First Era Of Globalization Research Articles

The growth contribution of colonial Indian railways in comparative perspective

AbstractRailways were an important driver of global economic growth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Whilst their role is well documented in industrial economies, we know less about their macro‐economic impact in developing countries. In this paper, we first estimate the aggregate growth impact of Indian railways, one of the largest networks in the world in the early twentieth century. Then, we compare their impact in India to four emerging Latin American economies (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Uruguay) and the Cape colony. Using growth accounting techniques common to the cross‐country estimates, we argue that the aggregate growth impact of Indian railways was significant, increasing Indian gross domestic product (GDP) per capita by 13.5 per cent by 1912. We also find that the growth impact of Indian railways was similar to Brazil and Mexico, but smaller than Argentina and the Cape. Compared with the latter, India had a smaller size of railway freight revenues in the economy and lower wages to fares leading to lower passenger time savings. Railways were the most important infrastructure driver of economic growth in India during the first era of globalization from 1860 to 1912, but they contributed less than in richer and more dynamic developing economies.

Globalization and Empire: Market Integration and International Trade among Canada, the US, and Britain, 1750–1870

AbstractWheat market integration between the US and the UK before the “first era of globalization” (in the second half of the nineteenth century) was frequently interrupted by policy and “exogenous” events such as wars. This paper adds Canada to this story by looking at trade and price data, as well as contemporary debates. This allows us to triangulate the role of policy and wars, since Canada as a small open economy was part of the British Empire. We find that, despite its privileged access to British markets, Canada faced similar barriers to the US, suggesting that membership of the British Empire provided only a modest benefit to trade. We also describe the limitations she faced accessing the US market, in particular after American independence.

Historia empresarial en América Latina: Temas, debates y problemas

Historia empresarial en América Latina: Temas, debates y problemas is commendable primarily for its transnational scope. Tracing developments in business organization and entrepreneurship across different countries of the American continent south of the US border, the book explores issues of strategy and business form in the long term. Substantial chapters examine how colonial times shaped later business endeavors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, highlighting themes of key local and transnational significance for historians including violence and gender. Undoubtedly, such wide-ranging scholarship will stimulate new research collaborations worldwide in business history, economic history, and beyond.The book fills a long-lasting gap in business history, which, despite gaining international prominence in the 1990s, has lacked a seminal text summarizing the essential themes, organizations, periodizations, and sources that researchers should know when examining the history of enterprises and entrepreneurs in Latin America. Moreover, scholars and instructors of capitalism both in Latin America and globally will benefit from the book's lucid structure, whereby chapters follow the periodization coined by Geoffrey Jones (who also contributes to this edited collection) that is well known among economic and business historians, which outlines transitions from the first era of globalization (from 1840 to 1929) to the second (from the 1980s to the financial crisis of 2008).Part 1 tackles the region's largest nations: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Peru. A common denominator among the chapters is the important role that European immigrants played in the evolution of business; the contributions add significantly to understanding the well-acknowledged fact that this demographic participated as laborers in the history of industrialization. Moreover, the chapters by Aurora Gómez-Galvarriato Freer and Gabriela Recio Cavazos and by Martín Monsalve Zanatti urge readers to go beyond the nineteenth century and include the colonial period as fundamental for any sort of emergent business organization, given that Latin American nations entered a period of international openness after the wars of independence. In addition, alluding to the legacy of the colonial period, Manuel Llorca-Jaña and Rory M. Miller explain how the history of business—in particular, of foreign direct investment—and government relations help explain various economic and social events in the last decade throughout the Southern Cone. In chapters on Colombia (by Carlos Dávila L. de Guevara) and Mexico (by Gómez-Galvarriato Freer and Recio Cavazos), readers learn that the history of globalization and business should be explored through local lenses and experiences, accounting for geographies and politics that shaped how business forms evolved at the national level. Moreover, specific spaces such as the US-Mexican border and the coastline between the Pacific Ocean and Peru (and China, in Monsalve Zanatti's chapter) created unique connections for business endeavors.Chapters on family business (by Paloma Fernández Pérez and Andrea Lluch), business groups in comparison (by María Inés Barbero), and the history of multinationals (by Marcelo Bucheli) contain plentiful examples of companies and business forms, each bringing their own experiences of knowledge, heritage, and business networks unique to doing business in Latin America. Thematic chapters focusing on green business, women, violence, and technology are invaluable for business historians keen to diversify their teaching and research. Indeed, these remain understudied topics within business history. In his contribution, Geoffrey Jones analyzes concepts including ecological distress, exploring the role of business—local and, above all, foreign—in creating a dangerous imbalance in Latin America. He warns of the cruel reality wherein economic growth has, most often, not followed a sustainable, environmentally friendly business model. Additionally, Bernardita Escobar Andrae scrutinizes the limits posed by the legacy of patriarchy in restricting women's leadership in the region—an underdeveloped topic within business history. I add that engaging additional works on Third World feminism by scholars such as Chandra Mohanty, as well as recent developments, a result of the #MeToo movements and fourth-wave feminism, will strengthen evaluations of gender and business in Latin America. Lastly, the volume evaluates all-important sources on so-called illegal business. Sandra Ley and Angelika Rettberg refreshingly move beyond business history's usual sources by showing how to explore the evolution of business in violent contexts through police records, journalistic accounts, and civil and business antiviolence initiatives. Considering the plethora of materials available to historians of Latin American enterprise, surprising examples emerge such as the wheel, which Xavier Durán evaluates to explore how businesses utilized wagons across mountainous regions through the age of air commerce.Historia empresarial en América Latina assesses far more than multilatinas, so in vogue in the present day—though these do receive the attention needed to contextualize their evolution. The rigor and richness of this edited volume generate an unparalleled guide for students of business history, researchers of globalization, and even historians of Latin America unfamiliar with the role of diverse companies and business actors in shaping regional dynamics.

