Trousson, Raymond / Vercruysse, Jeroom (dir.), Dictionnaire general de Voltaire. (Champion classiques, references et dictionnaires 18) 1272 p. 2020:10 (Champion, FR) <670-9>
ISBN 978-2-38096-016-7 paper ¥7,064.- (税込) EUR 38.00

Varga, Zsuzsanna, The Hungarian Agricultural Miracle?: Sovietization and Americanization in a Communist Country. Tr. by F. T. Zsigo. (The Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series) 354 pp. 2020:11 (Lexington Books, US) <664-914>
ISBN 978-1-79363-435-1 hard ¥32,762.- (税込) US$ 146.00 *

This book examines Soviet agriculture in post-1945 Hungary. It demonstrates how the agrarian lobby, a development following the 1956 revolution, led to contact with the West which allowed for the creation of an effective agricultural system. The author argues that this 'Hungarian agricultural miracle,' a hybrid of American technology and Soviet structures, was fundamental to the success of Hungarian collectivization.

Caruana de las Cagigas, Leonardo / Straus, Andre (eds.), Role of Reinsurance in the World: Case Studies of Eight Countries. (Palgrave Studies in Economic History) 300 pp. 2021:8 (Palgrave Macmillan, UK) <664-806>
ISBN 978-3-030-74001-6 hard ¥36,461.- (税込) EUR 149.99 *

This book is an edited collection by leading insurance historians, examining the historical role of reinsurance (the insurance of insurers) in the insurance markets of eight countries: USA, Netherlands, Sweden, France, Spain, Italy, Mexico and Japan. All the contributors are experts in their field and have widely published in insurance history, providing the reader with new insights into the insurance and economic history of these countries. In particular, this is the first book to explore the reinsurance markets in the USA, Netherlands, France, Italy and Mexico. This book will be of interest to economic and business historians, as well as insurance practitioners with an interest in the history of their industry.

Pittaluga, Giovanni Battista / Seghezza, Elena, Building Trust in the International Monetary System: The Different Cases of Commodity Money and Fiat Money. (Frontiers in Economic History) 274 pp. 2021:7 (Springer, GW) <664-838>
ISBN 978-3-030-78490-4 hard ¥29,168.- (税込) EUR 119.99 *

This book presents the evolution of the international monetary system from the gold standard to the monetary system in force today. It adopts a political economy approach, emphasizing the economic and political conditions under which an international monetary system can come into existence and be maintained over time. This approach highlights how the gradual transition in the international context from commodity money to fiat money has been led by the need for greater elasticity of money supply and smooth adjustments. This transition, however, raises the issue of how to guarantee, over time, the value of a money devoid of intrinsic value. By presenting a historical evolution, the book explains how the existence of an international monetary system based on money without intrinsic value can only occur when a particular balance of power exists at the international level that allows for the production of trust in a fiat money. The book is a must-read for scholars, researchers, and students in the fields of economic history and international monetary economics, interested in better understanding the evolution of the international monetary system.

Zeira, Joseph, The Israeli Economy: A Story of Success and Costs. (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World) 408 pp. 2021:11 (Princeton U. Pr., US) <664-756>
ISBN 978-0-691-19945-0 hard ¥8,302.- (税込) US$ 37.00 *

An authoritative economic history of Israel from its founding to the presentIn 1922, there were ninety thousand Jews in Palestine, a small country in a poor and volatile region. Today, Israel has a population of nine million and is one of the richest countries in the world. The Israeli Economy tells the story of this remarkable transformation, shedding critical new light on Israel's rapid economic growth.Joseph Zeira takes readers from those early days to today, describing how Israel's economic development occurred amid intense fighting with the Palestinians and neighboring Arab countries. He reveals how the new state's astonishing growth continued into the early 1970s, and traces this growth to public investment in education and to large foreign transfers. Zeira analyzes the costs of the Arab-Israeli conflict, demonstrating how economic output could be vastly greater with a comprehensive peace. He discusses how Israel went through intensive neoliberal economic policies in recent decades, and shows how these policies not only failed to enhance economic performance, but led to significant social inequality.Based on more than two decades of groundbreaking research, The Israeli Economy is an in-depth survey of a modern economy that has experienced rapid growth, wars, immigration waves, and other significant shocks. It thus offers important lessons for nations around the world.

