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

Bek, Patrick, No Bicycle, No Bus, No Job: The Making of Workers' Mobility in the Netherlands, 1920-1990. (Studies in History, Technology and Society) 212 pp. 2022:4 (Amsterdam U. Pr., NE) <678-372>
ISBN 978-94-6372-318-3 hard ¥30,484.- (税込) GB￡ 107.00 *

For working people, the cost of getting to work, in terms of time and expense, is a crucial aspect of daily life. In the twentieth century, people's opportunity to travel increased. This did not, however, apply to everyone. The absence of affordable housing near job locations combined with the lack of safe, efficient, and affordable mobility options aggravated social exclusion for some. No Bicycle, No Bus, No Job details how power relations have historically enabled or restricted workers' mobility in twentieth century Netherlands. Blue-collar workers, industrial employers, and the state shaped workers' everyday commute in a changing playing field of uneven power relations that shifted from paternalism to neo-liberalism.

Bray, Francesca / Hahn, Barbara / Lourdusamy, J. B. et al., Moving Crops and the Scales of History. (Yale Agrarian Studies Series) 384 pp. 2023:2 (Yale U. Pr., US) <678-373>
ISBN 978-0-300-25725-0 hard ¥8,624.- (税込) US$ 40.00 *

A bold redefinition of historical inquiry based on the "cropscape"-the people, creatures, technologies, ideas, and places that surround a crop Human efforts to move crops from one place to another have been a key driving force in history. Crops have been on the move for millennia, from wildlands into fields, from wetlands to dry zones, from one imperial colony to another. This book is a bold but approachable attempt to redefine historical inquiry based on the "cropscape": the assemblage of people, places, creatures, technologies, and other elements that form around a crop. The cropscape is a method of reconnecting the global with the local, the longue duree with microhistory, and people, plants, and places with abstract concepts such as tastes, ideas, skills, politics, and economic forces. Through investigating a range of contrasting cropscapes spanning millennia and the globe, the authors break open traditional historical structures of period, geography, and direction to glean insight into previously invisible actors and forces.

Covo, Manuel, Entrepot of Revolutions: Saint-Domingue, Commercial Sovereignty, and the French-American Alliance. 320 pp. 2022:9 (Oxford U. Pr., US) <678-374>
ISBN 978-0-19-762638-2 hard ¥21,344.- (税込) US$ 99.00 *
ISBN 978-0-19-762639-9 paper ¥6,250.- (税込) US$ 28.99 *

The Age of Revolutions has been celebrated for the momentous transition from absolute monarchies to representative governments and the creation of nation-states in the Atlantic world. Much less recognized than the spread of democratic ideals was the period's growing traffic of goods, capital, and people across imperial borders and reforming states' attempts to control this mobility. Analyzing the American, French, and Haitian revolutions in an interconnected narrative, Manuel Covo centers imperial trade as a driving force, arguing that commercial factors preceded and conditioned political change across the revolutionary Atlantic. At the heart of these transformations was the "entrepot," the island known as the "Pearl of the Caribbean," whose economy grew dramatically as a direct consequence of the American Revolution and the French-American alliance. Saint-Domingue was the single most profitable colony in the Americas in the second half of the eighteenth century, with its staggering production of sugar and coffee and the unpaid labor of enslaved people. The colony was so focused on its lucrative exports that it needed to import food and timber from North America, which generated enormous debate in France about the nature of its sovereignty over Saint-Domingue. At the same time, the newly independent United States had to come to terms with contradictory interests between the imperial ambitions of European powers, its connections with the Caribbean, and its own domestic debates over the future of slavery. This work sheds light on the three-way struggle among France, the United States, and Haiti to assert, define, and maintain "commercial" sovereignty. Drawing on a wealth of archives in France, the United States, and the United Kingdom, Entrepot of Revolutions offers an innovative perspective on the primacy of economic factors in this era, as politicians and theorists, planters and merchants, ship captains, smugglers, and the formerly enslaved all attempted to transform capitalism in the Atlantic world.

