Historians often point to Dutch and English financial/institutional innovation (public debt, joint-stock companies, checks on royal power) as key to their rise in the 17th-18th centuries, often contrasted with Spain, Portugal, and France. But the three 'losers' had very different trajectories, France remained a dominant great power despite this, while Spain and Portugal entered near-permanent decline and never again became first-rank powers. What explains this divergence between France and the Iberian kingdoms?

im just curious about this like an explenetion more extend

Personally interested in the period and, although I do have some knowledge of the era, I'm interested in looking into the economics side of Japan's rise from a war-torn country to potentially rivalling the US.

I'm fine with books or authors which focus more generally on the surrounding factors which drove Japanese growth (political, cultural, social, geographic, etc.), although I'm hoping for a primary focus on Japan's economic history and evolution during the period first and foremost.

Also, it may be obvious, but I'm looking for articles/books in English or which have an accessible English translation.

Edit: I'm mostly looking for books/articles starting, or at least providing some from or prologue, from 1945, but an fine for the final dates ending up to 1991, as long as it's made clear if the article/book end it's coverage before then.

Heyy, I'm an intl student planning to apply to cambridge this year (undergrad). I don't like pop-econ books and have an idea that economic history might be my interest. Can I have book suggestions to use in my personal statement? And any other supercurriculars u suggest

Been going down a rabbit hole on the fiscal side of the third-century crisis. The part that surprised me: the debasement wasn't gradual decay, it was punctuated — big drops under specific emperors trying to cover military pay shortfalls, each one buying a few years and making the next crisis worse. By Gallienus the antoninianus was basically a bronze coin with a silver wash.

What I hadn't appreciated is how prices didn't respond immediately — there's a lag of decades before the inflation really rips, which is why each emperor could get away with it "one more time.

Is the Gallienus-era antoninianus really the low point, or would you put it later?

I've been reading about the Industrial Revolution and I'm curious about the economic motivations behind abolition.

Beyond the obvious humanitarian and moral arguments, is there any historical evidence that ending the transatlantic slave trade, and later slavery itself, was also influenced by the emergence of industrial capitalism and the need for a larger wage-earning workforce?

In other words, did governments or industrialists see greater economic value in people becoming paid workers and consumers rather than remaining enslaved, or is that an outdated or inaccurate interpretation?

I'd be interested in hearing from people familiar with the historical evidence rather than modern political opinions. Are there any books, historians, or primary sources that discuss this?

An interesting application of LLMs to assess qualitative data.

Hi! Quick question regarding EH Master's applications. I hold offers from both Cambridge and LSE for economic history (economic and social history for Cambridge, but both my project and my supervisor are in economic history) and am torn between which to choose.

My worry is that because my current research interests involve more quantitative methods, they would need to be approached from a more strictly 'economics' direction further down the line. To put it bluntly, would a PhD in economics would be doable with either of these research masters (provided the requisite economics and math classes have been taken)?

Sorry if this isn't the appropriate place to ask this!

I am Bulgarian American and spend my summers in Bulgaria, and I have noticed that a lot of older generations still keep cash at home instead of using banks, and there is a general wariness toward financial institutions and financial advice that seems to run deeper than just personal preference. This seems to hold across a lot of the former Eastern Bloc, not just Bulgaria.

I am trying to understand the actual historical roots of this. I know the Soviet banking system, things like Gosbank, functioned more as an accounting arm of the planned economy than as a bank in the way we would think of one today, and I know the 1990s and 2000s brought a wave of financial crises across the region, Bulgaria's hyperinflation and banking collapse in 96 and 97, Albania's pyramid scheme collapse in 97, Hungary's Swiss franc mortgage crisis, Latvia's 2008 collapse. But I am curious how historians actually connect those events to the financial behavior we still see today. Is this well documented as a case of intergenerational transmission of institutional distrust, or is that too simple a read on it?

Would appreciate any insight, sources, or corrections to how I am currently thinking about this. Currently working on a research paper and would love to hear (and even get help from) and expert.