THE PARALLEL MARCH OF THE GINIS How does taxation relate to inequality, and what can be done about it?

THE PARALLEL MARCH OF THE GINIS How does taxation relate to inequality, and what can be done about it?

Taming the Global Financial Cycle: Central Banks as Shock Absorbers in the First Era of Globalization

The Classical Gold Standard period, with high capital mobility and fixed-exchange rates, is usually seen as the extreme case of international constraints on monetary policy. Contrary to this view, we show how central bank balance sheets offset the effects of international shocks on domestic interest rates. In contrast, in the United States, a gold standard country without a central bank, the reaction of money market rates was two to four times stronger than that of interest rates in countries with a central bank. Our study is based on the monthly balance sheets of all central banks in the world (i.e., 21) from 1891–1913.

Globalization and the spread of industrialization in Canada, 1871–1891

The dramatic decrease in international trade costs in the second half of the nineteenth century led to a global trade boom. In this paper, we examine the consequences of greater openness to international trade for regional economic activity in a small, open economy during the first era of globalization. Specifically, we provide a quantitative assessment of the role that exposure to globalization played in industrialization in Canada between 1871 and 1891. Greater exposure to globalization leads to faster growth of manufacturing and the greater concentration of industry around entrepôts of trade between Canada and the rest of the world.

Did the great influenza of 1918–1920 trigger a reversal of the first era of globalization?*

I revisit the 1918–20 pandemic and ask whether it led to a reversal in the rise of trade and financial globalization that preceded it. Using annual data for 17 countries for the 1870–1928 period, a variety of tests and techniques are used to draw some robust conclusions. Overall, the pandemic a century ago interrupted, but did not put an end, to the first globalization of the twentieth century. However, two blocs consisting of combatant and non-combatant countries, experienced significantly different consequences. Globalization was sharply curtailed for the combatant countries while there were few, if any, consequences for globalization in the non-combatant group of countries. That said, there was considerable resilience especially in trade openness among several of the combatant economies. Perhaps changes in the make-up of economic blocs, post-pandemic, is a fallout from shocks of this kind. While there are lessons for the ongoing COVID pandemics differences between the 1920s and today also play a role.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10368-021-00526-1.

The princess at the conference: Science, pacifism, and Habsburg society.

