help clarify any doubts or misreadings by building a reliable picture of the various types of currency used in Europe between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This is an essential step to subsequently address the possibility of comparing prices expressed in different currencies as they emerged on different markets.
During the Second Empire, the integration process of Corsica with France knew an intense acceleration, thanks to the development of the productive activities of the department given by the Napoleonic ...regime. At the same time, the ruling class of Corsica, following the capitalistic model, intensified the efforts to modify the productive assets of the island. The participation of Corisca producers to the Universal Exhibitions in Paris (1855), London (1862) and Paris (1867), analyzed in this essay, was fully part of this strategy, focused on the promotion and modernization of the economy and the social structures of the island.
The book provides an up-to-date overview of the structure, organization and evolution of the pharaonic administration from its origins to the middle of the first millennium BCE. General descriptions ...are supplemented by specific analysis of key archives, practices and institutions.
Historiography focusing on the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno is indeed vast and developed not only in regard to the main issues concerning the extraordinary intervention, but also to the various sectorial ...and territorial articulations public interventions for the recovery of Southern Italy undertook. Achieving a punctual reconstruction of the goings-on of the Cassa, an istitution that, for more than forty years despite some differences in planning during its various phases operated as an instrument to implement the strategies focusing on developing Southern Italy, requires a very deep commitment. However, an effective overall view can be reconstructed by interpreting a public intervention model strictly linked to the concrete economic events and to the trends of those industrial processes implemented in Southern Italy, even without going through a detailed chronicle of this entity.
The choice of a long-term perspective, focused on the analysis of the extraordinary intervention in its entirety, allowed for a more balanced evaluation of all the era regarding the supplementary actions the Italian State carried out to bridge the gap of its Southern regions, going beyond the exaggerated simplifications plaguing the evaluations of such an experience and confuting those hasty, often baseless, judgments on the results it achieved. At the same time, a wide viewpoint on the matter let a research path emerge, able to link the specific case of the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, itself difficult and controversial, while being considered one of the most advanced models internationally, with a very significant theme, such as the development policies implemented to tackle the problems of economic backwardness and to begin solving the dilemmas brought by the dualism.
The analysis which was carried out proved the existence of an unquestionable economic progress during the golden age. In that era of prosperity, not only did the areas in Italy already possessing a significant industrial presence experience significant advancement, all the while, the result, by no means granted, of a modernized economic structure in Southern Italy was achieved first through a policy focused on public works and then by true forms of industrialization and of a significant recovery of the gap the area had towards the Northern regions of Italy. Thus, the extraordinary intervention, focused on macroeconomic goals and driven by a technical structure such as the Cassa, itself autonomous and reacting towards governmental choices at the same time, revealed itself to be the most effective and innovative tool in turning the whole of Italy into an industrial power. The departure from such results in the following phase, dominated by the oil crisis and by the policies of industrial reconstruction, despite triggering a significant trend inversion, never questioned the value of the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno s initial experience, which was able to open and show the way to economical growth, during the Italian boom years.
La storiografia incentrata sul tema della Cassa per il Mezzogiorno è molto ampia e si sviluppa in relazione non solo alle questioni generali riguardanti l¿intervento straordinario, ma anche alle molteplici forme di articolazione settoriale e territoriale dell¿iniziativa pubblica per la ripresa e lo sviluppo del Sud. Una ricostruzione puntuale delle vicende della Cassa, che per oltre un quarantennio¿ anche se con diversità di impostazione nelle varie fasi ¿ha operato come strumento delle strategie per lo sviluppo del Mezzogiorno, richiede un impegno molto approfondito. Tuttavia, anche senza effettuare una dettagliata cronistoria dell¿attività dell¿Ente, si può ricomporre una visione d¿insieme, attraverso l¿interpretazione di un modello di intervento pubblico collegato strettamente agli eventi economici concreti e all¿andamento dei processi di industrializzazione che hanno interessato i territori meridionali.
La scelta di una prospettiva di lungo periodo, imperniata sull¿analisi dell¿intervento straordinario nel suo complesso, ha permesso un giudizio più equilibrato su tutta l¿epoca dell¿azione ¿aggiuntiva¿ dello Stato per il recupero del divario meridionale, superando eccessive semplificazioni nella valutazione di quell¿esperienza e confutando pareri sommari sui suoi risultati, spesso privi di fondamento. Al tempo stesso, una visione ampia ha fatto emergere un percorso in grado di associare il caso della Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, controverso e difficile, ma considerato anche un modello tra i più avanzati a livello internazionale, a un tema di grande importanza, come quello delle politiche di sviluppo adottate per affrontare i problemi dell¿arretratezza economica e per avviare a soluzione i dilemmi del dualismo.
L¿analisi effettuata ha provato l¿esistenza di un indiscutibile progresso economico nel periodo della golden age. Durante quell¿epoca di prosperità non solo si realizzò un notevole avanzamento delle aree del Paese che già possedevano un¿armatura industriale, ma si ottenne, contemporaneamente, il risultato, per nulla scontato, di una modernizzazione della struttura economica del Mezzogiorno ¿attraverso la politica delle opere pubbliche, prima, e dell¿industrializzazione vera e propria, poi¿ nonché, di un recupero del divario accumulato con le regioni settentrionali. In questo modo, l¿intervento straordinario, indirizzato verso obiettivi macroeconomici e guidato da una tecnostruttura come quella della Cassa, al tempo stesso autonoma e reattiva alle scelte strategiche del governo, si dimostrò lo strumento più efficace e innovativo per fare dell¿Italia intera una potenza industriale. L¿allontanamento da questi esiti, nella fase successiva dominata dalla crisi petrolifera e dalle politiche di ristrutturazione industriale, pur determinando una netta inversione di tendenza, non ha messo in discussione il valore dell¿esperienza iniziale della Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, capace di aprire la strada alla crescita economica italiana negli anni del boom.
In this paper we will describe the online sources for economic history, underlining how they have been changing the approach to the discipline. First, we will resume quickly the methodology of the ...economic history and its changes in the last years, then we will focus on three important website for the study of Italian economic history.
This book contains the proceedings of the study day devoted to "Firenze e Dubrovnik all'epoca di Marino Darsa (1508-1567)"which was held in Florence on 31 January 2009. In addition to exploring the ...work of the playwright and the subjects he addressed, the contributions also map out the cultural and economic context of his work, dwelling in particular on the influence and importance that the relations between Tuscany, and Florence in particular, and Dubrovnik (Ragusa) had upon his production. Enhanced by a short biography of Marin Držić and a selection of critical articles, the publication is addressed to scholars while also being proposed as a tool for teaching on university courses, providing an initial introduction to the man and his work, undeservedly little known, set against the political and economic background of his time.
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