Roy, Tirthankar, The Reserve Bank of India: Volume 5: 1997-2008. 750 pp. 2021:10 (Cambridge U. Pr., UK) <664-738>
ISBN 978-1-316-51132-9 hard ¥41,789.- (税込) GB￡ 145.00 *

The fifth volume on the history of the Reserve Bank of India covers the years from 1997-98 to 2007-08. During this period, it introduced key institutional and financial market reforms in a rapidly changing economic environment and facilitated faster integration of the Indian economy. The Bank rationalised and introduced innovative instruments of monetary control; strengthened regulatory and supervisory processes for both banking and non-banking sectors; adjusted its approach to achieve and sustain financial stability; focussed on building financial market institutions and infrastructure; and spurred legal and other amendments in the larger public interest as also for achieving flexibility with stability in the economy. It also worked to improve the rural credit system, financial inclusion and customer protection. This volume is a narrative history of the Bank and also a rich resource for understanding how an emerging market central bank manages change and shapes the economy to face future challenges.

Adams, R. J. C., Shadow of a Taxman: Who Funded the Irish Revolution? (Oxford Historical Monographs) 384 pp. 2022:3 (Oxford U. Pr., UK) <664-1100>
ISBN 978-0-19-284962-5 hard ¥20,462.- (税込) GB￡ 71.00 *

Shadow of a Taxman investigates how the unrecognised Irish Republic's money was solicited, collected, transmitted, and safeguarded, as well as who the financial backers were and what might have influenced their decision to contribute. The Republic's quest for funds took its emissaries as far afield as New York, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, and Melbourne, as well as virtually every parish in Ireland. By selling 'war bonds' to supporters, it raised GBP370,165 from 140,000 people in Ireland and nearly $6m from 300,000 people in the United States. These bonds promised a return to subscribers when British forces had left Ireland and an independent Irish Republic was internationally recognised. Exploiting newly uncovered documents, Shadow of a Taxman reveals the identities of these subscribers. Cross-referencing with census returns, intelligence reports, memoirs, and IRA membership rolls, it provides the first demographic analysis of non-combatant supporters of Irish independence on the eve of its realisation. It also shows how access to funds shaped the course of the Irish War of Independence and, ultimately, Irish republicans' negotiating position with the British government in 1921.

Brock, Aske Laursen / van Meersbergen, Guido et al. (eds.), Trading Companies and Travel Knowledge in the Early Modern World. 336 pp. 2021:10 (Routledge, UK) * paper 2023 <664-1101>
ISBN 978-1-03-205002-7 hard ¥36,025.- (税込) GB￡ 125.00 *
ISBN 978-1-03-205292-2 paper ¥11,524.- (税込) GB￡ 39.99 *

Trading Companies and Travel Knowledge in the Early Modern World explores the links between trade, empire, exploration, and global information transfer during the early modern period. By charting how the leaders, members, employees, and supporters of different trading companies gathered, processed, employed, protected, and divulged intelligence about foreign lands, peoples, and markets, this book throws new light on the internal uses of information by corporate actors and the ways they engaged with, relied on, and supplied various external publics. This ranged from using secret knowledge to beat competitors, to shaping debates about empire, and to forcing Europeans to reassess their understandings of specific environments due to contacts with non-European peoples. Reframing our understanding of trading companies through the lens of travel literature, this volume brings together thirteen experts in the field to facilitate a new understanding of how European corporations and empires were shaped by global webs of information exchange

Edwards, Daniel, Finance and the Crusades: England, c.1213-1337. (Advances in Crusades Research) 224 pp. 2021:11 (Routledge, UK) * paper 2023 <664-1103>
ISBN 978-0-367-70558-9 hard ¥38,907.- (税込) GB￡ 135.00 *
ISBN 978-0-367-70557-2 paper ¥11,524.- (税込) GB￡ 39.99 *

This book investigates the financial aspects of crusading in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Taking the kingdom of England as a case study, it explores a variety of themes, such as how much crusades cost, how they were financed, how funds were transferred to the East and how crusaders fared financially after their return. Its fundamental argument, in contrast with current historiography, is that it was the "private" fundraising of individuals - not the "public" fundraising of the Crown and the Church - that constituted the life-blood of the crusade movement in the period under consideration. Indeed, it is likely that the crusades were only able to remain central to the religious and political life of England, and indeed western Christendom, because participants, and those in their connection, continued to be willing to sacrifice their own financial wellbeing for the interests of the Holy Land.