Historians are showing increasing interest in scientific internationalism, the notion that science transcends national differences and hence advances peace and cooperation. This notion became particularly popular in the decades around 1900, the heyday of the universal expositions and the so-called first era of globalization. In this article I argue that in order to properly historicize scientific internationalism, it is imperative to understand how actors imagined science to have pacifist effects, and to relate their technoscientific to their geopolitical imaginaries. To illustrate this, I analyze the 1911 novel Der Menschheit Hochgedanken (translated as When Thoughts Will Soar) by the famous Austrian pacifist Baroness Bertha von Suttner. It tells the story of a scientific conference whose participants, by the sheer brilliance of their thought, ward off war and preserve world peace. Relating the novel to von Suttner’s own life experiences, I situate her internationalism in the social texture and international relations of the late Habsburg Empire. It appears that Von Suttner mobilized notions of the pacific effects of science with an eye to preserving both the European system of states and the position of the aristocracy.

“Unusual, Unstable, Complicated, Unreliable and Temporary” Reinterpreting the Ebb and Flow of Globalization

In 1919, John Maynard Keynes wrote his famous tract The Economic Consequences of the Peace. In that work, he anticipated the collapse of the first era of globalization that began in the mid-nineteenth century. He admonished the short-sighted assumption that these years of relative peace and prosperity for many was a permanent norm, interrupted only briefly by the Great War. The diplomatic failures, lapses in leadership, and promotion of narrow interests and vision outlined by Keynes underpinned his prediction of a backslash of economic nationalism, trade protectionism, and recession. The paper revisits the turning points in the evolution of the global economic system since 1919 by focusing primarily on the evolution of the international monetary system and policy cooperation/coordination. We identify three disruptions and examine how each prompted a change in the underlying ideology about how the international monetary system should organize: World War I, Bretton Woods, 1970s Great Inflation and Managed Floating. Each turning point was characterized by different forms and institutions of cooperation, how rules (either explicit or implicit) were designed and implemented, and the crucial importance of the historical context.

Did the great influenza of 1918-1920 trigger a reversal of the first era of globalization?

I revisit the 1918-20 pandemic and ask whether it led to a reversal in the rise of trade and financial globalization that preceded it. Using annual data for 17 countries for the 1870-1928 period, a variety of tests and techniques are used to draw some robust conclusions. Overall, the pandemic a century ago interrupted, but did not put an end, the first globalization of the 20th century. However, two blocs consisting of combatant and non-combatant countries, experienced significantly different consequences. Globalization was sharply curtailed for the combatant countries while there were few, if any, consequences for globalization in the non-combatant group of countries. That said, there was considerable resilience especially in trade openness among several of the combatant economies. Perhaps changes in the make-up of economic blocs, post-pandemic, is a fallout from shocks of this kind. While there are lessons for the ongoing COVID pandemics differences between the 1920s and today also play a role.

Did the Great Influenza of 1918-1920 Trigger a Reversal of the First Era of Globalization?

I revisit the 1918-20 pandemic and ask whether it led to a reversal in the rise of globalization that preceded it. Using annual data for 17 countries for the 1870-1928 period, a variety of tests and techniques are used to robustly draw some firm conclusions. Overall, the pandemic a century ago interrupted but did not put an end to the first globalization of the 20th century. However, two blocs consisting of combatant and non-combatant countries, experienced significantly different consequences. Globalization was sharply curtailed for the combatant countries while there were few, if any, consequences for trade and financial globalization in the non-combatant group of countries. That said, there was considerable resilience especially in trade openness among several of the combatant economies. Perhaps changes in the make-up of economic blocs, post-pandemic, is a fallout from shocks of this kind. While there are lessons for the ongoing COVID pandemics differences between the 1920s and today also play a role.

Recovery from financial crises in peripheral economies, 1870–1913

What drives recoveries after financial crises? I address this question for the 1870–1913 “first era of globalization,” focusing on whether trade policy changes or positive movements in commodity prices played a bigger role in stimulating output growth after financial crises in peripheral economies. At this time before governments had modern fiscal and monetary policy tools to use while responding to crises protectionism was one of the few national-level policy options available for shaping economic activity. Improving terms of trade is another major factor that could influence output growth in the commodity-exporting countries included in this analysis. While previous studies of this period have looked at longer-run associations between these explanatory variables and economic growth, I focus on the aftermath of crises, and find that tariff rate increases had a positive impact on GDP per capita growth, while positive terms of trade changes did not have a significant effect on output growth. This suggests that governments played a substantial role in shaping post-crisis recoveries during this period.

