During the late eighteenth century, innovations in Europe triggered the Industrial Revolution and the sustained economic progress that spread across the globe. While much has been made of the details of the Industrial Revolution, what remains a mystery is why it took place at all. Why did this revolution begin in the West and not elsewhere, and why did it continue, leading to today’s unprecedented prosperity? In this groundbreaking book, celebrated economic historian Joel Mokyr argues that a culture of growth specific to early modern Europe and the European Enlightenment laid the foundations for the scientific advances and pioneering inventions that would instigate explosive technological and economic development. Bringing together economics, the history of science and technology, and models of cultural evolution, Mokyr demonstrates that culture—the beliefs, values, and preferences in society that are capable of changing behavior—was a deciding factor in societal transformations.
Mokyr looks at the period 1500–1700 to show that a politically fragmented Europe fostered a competitive “market for ideas” and a willingness to investigate the secrets of nature. At the same time, a transnational community of brilliant thinkers known as the “Republic of Letters” freely circulated and distributed ideas and writings. This political fragmentation and the supportive intellectual environment explain how the Industrial Revolution happened in Europe but not China, despite similar levels of technology and intellectual activity. In Europe, heterodox and creative thinkers could find sanctuary in other countries and spread their thinking across borders. In contrast, China’s version of the Enlightenment remained controlled by the ruling elite.
Combining ideas from economics and cultural evolution, A Culture of Growth provides startling reasons for why the foundations of our modern economy were laid in the mere two centuries between Columbus and Newton.

这是一本关于京东方的再创业史。记录了京东方在一个全球高技术工业中的史诗般崛起。通过讲述这个真实的故事——真实的团队在真实的世界里创造出来的真实业绩——解释了中国经济发展的动力。
20年来，京东方从一家岌岌可危的老牌国企发展成为领军中国工业的龙头企业，并在全球半导体显示工业中异军突起，历经国企改制的脱胎重生和技术替代与市场替代的严酷洗礼，数度破釜沉舟实现颠覆式创新和跨越式发展，爆发出令世人瞠目的创造力。京东方独立自主、创新自强，敢于走自己的路，是中国工业精神的最佳写照。

本书作者为奥地利学者耿爱德，分为上、下两册。全书重点论述了中国的金属硬币，分为银部、金部、铜部三编，对中国货币之流通、种类、市场分布、产地、外汇市场等方面进行了论述，勾勒了中国货币发展脉络，对后人解读、研究中国货币，尤其是金属货币助益良多。

Beginning his epic history in the early 1600s, Eric Jay Dolin traces the dramatic rise and fall of the American fur industry, from the first Dutch encounters with the Indians to the rise of the conservation movement in the late nineteenth century. Dolin shows how the fur trade sparked controversy, fostered economic competition and fuelled wars among the European powers.

By the publisher of the prestigious Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, an account of the deep economic slump of 1920–21 that proposes, with respect to federal intervention, “less is more.” This is a free-market rejoinder to the Keynesian stimulus applied by Bush and Obama to the 2007–09 recession, in whose aftereffects, Grant asserts, the nation still toils.
James Grant tells the story of America’s last governmentally-untreated depression; relatively brief and self-correcting, it gave way to the Roaring Twenties. His book appears in the fifth year of a lackluster recovery from the overmedicated downturn of 2007–2009.
In 1920–21, Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding met a deep economic slump by seeming to ignore it, implementing policies that most twenty-first century economists would call backward. Confronted with plunging prices, wages, and employment, the government balanced the budget and, through the Federal Reserve, raised interest rates. No “stimulus” was administered, and a powerful, job-filled recovery was under way by late in 1921.
In 1929, the economy once again slumped—and kept right on slumping as the Hoover administration adopted the very policies that Wilson and Harding had declined to put in place. Grant argues that well-intended federal intervention, notably the White House-led campaign to prop up industrial wages, helped to turn a bad recession into America’s worst depression. He offers the experience of the earlier depression for lessons for today and the future. This is a powerful response to the prevailing notion of how to fight recession. The enterprise system is more resilient than even its friends give it credit for being, Grant demonstrates.

