The Cambridge History of Capitalism: Volume 2, The Spread of Capitalism: From 1848 to the Present

Larry Neal · Jeffrey G. Williamson

Jan 2014 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

The second volume of The Cambridge History of Capitalism provides an authoritative reference on the spread and impact of capitalism across the world, and the varieties of responses to it. Employing a wide geographical coverage and strong comparative outlook, a team of leading scholars explore the global consequences that capitalism has had for industry, agriculture, and trade, along with the reactions by governments, firms, and markets. The authors consider how World War I halted the initial spread of capitalism, but global capitalism arose again by the close of the twentieth century. They explore how the responses of labor movements, compounded by the reactions by political regimes, whether defensive or proactive, led to diverse military and welfare consequences. Beneficial results eventually emerged, but the rise and spread of capitalism has not been easy or smooth. This definitive volume will have widespread appeal amongst historians, economists, and political scientists.

About the author

Larry Neal is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Specializing in financial history and European economies, he is author of The Rise of Financial Capitalism: International Capital Markets in the Age of Reason (Cambridge, 1990) and The Economics of Europe and the European Union (Cambridge, 2007), and is co-editor of The Origins and Development of Financial Markets and Institutions: From the Seventeenth Century to the Present (Cambridge, 2009) and 'I am Not Master of Events': The Speculations of John Law and Lord Londonderry in the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles (2012).

Jeffrey G. Williamson is Emeritus Laird Bell Professor of Economics, Harvard University, Massachusetts and Honorary Fellow in the Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is also Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and has been a visiting professor at seventeen universities around the world. Professor Williamson specializes in development, inequality, globalization and history, and he is the author of around 230 scholarly articles and thirty books, his most recent being Trade and Poverty: When the Third World Fell Behind (2011), Globalization and the Poor Periphery before 1950 (2006), Global Migration and the World Economy (2005, with T. Hatton) and Globalization in Historical Perspective (2003, edited with M. Bordo and A. M. Taylor).