Books in the Modern Economic and Social History series

Focuses on the example of Britain's largest machine tool maker, Alfred Herbert Ltd of Coventry. Taking a chronological approach, this book explores how, during the late 19th century, the industry developed a reputation for excellence throughout the world, before the challenges of two world wars necessitated drastic changes and reorganisations.

This title attempts to create an international perspective on critical issues concerning exchange rates and economic policy in the 20th century. A major part of this debate is the weaving together of empirical observations and the theoretical foundations of exchange rate economics.

Offers a perspective on the role of mining tycoons both in shaping the economic and political map of the globe, and in setting a standard for extravagant displays of wealth amongst the world's rich. This book contains chapters, which focus on biographical accounts of particular mining tycoons.

Offers an introduction to how financiers, governments and entrepreneurs in Europe managed to face the challenges of constructing and maintaining an integrated railway network, both in their own countries and their colonies. This volume offers analysis exploring the trans-national investment policies of railway construction.

This study offers a social history of the English gas industry from the 1880s to the late 1930s. It documents the role that women played in its development by considering the expansion of sales and customer services occupations for women within the industry.

In Britain, at the turn of the century, the nature of office work was changing, in line with large-scale social and economic developments. Taking for its location Glasgow, this study explores these changes.

Richard Cobden (1804-1865) rose from humble beginnings to become the leading advocate of nineteenth-century free-trade and liberalism. Divided into five sections, this collection of essays offers a reassessment of Cobden's career, and its impact and legacy in the two hundred years since his birth.

Dealing with issues of social, economic and intellectual history, this work offers an investigation into one of the most influential, though misunderstood, thinkers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Thomas Robert Malthus.

Through a detailed study of the archives of nearly 50 English and Scottish insurance companies founded between 1696 and 1850 together with the construction of many new datasets on output, performances an markets, this book presents one of the most comprehensive histories ever written of a financial service.

Focuses on the role of the state in promoting a country's long-term technological progress and industrial leadership. This study looks at Schumpeterian growth, which credits the ability to use technological progress for the benefit of industrial leadership as the key motor of national development and economic success.

Focusing on the interactions of producers, sellers and consumers of meat across the world, this title elucidates aspects of the evolution of the international economy and the part played by the investment of capital and the enterprise of individuals. It utilises the government reports and papers issued by countries involved in the meat trade.

In recent years considerable attention has been paid to the contribution of the business community and the middle class in general to urban development in the nineteenth century. This book represents an important contribution to existing historiography through an exploration of a range of key issues in business, maritime and urban history based on an innovative and path-breaking study of the merchant community in nineteenth-century Liverpool.

What do unions do and why do they do it? Do they maximize profit for their members or obtain better conditions that benefit society as a whole? The authors offer a sustained study of the effects of union activities in terms of economic performance and the impact on the business world.

The years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, aptly described by Mark Twain as the 'Gilded Age' witnessed an unprecedented level of technological change, material excess, untrammeled pursuit of profit and imperial expansion. Within this dynamic and often ruthless environment many colorful characters strode across the world stage, among them the great mining tycoons, who constituted one of the major spearheads of global capitalistic expansion and colonial exploitation. This volume, which carries the epic story to the mid-twentieth century, provides a truly international perspective on the role of mining entrepreneurs, investors and engineers in shaping the economic and political map of the globe, in testing management techniques and in setting a vogue for extravagant displays of wealth among the world's rich.

This title explores the changing relationship between English society and the coastal environment since the early 19th century, with reference to the long-held belief that the seaside was immeasurably good for health.

Due to the advent of digital technology, the print medium is being challenged as the primary means of recording and communicating ideas. The days of the skilled compositor are at an end. This work sets out to determine if the compositor belonged to an aristocracy of labour.

Studies the long term economic transformation of Romania, offering a narrative and thematic account of events from nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. This book addresses a range of pertinent issues that have shaped Romania's economic development. It offers insight into both the history of Romania, and its future prospects.

A history of the development of the British bicycle industry from the perspective of business and economic history. Focusing on themes such as entrepreneurship, personal capitalism and organization, the industry's fortunes are traced through the history of one of its leading firms, Raleigh.