International trade has shaped the modern world, yet until now no single book has been available for both economists and general readers that traces the history of the international economy from its earliest beginnings to the present day. Power and Plenty fills this gap, providing the first full account of world trade and development over the course of the last millennium. Ronald Findlay and Kevin O'Rourke examine the successive waves of globalization and "deglobalization" that have occurred during the past thousand years, looking closely at the technological and political causes behind these long-term trends. They show how the expansion and contraction of the world economy has been directly tied to the two-way interplay of trade and geopolitics, and how war and peace have been critical determinants of international trade over the very long run.The story they tell is sweeping in scope, one that links the emergence of the Western economies with economic and political developments throughout Eurasia centuries ago. Drawing extensively upon empirical evidence and informing their systematic analysis with insights from contemporary economic theory, Findlay and O'Rourke demonstrate the close interrelationships of trade and warfare, the mutual interdependence of the world's different regions, and the crucial role these factors have played in explaining modern economic growth. "Power and Plenty" is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the origins of today's international economy, the forces that continue to shape it, and the economic and political challenges confronting policymakers in the twenty-first century.

Description
Contents
Resources
Courses
About the Authors
Today's world textile and garment trade is valued at a staggering $425 billion. We are told that under the pressure of increasing globalisation, it is India and China that are the new world manufacturing powerhouses. However, this is not a new phenomenon: until the industrial revolution, Asia manufactured great quantities of colourful printed cottons that were sold to places as far afield as Japan, West Africa and Europe. Cotton explores this earlier globalised economy and its transformation after 1750 as cotton led the way in the industrialisation of Europe. By the early nineteenth century, India, China and the Ottoman Empire switched from world producers to buyers of European cotton textiles, a position that they retained for over two hundred years. This is a fascinating and insightful story which ranges from Asian and European technologies and African slavery to cotton plantations in the Americas and consumer desires across the globe.
The first historical account of the role of cotton textiles in transforming the world economy over the past millennium
Shows how Europe's road to cultural development and economic growth was brought about by Asian technologies, African labour, and American raw materials and consumer markets
Richly illustrated including images of cloth, clothing and contemporary manufacturing processes
Awards
Winner of the 2014 World History Association Bentley Book Prize
Reviews & endorsements
'… a remarkable volume full of insight and originality … Riello deserves a wide audience and the book will be of interest to a readership well beyond the audience for world economic history, including cultural and social history, the histories of art, design, fashion and, of course, textiles themselves.' Reviews in History (history.ac.uk/reviews)
'Mr Riello's meticulous approach and scholarly prose make for a dense work but one that is wide-ranging, beautifully nuanced and often surprising. Like its namesake, Cotton deserves a wide circulation.' The Wall Street Journal
'Reveals much about globalisation …' Financial Times
'This is a brilliant study of two periods of globalization, centered and driven first by twelfth- to seventeenth-century Indian production of cotton textiles, and second by the gradual triumph of Europe, particularly Britain, beginning in the eighteenth century. Essential.' B. Weinstein, Choice
'… strikingly broad in coverage and even bolder in the sweep of its claims, geographical, chronological and methodological … [a] rich and elaborate work.' Eric Jones, EH.Net
'Giorgio Riello's important and ambitious study on cotton overlaps a bit with books in the commodity history genre, but it is incontrovertibly more. The author's primary aim is not merely to fill a gap but rather to contribute to our understanding of nothing less than the origins of modern economic growth and development. This short review can only hint at the wealth of important data and insights (not to mention the stunning illustrations) to be found in this book.' Peter A. Coclanis, Journal of Southern History
'This is a beautiful book, packed with dozens of rich photographs of cotton fabric and contemporary paintings … Riello preserves a level of nuance and contingency rare in global histories. He has written an insightful economic history of cotton that should find a wide reading among economic historians and historians of the Atlantic world.' Andrew C. Baker, The South Carolina Historical Magazine
Read more at http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/history/global-history/cotton-fabric-made-modern-world#LwBDuGd5eKTswMlu.99

明清时，中国没有发生欧美“工业革命”那种以机器大规模生产的经济变化，清末以前也并未出现“民主宪政”之类的法律与政治改革运动，但是仍然出现许多有意义的社会变迁。本书有系统地描述并论证明清中国经济与法律的发展历程及其历史意义，点出探究明清经济史的重要意义，提出明清中国也有商业法律的主张。
本书为使读者能容易理解当时中国经济与法律互动的复杂性，先介绍十六至十九世纪之间的中国经济变动趋势，以下各章展开对明清中国商业法律的说明与分析。作者将研究视角做了较大范围的扩充，不仅讨论处理市场交易、商事纠纷与商业契约的法律规范本身，也分析当时中国用以运作商业法律的制度变迁，更进一步将“非西方”地区的历史完整地纳入，以说明一些重要的经济与法律变迁究竟是如何逐渐由明清中国部分地区往外扩散至全国，进而改写了既有的近代世界经济史。