M. M. Postan

Monetary, Credit and Banking Systems

Urban and rural markets, weekly markets and fairs, multiplied in Europe or intensified their activity, assisting the penetration of the local economy by money and credit in many forms. The difficulties which the local economy encountered with the easing of the circulation of money were not confined to problems of debasement or revaluation of its own coinage, or of the diversity of the systems of moneys of account. However, important metallic money might be in the local economy of the modern age, it in no way hampered the development of credit. The international flows of specie throughout the modern age were doubtless strongly influenced by movements of capital and in particular by government transfers. Control of public finance and taxation were not the exclusive domain of the central governments during the modern age. Western Europe especially was characterized by a bewildering gap between the growing power of state authority and its inability to substantiate this power financially and fiscally.

The Organization of Trade

A General Picture From the point of view of business organization, the Middle Ages present no uniform picture either in time or in space. During the so-called Dark Ages, the manorial economy was dominant and most landed estates were relatively self-sufficient. Exchange, at any rate, was reduced to a minimum, and trade, while it did not disappear altogether, fell to a low ebb. What little survived was carried on by groups of travelling merchants who catered for the rich by selling them luxuries or who exploited the poor by charging high prices for necessities in times of famine or distress. A real revival did not occur until the eleventh century with the cessation of the Norman invasions and the decline of feudal anarchy. In Italy urban life regained vigour; in Flanders it sprang up anew. From these two centres, the movement spread and gained momentum. The Crusades gave it further impetus. Latin merchant colonies were established all over the Levant. Soon the Venetians, the Genoese and the Pisans controlled the foreign trade of the Byzantine Empire. Methods of business organization made steady progress, but the merchants continued to be peregrinators, moving constantly about in unending pursuit of profit. They and their servants still accompanied their goods either by land or by sea. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the travelling trade of western Europe gravitated to the fairs of Champagne, and their rhythm regulated the coming and going of the merchant caravans from Italy, Flanders, Germany and all corners of France.

Markets and Fairs

Early Fairs and Markets It is no longer possible nowadays to take the view that the Germanic invasions put an end to the commercial life which still characterized the last centuries of the Roman Empire. The new states which arose on all sides upon the ruins of Romania were still the scene of relatively intensive trading operations. Foreigners as well as natives took part in this economic activity. Among the former the Syrians especially attract attention. They were already to be found everywhere during the Imperial period: from Egypt to the Danube, from Spain to England. M. P. Charlesworth, among others, has fully demonstrated this point. In the fifth century Salvianus speaks of the negociatorum et Syricorum omnium turbas quae majorem ferme civitatum universarum partem occupant . These ‘Syrians’ are, however, at least in part, Greeks, and in their ranks should no doubt be included those Greek merchants of Orleans mentioned by Gregory of Tours who received a visiting Merovingian sovereign to their town with songs. In the Midi towns especially the population was a cosmopolitan one. At Narbonne, in 589, it comprised Goths, Romans, Jews, Greeks and Syrians; certainly these three last groups lived primarily by trade. The Jews, who were numerous throughout Gaul and in Spain, were frequently forbidden to possess and to traffic in Christian slaves, a fact which is proof that they did play an important role in this trade. Port organization continued to follow the Roman pattern, witness the catabolus or cataplus of Marseilles found in Gregory of Tours and in a document of Clovis III dated 692. Further evidence is to be found in the thelonearii who welcomed to Visigothic Spain the transmarini negociatores

Labour in Great Britain

The Industrial Revolution: Economic Models of the Labour Market In Britain, the hundred years or so between c . 1750 and c . 1850 saw the competition of what is conventionally called the industrial revolution, and with it the corresponding transformation of the labour force from its traditional structure into a modern industrial working class. These changes constituted a stage in an irreversible social evolution, the creation of modern industrial capitalism. The new character given to society included the emergence of new classes and of new relationships between classes. The period as a whole has a certain unity and is marked off without much difficulty as the transitional link between relatively more stable economic relations that preceded it and a re-stabilized, but different, framework that followed. Economic theorists who lived through it, beginning with the ‘classics’ of Political Economy, as well as more recent writers on economic development, have been inclined to treat it as a particular and indeed unique phase with certain laws and characteristics of its own. As far as the market for labour in this period is concerned, there has been a remarkable and indeed striking unanimity among them and among all observers. The general axiom is that in this period as a whole the market operated against labour, and that wages tended therefore to be at or near subsistence levels. The mercantilist writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had looked upon labour as merely a factor of production, which, in a competitive world in which most industry was highly labour-intensive, should be obtained at the lowest possible cost.

