Today's wide economic gap between the postindustrial countries of the West and the poorer countries of the third world is not new. Fifty years ago, the world economic order -- two hundred years in the making -- was already characterized by a vast difference in per capita income between rich and poor[...]

In Globalization and the Poor Periphery before 1950 Jeffrey Williamson examines globalization through the lens of both the economist and the historian, analyzing its economic impact on industrially lagging poor countries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Williamson argues that industr[...]

World mass migration began in the early nineteenth century, when advances in transportation technology and industrial revolutions at home enabled increasing numbers of people to set off for other parts of the globe in search of a better life. Two centuries later, there is no distant African, Asian, [...]

The first volume of The Cambridge History of Capitalism provides a comprehensive account of the evolution of capitalism from its earliest beginnings. Starting with its distant origins in ancient Babylon, successive chapters trace progression up to the 'Promised Land' of capitalism in America. Adopti[...]

The Cambridge History of Capitalism is a comprehensive two-volume work that provides an authoritative account of the evolution of capitalism and its spread and impact across the world. Adopting a wide geographical coverage and strong comparative perspective, an international team of leading scholars[...]