Jerven, Morten, The Wealth and Poverty of African States: Economic Growth, Living Standards and Taxation since the Late Nineteenth Century. (New Approaches to Economic and Social History) 280 pp. 2021:12 (Cambridge U. Pr., UK) <664-1104>
ISBN 978-1-108-42459-2 hard ¥21,615.- (税込) GB￡ 75.00 *
ISBN 978-1-108-44070-7 paper ¥6,913.- (税込) GB￡ 23.99 *

A wealth of new data have been unearthed in recent years on African economic growth, wages, living standards, and taxes. In The Wealth and Poverty of African States, Morten Jerven shows how these findings transform our understanding of African economic development. He focuses on the central themes and questions that these state records can answer, tracing how African states evolved over time and the historical footprint they have left behind. By connecting the history of the colonial and postcolonial periods, he reveals an aggregate pattern of long-run growth from the late nineteenth century into the 1970s, giving way to widespread failure and decline in the 1980s, and then followed by two decades of expansion since the late 1990s. The result is a new framework for understanding the causes of poverty and wealth and the trajectories of economic growth and state development in Africa across the twentieth century.

Ma, Debin / von Glahn, Richard (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of China. Volume 2.: 1800 to the Present. 700 pp. 2022:2 (Cambridge U. Pr., UK) <664-1105>
ISBN 978-1-108-42553-7 hard ¥36,313.- (税込) GB￡ 126.00 *

China's rise as the world's second-largest economy surely is the most dramatic development in the global economy since the year 2000. Volume II, which spans China's two turbulent centuries from 1800, charts this wrenching process of an ancient empire being transformed to re-emerge as a major world power. This volume for the first time brings together the fruits of pioneering international scholarship in all dimensions of economic history to provide an authoritative and comprehensive overview of this tumultuous and dramatic transformation. In many cases, it offers a fundamental reinterpretation of major themes in Chinese economic history, such as the role of ideology, the rise of new institutions, human capital and public infrastructure, the impact of Western and Japanese imperialism, the role of external trade and investment, and the evolution of living standards in both the pre-Communist and Communist eras. The volume includes seven important chapters on the Mao and reform eras and provides a critical historical perspective linking the past with the present and future.

Ma, Debin / von Glahn, Richard (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of China. Volume 1.: To 1800. 700 pp. 2022:2 (Cambridge U. Pr., UK) <664-1106>
ISBN 978-1-108-42557-5 hard ¥36,313.- (税込) GB￡ 126.00 *

China's rise as the world's second-largest economy surely is the most dramatic development in the global economy since the year 2000. But China's prominence in the global economy is hardly new. Since 500 BCE, a dynamic market economy and the establishment of an enduring imperial state fostered precocious economic growth. Yet Chinese society and government featured distinctive institutions that generated unique patterns of economic development. The six chapters of Part I of this volume trace the forms of livelihood, organization of production and exchange, the role of the state in economic development, the evolution of market institutions, and the emergence of trans-Eurasian trade from antiquity to 1000 CE. Part II, in twelve thematic chapters, spans the late imperial period from 1000 to 1800 and surveys diverse fields of economic history, including environment, demography, rural and urban development, factor markets, law, money, finance, philosophy, political economy, foreign trade, human capital, and living standards.

Pittaki, Zoi, Exploring the Roots of Systematic Tax Avoidance in Greece: Business, the Tax System and Tax Conscience, 1955-2008. (Palgrave Studies in Economic History) 284 pp. 2021:7 (Palgrave Macmillan, UK) <664-1107>
ISBN 978-3-030-71978-4 hard ¥26,737.- (税込) EUR 109.99

This book explores the interaction between business and the system of taxation in Greece, from the mid-1950s up to 2008, the year that marked the eve of the economic crisis the country faced in the aftermath of the international financial crisis of 2007. The evidence presented confirms William Baumol's point about how taxation affects entrepreneurship. That is, it is shown that Baumol was right when indicating that problematic tax rules can lead to unproductive forms of entrepreneurship, such as tax evasion. However, the focus here is on aspects of the system of taxation that Baumol's model, examining solely tax rates and levels of taxation, neglected. This book shows that, as far as Greek entrepreneurship is concerned, the adverse effects of the system of taxation came mostly from a series of issues that increased its perceived unfairness and illegitimacy. The way that the tax system functioned also increased uncertainty, which was anything but beneficial for investing in business. This book contributes to the current debates about the Greek economy and the causes of the crisis affecting the country. In this respect, it also throws light on the big issue of tax evasion burdening the country's fiscal system. However, the research also belongs to the wider literature examining entrepreneurship from a business history perspective, to that focusing on the relation between entrepreneurship and institutions, to the debates regarding the ways entrepreneurship is affected by the socio-political and economic environment but also to institutional analyses about taxation.

