Jari Eloranta

From the great illusion to the Great War: Military spending behaviour of the Great Powers, 1870–1913

The purpose of this article is to re-evaluate the military spending dynamics leading to the First World War, namely to explore the impact of the declining military and economic leadership of the UK and the economic emergence of the USA. Individual countries responded to threats from perceived enemies and spillovers from potential allies rationally, yet often going beyond the bounds of traditional alliances. In a sixteen-country system, the military reticence of the UK and USA encouraged higher military spending by other states, which suggests that Germany was not responsible for the arms race alone. Aggregate systemic military spending also incurred higher individual spending levels, whereas alliance impacts were not consistent.

Quantitative methods in business history: An impossible equation?

Abstract In this article we want to evaluate how often quantitative tools and methods were utilized in the two premier journals in business history in the 1990s. Thus we tap into an important methodological discussion among the post-Chandlerian business historians. We found that simpler quantitative tools were employed quite often, but not necessarily going much beyond that.Also, it became apparent that the most cited business history articles were often written by scholars coming from‘outside’ the fluid disciplinary core of business history field.The analyses performed in the article revealed that the level of quantification seemed to have either no discernible impact (Business History Review) or even a negative impact (Business History).

War and Disintegration, 1914–1950

Introduction Between 1914 and 1945 Europes economic development and integration were interrupted and set back by two world wars, and its regional patterns were brutally distorted by combat, exterminations, migrations, and the redrawing of borders. The First World War (the “Great War” of 1914–18) set more than thirty countries into conflict with each other and led to ten million premature deaths. It was dwarfed only by the Second World War (1939–45), in which more than sixty countries waged war and the war prematurely ended the lives of more than fifty-five million people (Broadberry and Harrison 2005b). As for who fought whom, there were limited continuities: in both wars, Germany, Austria, and Hungary fought Britain, France, and Russia for much of the time. Other allegiances changed. For ease of reference, Table 6.1 lists the European countries that were in or out of each war and, if in, on what side. Although punctuated by an “interwar period,” the two wars can be understood as a single historical process. The process was global but the European dimension was fundamental to it. Thus, Europe was the main theatre of a vast thirty-year conflict of empires and nationalisms. The first War was fought primarily by European powers in Europe; some non-European participants and colonial polities played a minor role while others intervened late in the process.

Rent seeking and collusion in the military allocation decisions of Finland, Sweden, and Great Britain, 1920–381

Analysis of military acquisition policies in Finland, Sweden, and Great Britain in the period from 1920 to 1938 produces evidence of rent seeking, both quantitative and qualitative, in all three cases. The Finnish institutional environment offered the most extensive rents and collusion opportunities, which translated into tangible price advantages for domestic producers. The Swedish and British domestic producers operated under more efficient institutions and thus had to settle for more moderate rents. Evolving institutional environments determined the extent of the rent seeking.

Importance of «weak» states during conflicts: Portuguese trade with the United States during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars

This paper focuses on the analysis of weak states in the international trading system during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic crises, especially on Portugals trade relations with the United States. We argue that the previous studies of the trade flows during these conflicts have not paid enough attention on smaller actors. Even though the Peninsular War caused severe disruption of agricultural production in Portugal, the United States, despite its strained relations with an ally of Portugal, Great Britain, became a key supplier for the Portuguese market. Clearly, the threatened position of the peninsula, and the need to supply the troops, awarded the Portuguese some room to manoeuvre in the international markets. Total war was not a constraint for all states — economic necessities trumped political and diplomatic concerns during the era of the first real-world wars. This situation was a temporary one, only to change after the conflict.

Democratization and central government spending, 1870–1938: Emergence of the leviathan?

Abstract Did the expansion of democratic institutions play a role in determining central government spending behavior in the 19th and 20th centuries? The link between democracy and increased central government spending is well established for the post-Second World War period, but has never been explored during the first “wave of democracy” and its subsequent reversal, that is 1870–1938. The main contribution of this paper is the compilation of a dataset covering 24 countries over this period to begin to address this question. Utilizing various descriptive techniques, including panel data regressions, we explore correlations between central government spending and the institutional characteristics of regimes. We find that the data are consistent with the hypothesis that democracies have a broader need for legitimization than autocracies as various measures of democracy are associated with higher central government spending. Our results indicate that the extension of franchise had a slight positive impact on central government spending levels, as did a few of the other democracy variables. We also find that early liberal democracies spent less and monarchies more than other regimes; debt increases spending; and participation in the Gold Standard reduced government spending substantially.

Let the best story win : evaluation of the most cited business history articles

Abstract Faced with intensifying competition for scientific impact measured in terms of citation counts, small disciplines are challenged to prove their importance as they lack the critical mass to accumulate large numbers of citations. This paper demonstrates that by emphasizing theoretical and methodological rigor even small disciplines such as business history can be competitive. Yet it still appears that readers of business history articles first and foremost seek interesting and useful subject matter, i.e. ‘best’ stories that can be used as background information and as tools in comparisons. However, articles advancing theory and methodology have increasingly gained interest and citations from other business historians as well as from scholars in related disciplines. Thus, business history scholarship using a sound theoretical framework to analyze relevant cases score more citations both inside and outside the field, leading to fruitful debates that serve to enhance the discipline.

Empire Effect Versus Crowding Out Effect: Shipping Productivity in the North Atlantic from 1764 to 1860

While there is a rich literature on the benefits of empire in terms of the provision of key public goods—notably security for international trade—the costs have been downplayed. In this paper, we focus on merchant shipping data between Canada and Britain between 1764 and 1860 to measure these costs. Imperial hegemony would have implied greater security for shippers and this, in turn, would have stimulated investments in productivity. However, we contend that a counter-effect would have operated simultaneously. The provision of greater security meant greater military navies which crowded out merchant navies in terms of availability of capital and labor. We argue that the benefit of the “security effect” has to be weighed against the cost of the “crowding-out” effect. We find that the “crowding-out effect” was larger than the “security effect.” For “security effects” to overpower “crowding out effects,” one had to have a very small navy in absolute terms but a large one relative to other military powers.

Historicizing Divergence: A Comparative Analysis of the Revolutionary Crises in Russia and Finland

Beginning 1917, Russia and Finland both experienced revolutionary situations, the seizure of power by radical political groups, and civil wars. However, the ultimate outcomes of the revolutionary crises in the two countries turned out to be different: the Russian Bolsheviks won the struggle for power whereas the Finnish Red Guard suffered a defeat. Why did the radical socialists win in Russia but lose in Finland? This chapter argues that the Russian revolutionaries benefited from the existence of two coalition alliances that had not fully materialized in Finland: the workers–soldiers’ alliance, which was critical for the radicals’ seizure of power, and the workers–peasants’ alliance, which became pivotal during the years of the civil war. Thus, our comparative historical analysis lends support to the “social history” of the revolutions but—in contrast to other writings—draws attention to the centrality of structural conditions created by a mass mobilization war and the contingent nature of the extant revolutionary alliances.