Düyun-u Umumiye İdaresi’nin Borç Yönetiminden Bir Kesit: İkramiyeli Tahviller

Bu çalışmada uluslararası finans sermayenin Osmanlı ekonomisi üzerindeki etkilerinin Düyun-u Umumiye İdaresi’nin mali denetimi açısından analiz edilmesi amaçlanmaktadır. Osmanlı ekonomisi dünya ekonomisine tarımsal meta üretimi ihracatına dayalı dış ticaret ilişkileri ile entegre olmaktaydı. Osmanlı ekonomisinde ticaret ve finans sermayesinin uluslararasılaşması, dış borçlanma ilişkilerinde rol oynayan kurumlar ile yüzyıl sonunda gerçekleşti. 19. yüzyıl Osmanlı ekonomisinde kamu borçlarının mali denetiminde etkili olan Düyun-u Umumiye İdaresi, doğrudan yabancı yatırımları da desteklemekteydi. Yabancı demiryolu yatırımların risklerinin azaltılmasında rol oynayan Düyun-u Umumiye İdaresi, uluslararası sermaye yatırımları açısından güvenilir bir kurumdu. Çalışmada, Rumeli demiryolu yatırımının finansmanı için çıkarılan ikramiyeli tahvillerin incelenmesiyle, uluslararası sermayenin Osmanlı ekonomisinde yarattığı finansallaşma eğilimi incelenmektedir. Çalışmada, Düyun-u Umumiye’nin mali denetim dışındaki faaliyetlerinin özellikle yabancı yatırımlara yönelik faaliyetlerinin sonuçlarını analiz edebilmek açısından Rumeli demiryollarının finansmanı için çıkarılan İkramiyeli tahviller incelenmektedir. 1870 ve 1872 yılında iki seri halinde çıkarılan ve kura ile ikramiye kazandıran tahvillerin getirisinden küçük yatırımcılar yararlanamamıştır.

Kentucky's Joseph C. S. Blackburn: Soldier, Statesman, and a Friend of All by Elizabeth Rouse Fielder

Reviewed by: Kentucky's Joseph C. S. Blackburn: Soldier, Statesman, and a Friend of All by Elizabeth Rouse Fielder Stefano Tijerina (bio) Kentucky's Joseph C. S. Blackburn: Soldier, Statesman, and a Friend of All. By Elizabeth Rouse Fielder. (Morley: Acclaim Press, 2018. Pp. vii, 384. $29.95 cloth) Having researched the Joseph Clay Stiles Blackburn papers at the Kentucky Historical Society in search of primary sources that would shed light on his work as Civil Governor of the Panama Canal Zone, it is evident that Elizabeth Rouse Fielder's depiction of the life of Blackburn is idyllic. This does not demerit the fact that in Kentucky's Joseph C. S. Blackburn: Soldier, Statesman and a Friend of All, Fielder is able to effectively describe the dynamics of local politics and culture, and its impact on nation-building, as the United States moved past the Civil War and toward the unification of the national market. Fielder's objective was to describe the trajectory of the political career of Joseph Blackburn, while drawing parallels to the economic development of Kentucky and the consolidation of the nation-state, contributing to the historiography of the Reconstruction era from a southern lens. Blackburn's political life, as described by Fielder, reveals that the vision of nation-building and the realization of "Manifest Destiny" was not only the intellectual product of the North but also of the South. Her book is broken down into six parts. The first part describes the emergence of the Blackburn family in Kentucky, emphasizing their generational trajectory in the economic, political, and cultural spheres. This is followed by a section that gives agency to Blackburn's role in the American Civil War and that served as a means to connect him to the Reconstruction era and its impact on Kentucky's post–Civil War economic development. The third part contains the core of the development of Blackburn's political career, his vision as a Democrat, and his numerous battles, on the debate floor, in defense of a balance between state and federal powers, always placing country first (pp. 258–94). Part four of Fielder's work focuses on his years as Governor of the Panama Canal Zone (1907–1909), connecting Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine with nation-building [End Page 323] overseas, as the power of the United States expanded beyond its borders, threatening the interests of other superpowers of the time. This is followed by parts five and six which depict the concluding years of Blackburn's career, emphasizing the life of the Southern Democrat whose political trajectory was driven by the conviction that the United States was destined to a growing and influential role on the international stage (p. 315). Although lacking clarity, the concluding remarks let the reader know that without the conviction and dedication of Southern Democrats like Blackburn, the nation-state project would have been impossible to achieve. Perhaps Fielder's work will inspire scholars to move past the classical historical analysis, unveiling new local historical narratives that may shed light on the political, economic, cultural, social, and business history that shaped the nation during the first era of globalization. Ultimately, as shown by Fielder, Blackburn was face-to-face with the challenges of nation-building, juggling local interests and national interests, as the United States transformed into a regional power. Fielder's work is lacking in-depth historical analysis and only touches the surface in many instances. Nevertheless, it illustrates why it is important to move beyond the status quo of history, encouraging scholars to return to the archives, dust away old collections, and revise the narrative through new stakeholders that impacted the local, federal, and international trajectories of our nation-building process. Many questions remained unanswered: what were the worldviews of pro-federalists like Blackburn? What were his views on American expansionism? What were his views on Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine? What role did he see the state of Kentucky play as the first era of globalization unfolded? Perhaps some of these answers would explain why his political rivals back home would repudiate his "inconsistency" when it came to casting a vote in Washington, according to an op-ed piece...