Schwecke, Sebastian, Debt, Trust and Reputation: Extra-legal Finance in Northern India. (Metamorphoses of the Political: Multidisciplinary Approaches) 410 pp. 2021:11 (Cambridge U. Pr., UK) <664-1111>
ISBN 978-1-316-51726-0 hard ¥25,938.- (税込) GB￡ 90.00 *

Starting in the late nineteenth century, colonial rule in India took an active interest in regulating financial markets beyond the bridgeheads of European capital in intercontinental trade. Regulatory efforts were part of a modernizing project seeking to produce alignments between British and Indian business procedures, and to create the financial basis for incipient industrialization in India. For vast sections of Indian society, however, they pushed credit/debt relations into the realm of extra-legality, while the new, regulated agents of finance remained incapable (and unwilling) of serving their needs. Combining historical and ethnographic approaches, the book questions underlying assumptions of modernization in finance that continue to prevail in postcolonial India, and delineates the socioeconomic responses they produced, and studies the reputational economies of debt that have emerged instead - extra-legal markets embedded into communication flows on trust and reputation that have turned out to be significantly more exploitative than their colonial predecessors.

Tan, Li, Institutions and Chinese Economic Development: A Comparative Historical Approach. (Routledge Explorations in Economic History) 232 pp. 2021:11 (Routledge, UK) * paper 2023 <664-1112>
ISBN 978-1-03-206390-4 hard ¥38,907.- (税込) GB￡ 135.00 *
ISBN 978-1-03-206391-1 paper ¥11,524.- (税込) GB￡ 39.99 *

China's rise as an economic power has posed some challenging questions: how did China achieve GDP growth that was even faster than the Four Asian Tigers? Is the "Chinese model" superior? Why hasn't the rapid economic growth lead to democracy in the country as many observers expected? And can China sustain its rapid economic growth with its existing social system? Institutions and Chinese Economic Development: A Comparative Historical Approach explores these questions by studying the historical relationship between institutions and economic development in China, drawing comparisons with England, Japan and other Asian economies as appropriate. The investigation focuses on several junctures in China's economic development: the starting point of the divergence between China and the West; the externally-provoked industrial development in the late 19th century; and the contemporary Chinese Miracle. The analysis foregrounds the role played by Chinese institutions and examines their effects on both the country's failure to industrialize in the past and its economic achievements in recent time. The book also asks whether, without reform to the existing state institutions, China might still be subject to the historical dynastic cycles today, despite its recent economic success.This work is of great interest to students and scholars of the Chinese economy, economic history and institutional economics, as well as comparative history and Chinese studies more broadly.

Vanneste, Tijl, Blood, Sweat and Earth: The Struggle for Control over the World's Diamonds Throughout History. 400 pp. 2021:10 (Reaktion Books, UK) <664-1113>
ISBN 978-1-78914-435-2 hard ¥8,646.- (税込) GB￡ 30.00 *

Blood, Sweat and Earth is a hard-hitting historical expose of the diamond industry, focusing on the exploitation of workers and the environment, and the monopolization of uncut diamonds, and how little this has changed over time. It describes the use of forced labour and political oppression by Indian sultans, the Portuguese in Brazil, and South African industrialists, as well as the hoarding of diamonds to maintain high prices, from the English East India Company to De Beers. While recent discoveries of diamond deposits in Siberia, Canada and Australia have brought an end to monopolization, the book shows that advances in the production of synthetic diamonds have not yet been able to eradicate the exploitation caused by the world's unquenchable thirst for sparkle.

齊藤誠著　戦争と平和への出資における強い貨幣需要－戦時と現代の日本の事例－
Saito, Makoto, Strong Money Demand in Financing War and Peace: The Cases of Wartime and Contemporary Japan. (Advances in Japanese Business and Economics 28) 204 pp. 2021 (Springer, SI) <251-36083>
ISBN 978-981-16-2445-2 hard ¥26,737.- (税込) EUR 109.99 *

This book theoretically and empirically investigates the emergence of strong money demand in wartime Japan (1937-1945), its disappearance after the end of the war (1945-1949), and the reemergence of strong money demand in contemporary Japan (from 1995 to the present) in terms of the effects on fiscal activities and the price level. An augmented fiscal/monetary theory of the price level is constructed from a close examination of the strong money demand present in these periods. Then, profoundly puzzling phenomena such as mild deflation despite monetary expansion, low long-term interest rates despite fiscal unsustainability, and weak aggregate demand despite near-zero rates of interest, all of which are actually being observed in contemporary Japan, can now be interpreted in line with the above augmented theory. In the present, strong money demand at near-zero rates endows the Japanese government with maximum fiscal flexibility. However, if it disappeared for some reason, prices would surge to the quantity theory of money level, and fiscal sustainability would have to be restored. In the future, alternative currency units issued by private banks might carry out a purge of such strong demand for the yen.