Inspired by recent research on the cultural impact of economic change, an international team of leading academics and younger scholars examine the ways in which state and society responded to fundamental economic transition. The studies embrace all aspects of the regulatory process, from developing ideas on the economy, to the passage of legislation, and to the negotiation of economic policy and change in practice. The book challenges the general characterization of the period as a shift from a regulated economy to a more laissez-faire system, highlighting the uncertain but significant relationship between the state and economic interests across the long eighteenth century.
Analyzing the evolution of economic policy in postwar Britain, this book develops a striking new argument about the sources of Britain's economic problems. Through an insightful, comparative examination of policy-making in Britain and France, Hall presents a new approach to state-society relations that emphasizes the crucial role of institutional structures.
By the American Revolution, the farmers and city-dwellers of British America had achieved, individually and collectively, considerable prosperity. The nature and extent of that success are still unfolding. In this first comprehensive assessment of where research on prerevolutionary economy stands, what it seeks to achieve, and how it might best proceed, the authors discuss those areas in which traditional work remains to be done and address new possibilities for a 'new economic history.'
It is commonplace to assume that the twentieth-century British economy has failed, falling from the world's richest industrial country in 1900 to one of the poorest nations of Western Europe in 2000. Manufacturing is inevitably the centre of this failure: British industrial managers cannot organise the proverbial 'knees-up' in a brewery; British workers are idle and greedy; its financial system is uniquely geared to the short term interests of the City rather than of manufacturing; its economic policies areperverse for industry; and its culture is fundamentally anti-industrial. There is a grain of truth in each of these statements, but only a grain. In this book, Alan Booth notes that Britain's living standards have definitely been overtaken, but evidence that Britain has fallen continuously further and further behindits major competitors is thin indeed. Although British manufacturing has been much criticised, it has performed comparatively better than the service sector. The British Economy in the Twentieth Century combines narrative with a conceptual and analytic approach to review British economic performance during the twentieth century in a controlled comparative framework. It looks at key themes, including economic growth and welfare, the working of the labour market, and the performance of entrepreneurs and managers. Alan Booth argues that a careful, balanced assessment (which must embrace the whole century rather than simply the post-war years) does not support the loud and persistent case for systematic failure in British management, labour, institutions, culture and economic policy. Relative decline has been much more modest, patchy and inevitable than commonly believed.
This book considers the impact of slavery and Atlantic trade on British economic development in the generations between the restoration of the Stuart monarchy and the era of the Younger Pitt. During this period Britain's trade became 'Americanised' and industrialisation began to occur in the domestic economy. The slave trade and the broader patterns of Atlantic commerce contributed important dimensions of British economic growth although they were more significant for their indirect, qualitative contribution than for direct quantitative gains. Kenneth Morgan investigates five key areas within the topic that have been subject to historical debate: the profits of the slave trade; slavery, capital accumulation and British economic development; exports and transatlantic markets; the role of business institutions; and the contribution of Atlantic trade to the growth of British ports. This stimulating and accessible book provides essential reading for students of slavery and the slave trade, and British economic history.
It has long been recognised that Britain has declined relatively to other countries, although there are differences of view both on the beginning of the decline and its causes. The author pinpoints two causes: first, a technological inferiority which has resulted in the country's exporting goods of poorer quality and importing goods of higher quality; secondly, the tendency for an upward pressure on incomes, from a society of political equals where each individual has expectations of a level of income reasonably comparable with others. The claims of different groups are easily accommodated in a semi-monopolistic industrial structure and are passed on in higher prices. Keynes recognised the latter problem of cost-push; but his intellectual revolution was not accompanied by a change of institutions, which continued to act in accordance with an earlier tradition. The present Government has reached a false diagnosis in ascribing the country's problems to too much money. It has therefore worsened the situation and weakened such hopes as there were of improvement.
A new edition of the leading textbook on the economic history of Britain since industrialization. Combining the expertise of more than thirty leading historians and economists, Volume 2 tracks the development of the British economy from late nineteenth-century global dominance to its early twenty-first century position as a mid-sized player in an integrated European economy. Each chapter provides a clear guide to the major controversies in the field and students are shown how to connect historical evidence with economic theory and how to apply quantitative methods. The chapters re-examine issues of Britain's relative economic growth and decline over the 'long' twentieth century, setting the British experience within an international context, and benchmark its performance against that of its European and global competitors. Suggestions for further reading are also provided in each chapter, to help students engage thoroughly with the topics being discussed.
Bernard Alford reviews the changing role, and diminishing influence, of Britain within the international economy across the century that saw the apogee and loss of Britain's empire, and her transformation from globe-straddling superpower to off-shore and indecisive member of the European Community. He explores the relationship between empire and economy; looks at economic performance against economic policy; and compares Britain - through and beyond the Thatcher years - with her European partners, America and Japan. In assessing whether Britain's economic decline has been absolute or merely relative, he also illuminates the broader history of the world economy itself.