Learning Empire: Globalization and the German Quest for World Status, 1875–1919 by Erik Grimmer-Solem

Reviewed by: Learning Empire: Globalization and the German Quest for World Status, 1875–1919 by Erik Grimmer-Solem Dirk Bonker Learning Empire: Globalization and the German Quest for World Status, 1875–1919. By Erik Grimmer-Solem. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. 654. Cloth $44.99. ISBN 978-1108483827. In this impressive book, Erik Grimmer-Solem offers a new narrative of the German Empire's expansionist discourse and pursuit of global power from the 1870s through the 1910s. Learning Empire presents Wilhelmine Weltpolitik as an "improvised response" to, and product of, an "accretion of insights" about the "opportunities and challenges" presented by the processes of globalization that first came into view beginning in the 1870s (19). Weltpolitik flowed from a newly emerging and continually evolving liberal nationalist discourse about Weltwirtschaft and the interrelationship between global politics, empire, and economics. The discourse's prime movers were a group of university-trained, policy-oriented political economists, who as the nation's leading experts on matters of globalization gained, by 1900, the ears of key decision makers such as Alfred von Tirpitz and Bernhard von Bülow and then [End Page 405] remained involved in key areas of imperial politics through the end of World War I. Embedded within the world of global scholarly connections, these economists forged the contours of their discourse in the crucible of their experience of overseas travel and study in multiple parts of the world, especially North America, the Caribbean, Venezuela, Japan, and China, in the 1880s and 1890s. Elegantly yoking intellectual history to the history of policy making, and deeply grounded in vast multiarchival research, Grimmer-Solem places at the center of his analysis a group of five German economists: Ernst von Halle, Karl Helfferich, Karl Rathgen, Herrmann Schumacher, and Max Sering. Eventually gaining professorships in political economy, these men were connected in one way or another to Gustav Schmoller, the doyen of Germany's school of historical political economy and eminent public figure, who also figures prominently in the analysis together with one of his American students, Henry Farnam. Organized in three chronologically arranged parts ("Absent-Minded Empire, 1875–1897"; "Empire Imagined, 1897–1907"; and "Empire Lost, 1908–1919"), Learning Empire closely follows the pursuits of its main characters, covering both their encounters with the new worlds of global politics and economics through study and travel and their direct involvement in key fields of national policy making. These fields range from the naval build-up, trade relations and tariff reform, and particular overseas empire pursuits (for example, in China) at the turn of the twentieth century, to the multifaceted colonial crisis of 1904–1907, the subsequent colonial reform efforts, the Anglo-German naval arms race, financial reform, and Weltpolitik projects such as the Baghdad railways before World War I. They extend to the formulation of annexationist war aims, unconditional submarine warfare, the Jewish census, and other wartime issues. Throughout, Grimmer-Solem richly situates the intellectual and political pursuits of his protagonists within both ever-changing concrete situational contexts and conjunctures and his own account of the changing worlds of big-power competition over empire and industry and the German Empire's national politics and pursuit of global power. Learning Empire is a wonderfully ambitious book. Its goal is to offer not only a "new, wider narrative about German expansionism" but also a novel account of the "full arc" of German history from 1875 and 1919 as "concurrent with the rise and fall of the first era of globalization" (14, 19). It places liberal imperialism (including its radical nationalist mutation) and middle-class publics at the center of Germany's imperial imaginary and pursuit of global power and world empire. It stresses the paramount importance of the United States as the most important point of reference for German global-imperial aspirations and it presents Great Britain, not Germany, as the key destabilizing force in multicentered world politics before 1914, while stressing the fairly moderate and ultimately reactive and defensive nature of German ambitions in the fast-moving milieu of global power. Historiographically, Grimmer-Solem frames his intervention as an attempt to supersede, once and for all, any national [End Page 406] exceptionalist narratives of the German Empire...