DFG-Netzwerk "Das Versprechen der Maerkte" (Hrsg.), Marktgeschehen: Fragmente einer Geschichte fruehneuzeitlichen Wirtschaftens. 280 S. 2022:12 (Campus, GW) <678-375>
ISBN 978-3-593-51597-7 hard ¥6,826.- (税込) EUR 29.00 *

≫Der Markt≪ gilt gemeinhin als zeitloser und effektiver Mechanismus zum Tausch von Guetern und zur Bildung von Preisen. Dieser Band, der die Ergebnisse des DFG-Netzwerks ≫Das Versprechen der Maerkte≪ buendelt, problematisiert diese Annahme und zeigt, dass Maerkte das Ergebnis historischer Praxis sind: Sie entstehen und existieren durch das Marktgeschehen selbst, das weit ueber die Markttransaktion hinausreicht und durch die jeweilige Gesellschaft gepraegt ist. Die Beitraege machen marktbezogene Praktiken von der Fruehen Neuzeit bis zum beginnenden 19. Jahrhundert sichtbar und verknuepfen sie transregional vergleichend miteinander. Ausgangspunkte der Sondierungen sind so unterschiedliche Aspekte wie die Gestaltung und Bemessung von Waren, Werbung als Medium, die Begrenzung von Gewinnen oder der Zugang zu Maerkten. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

Herold, Maik, Der gute Wirtschaftsbuerger: Politische Begruendungen oekonomischen Handelns in der Vormoderne. 450 S. 2022:9 (Campus, GW) <678-376>
ISBN 978-3-593-51601-1 paper ¥11,534.- (税込) EUR 49.00 *

Sun, Yaqin / Chang, Xu, A General History of China's Foreign Trade. Volume 1. Tr. by Rui Su. 480 pp. 2023 (World Scientific, SI) <678-377>
ISBN 978-981-12-5642-4 hard ¥31,908.- (税込) US$ 148.00 *

China boasts a long history of foreign trade. As early as the pre-Qin period, residents of the country began to ship silk and other merchandise on outbound voyages. From the 2nd century BCE on, China has been connected to the rest of the world via the Overland Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road initiated in the reign of Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty.Trade relations between China and other regions in the world have been developing gradually and continuously. Trade has contributed to deepening economic and cultural exchanges between China and other countries. While benefiting the whole of humankind, Chinese civilization has also absorbed the achievements of other civilizations, allowing China and other countries to experience mutual benefits and advance together.This is the first volume in a series of books retelling the arduous development of China's foreign trade. It covers ancient times, recording China's foreign trade from the pre-Qin period to the early period of the Qing Dynasty.

Wendt, Helge, Kohlezeit: Eine Global- und Wissengeschichte (1500-1900). 480 S. 2022:11 (Campus, GW) <678-379>
ISBN 978-3-593-51538-0 hard ¥10,593.- (税込) EUR 45.00 *

中央銀行の台頭
Wansleben, Leon, The Rise of Central Banks: State Power in Financial Capitalism. 336 pp. 2023:2 (Harvard U. Pr., US) <678-284>
ISBN 978-0-674-27051-0 hard ¥9,702.- (税込) US$ 45.00 *

A bold history of the rise of central banks, showing how institutions designed to steady the ship of global finance have instead become as destabilizing as they are dominant.While central banks have gained remarkable influence over the past fifty years, promising more stability, global finance has gone from crisis to crisis. How do we explain this development? Drawing on original sources ignored in previous research, The Rise of Central Banks offers a groundbreaking account of the origins and consequences of central banks' increasing clout over economic policy.Many commentators argue that ideas drove change, indicating a shift in the 1970s from Keynesianism to monetarism, concerned with controlling inflation. Others point to the stagflation crises, which put capitalists and workers at loggerheads. Capitalists won, the story goes, then pushed deregulation and disinflation by redistributing power from elected governments to markets and central banks. Both approaches are helpful, but they share a weakness. Abstracting from the evolving practices of central banking, they provide inaccurate accounts of recent policy changes and fail to explain how we arrived at the current era of easy money and excessive finance.By comparing developments in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Switzerland, Leon Wansleben finds that central bankers' own policy innovations were an important ingredient of change. These innovations allowed central bankers to use privileged relationships with expanding financial markets to govern the economy. But by relying on markets, central banks fostered excessive credit growth and cultivated an unsustainable version of capitalism. Through extensive archival work and numerous interviews, Wansleben sheds new light on the agency of bureaucrats and calls upon society and elected leaders to direct these actors' efforts to more progressive goals.