Capital Investment and Economic Growth in France, 1820–1930

The General Argument Until quite recently, studies of capital formation in France were few in number and relatively cursory. This lacuna was of little importance: it seemed that the findings to be expected of such research were already well known. It was thought that the level of economic growth and of investment had remained below the level which technical advance made it possible to reach – or so it seemed from a comparison with the relevant figures for other countries or even with those for France during the earlier part of the nineteenth century. For of all the countries that underwent industrialization France was one of the few to experience an early and lasting break in development. Francois Perroux was the first to identify the problem. ‘About 1860’, he writes, ‘there appeared the first signs of a slowing-down of the economy; from 1880, this became a pronounced trend.’ The rate of growth fell, and this falling-off had long-lasting effects on the economy, for during its early stages – the period 1892–1914 – the second phase of industrialization was ‘much less vigorous than the first’. Various arguments have been put forward to explain this deceleration. Two of them, related to the state of the economy, have gained general acceptance in the past. Underinvestment, runs the argument, was connected, in the first place, to the shortness of the periods during which long-term planning was possible. At the very beginning of the nineteenth century, France already laboured under this disadvantage: the stagnation of agricultural productivity and the decline in international trade had paralysed industry throughout the thirty years of insecurity and of war which lasted until 1820.

Industrial Entrepreneurship and Management in Great Britain

Introduction Since the Second World War the effort to understand the process of economic growth has been a major preoccupation of the social scientist. During this quarter-century those economic historians investigating this complex phenomenon have tended to follow the lead of the late T. S. Ashton by according a critical significance to the entrepreneur; and with their growing disenchantment with the strategic roles of natural resources and capital in economic development, economists too are increasingly promoting entrepreneurship and the supply of managerial ability to a position of greater and greater importance. More and more attention is being given to the economic and social circumstances favourable to increasing the supply of entrepreneurs, and the investigation of these circumstances is becoming ever more sophisticated. Economic historians and sociologists have identified a number of beliefs, attitudes, value systems, climates of opinion, and propensities which they have found to exert a favorable influence on the generation of enterprise and of developmental initiative. They have also stressed the role of minorities and of deviant behavior in the formation of entrepreneurial groups. [And] joining in the search,… psychologists have recently undertaken to establish the dependence of development and of entrepreneurial activity on the presence of achievement motivation. These interrelated explorations leave the student of the phenomenon of entrepreneurship both stimulated and not a little bewildered. The arguments advanced by both sociologists and psychologists are often fascinating, but the majority of them are as yet imprecise, chronologically ill-fitting, and empirically insubstantial.

The United States: Evolution of Enterprise

Introduction: Modern Business Enterprise Large business enterprises have come to dominate American production, distribution, transportation, finance, and services. Such enterprises have been products of, and prime movers in, the rapid industrialization of the United States. Indeed, this new institutional form now plays a major role in all the urban and industrial economies of the non-Communist world. Giant business organizations have become hallmarks of the twentieth century. Modern business enterprise makes use of more workers, managers, owners, machines, materials, and money than any other economic institution in history. Because of its size, it is impersonal in tone and bureaucratic in organization. Its managers, workers, and owners cannot possibly come to know one another. Its control requires the creation of a carefully defined hierarchy of offices, each with its own functions and responsibilities. The lines of authority, responsibility, and communication among offices are also carefully defined. Detailed accounts and other statistical and financial data flow through these channels. Control through statistics has become a basic managerial art. The managers of these enterprises make their careers in a single industry and often in a single firm. They are rarely, if ever, owners of their enterprises, for nearly all the enterprises are ‘publicly owned’ corporations in a legal sense, and their stock is held by thousands or even tens of thousands of shareholders. In only 15.5 per cent of the 200 largest corporations in 1963 did an individual, family, or group hold as much as 10 per cent of the stock.

The medieval economy and society : an economic history of Britain, 1100-1500

To understand the meaning of prices, trade and markets in medieval times, we need to first understand the structure of society. Anglo-Saxon institutions arose to a considerable extent from Roman foundations, but the economy was also crucially influenced by the reclamation and settlement of new land, changing population patterns, developments in agricultural methods and technology. By focusing on these realities, we can gain a new depth of insight into the key economic units of the age - guilds, towns and villages, feudal manors and land holdings.

The Cambridge Economic History of Europe. Volume III. Economic Organization and Policies in the Middle Ages

This volume examines the economic history of Europe, looking at the economic organisation and policies during the Middle Ages.

An Economic History of Western Europe 1945-1964.

preface page 3 abbreviations 8 Part 1:{emsp}Growth {ensp}1 high and smooth 11 {ensp}2 growthmanship 22 {ensp}3 employment and inflation 52 {ensp}4 trade 90 {ensp}5 investment 115 {ensp}6 innovation 143 Part 2:{emsp}The Changing Shape {ensp}7 contracting agriculture 173 {ensp}8 industrial regrouping 187 {ensp}9 OWNERSHIP: DEMOCRATIC AND PUBLIC 215 10 ownership: anonymous 230 11 the managers 265 12 the managed 302 13 cui bono 345 appendix notes 361 index 375