Protectionism and Economic Growth: Causal Evidence from the First Era of Globalization

We investigate how protectionist policies influence short-run economic growth. Our empirical strategy exploits an extraordinary tax scandal that gave rise to an unexpected change of government in Sweden. A free-trade majority in parliament was overturned by a protectionist majority in 1887. The protectionist government increased tariffs. We employ the synthetic control method to select control countries against which economic growth in Sweden can be compared. We do not find evidence suggesting that protectionist policies influenced economic growth and examine channels why. New tariff laws increased government revenue. However, the results do not suggest that the protectionist government stimulated the economy by increasing government expenditure.

Openness to Trade and the Spread of Industrialization: Evidence from Canada During the First Era of Globalization

We use new data on manufacturing in Canada to quantify the impact of globalization on the growth and composition of industrialization in the second half of the nineteenth century. We find that industries and regions more exposed to international trade experienced faster growth. Consistent with the literature on economic development in Canada, we find that scale economies, government policy decisions, and domestic market expansion also played an important role in manufacturing growth. However, after controlling for these factors, we find that greater exposure to globalization shaped the pattern of regional industrialization in a way not appreciated in Canadian historiography.

Responding to the First Era of Globalization: Canadian Trade Policy, 1870–1913

In this article we document Canada’s trade policy response to late nineteenth and early twentieth century globalization by linking newly digitized annual productspecific data on the value of Canadian imports and duties paid from 1870–1913, to establishment-specific production and location information drawn from the manuscripts of the 1871 industrial census. We find evidence of a highly selective move towards protectionism following the adoption of the National Policy in 1879. Changes in the Canadian tariff schedule narrowly targeted manufactured import products that had close substitutes produced by relatively large, urban, politically influential domestic manufacturers.

Anglo‐American trade costs during the first era of globalization: the contribution of a bilateral tariff series†

AbstractPrevious scholarship has suggested that British trade was generally unaffected by foreign tariffs during the period from 1870 to 1913. This article focuses specifically on Anglo‐American trade, which was the largest bilateral flow of trade during the first era of globalization, and finds that tariffs were the sole intertemporal determinant of Anglo‐American trade costs. However, the determinacy of tariffs for Anglo‐American trade costs only becomes apparent when the tariff variable incorporates a measure of the bilateral American tariff toward Britain, which this article reconstructs. The article concludes by claiming that Anglo‐American trade represents a major qualification to any emerging consensus that foreign tariffs were of minor significance to the trade of late nineteenth‐century Britain.

Integration between the London and New York Stock Exchanges, 1825-1925

In this article the integration between the London and New York Stock Exchanges is analysed during the era when they were still developing as asset markets. The domestic securities on both exchanges showed little sustained integration, even when controlling for the different characteristics of stocks, which implies that the pricing of securities in the US and UK was still being driven by local factors. These results place a limit on the view that the pre-First World War period was the first era of globalization in terms of capital markets. However, there was considerable integration between New York and those listings on London that operated internationally. This suggests that the listing of foreign securities may be one of the primary mechanisms driving asset market integration.