Peter A. Coclanis

Capital Mobilization and Southern Industry, 1880–1905: The Case of the Carolina Piedmont

As the American South commenced its modern industrialization in the late nineteenth century, it found itself handicapped not simply by its poverty, but also by its lack of institutionalized means for mobilizing investment capital for manufacturing. Using evidence from the first major southern manufacturing region, the Carolina Piedmont, we argue that the resulting high information and transactions costs forced industrial promoters to rely heavily upon small, local investors who preferred safety to innovation. As a result, southern manufacturing firms were hampered in their flexibility, and southern industrial structure was skewed toward mature industries with little developmental potential.

Globalization in Southeast Asia

The authors attempt to accomplish four interrelated tasks in this article: (1) to develop a plausible and defensible approach to studying globalization; (2) to define Southeast Asia; (3) to delimit and historicize the globalization process in Southeast Asia; and (4) to describe and analyze the economic performance of Southeast Asia over the past 30 years or so, paying particular attention to the region before, during, and after the events of 1997.

Economic transformation and biological welfare in colonial Burma: Regional differentiation in the evolution of average height

Did economic development result in an improvement in biological welfare in the tropics before the diffusion of modern public health techniques in the 1950s and 1960s? Between the mid-19th and early 20th century, Lower Burma experienced a rapid rise in population and became increasingly commercialized as a major rice exporter. Land reclamation on a massive scale in the Irrawaddy delta required an arduous process of jungle clearance, land drainage and preparation, and canal and bund construction, mostly in malarial swamps. Once paddy lands were created, rice was grown with rudimentary tools in malarial zones. By contrast, in most parts of Upper Burma the economy remained more subsistence-oriented, and less commercialized. In this paper, we investigate changes in physical stature by processing and analyzing data reported in two anthropometric surveys conducted in various regions of Upper and Lower Burma in 1904 and in 1938-1941. An inverted U curve is observed in the evolution of average height in Lower Burma, while stature remained fairly stable in Upper Burma until the 1930s.

The Crisis in Economic History

Quantitative economic history was once all the rage. But, until recently, any and all approaches to economic history seemed to be losing ground. The authors tell us why and whether economic history is now making a comeback.Quantitative economic history was once all the rage. But, until recently, any and all approaches to economic history seemed to be losing ground. The authors tell us why and whether economic history is now making a comeback.

Back to the Future: The Globalization of Agriculture in Historical Context

Despite the breathless nature of much contemporary writing on globalization, agriculture, and food security, these issues are hardly new. This essay argues that integrated markets for many agricultural products existed well over a century ago, and, in examining the process and results of this earlier period of globalization, provides some lessons for today.

Breaking New Ground: From the History of Agriculture to the History of Food Systems

The author makes the case for an integrated approach to the study of agricultural history, an approach that explicitly connects matters pertaining to agricultural production, broadly conceived, to those pertaining to agricultural input acquisition and to the distribution and consumption of agricultural output. Drawing heavily on the economic approach known as input-output analysis (associated with the Nobel Prize-winning economist Wassily Leontief, and adapted to agriculture by John H. Davis and Ray A. Goldberg), the author lays out his systems approach to agricultural history and provides examples and cases illustrating how it might be used.

Ideas, Ideologies, and Social Movements: The United States Experience since 1800

This volume uncovers the role of ideas and ideologies in some of the most important social movements in US history. The book examines attempts to bring about or to thwart social or institutional change - from political democratization and feminism to animal rights and civil rights.

Quantification in History

The concept of quantification is defined and the evolution of quantification as a methodological tool in history is traced. Originating in the early modern period and gaining greater prominence in the nineteenth century, quantification in history came of age in the 1960s. For a time, in the 1970s and early 1980s, quantitative approaches seemed poised to revolutionize history as a field. Beginning in the mid-1980s, however, other approaches and methods, often drawn from anthropology and literature and inspired by postmodernism, began to surpass quantification in popularity, and since the late 1980s, quantitative work in history has been increasingly marginalized. But over the past decade, postmodernist approaches have lost momentum in history, and there have been some small victories by quantifiers, particularly in the field of economic history. Yet despite the fact that the approach remains indispensable for answering certain kinds of historical questions and despite the effective employment of quantitative approaches by many historically inclined scholars in other social sciences, the future of quantification in the discipline of history itself remains uncertain.

A Way Forward

Corruption recovery is a critical but understudied organizational change. We gained unique access to a company that experienced multiple corruption incidents in the months prior to our survey rollout that garnered 2,300+ respondents (71%) across 19 business units. We explored how employee perceptions of leaders’ enactment of a core set of values and of CEO and business unit leaders’ ethical leadership were associated with organizational commitment as these leaders implemented change following corruption. Results indicated that ethical leadership and values enactment were associated with increased organizational commitment. Group-level membership in units implicated in corruption was associated with reduced commitment while membership in business units with increased customer contact was associated with increased commitment. Shared employee perspectives of the ethical leadership of business unit leaders, but not the CEO, were also associated with higher commitment. We also discuss future research, limitations, and implications for management.

The Hidden Dimension: "European" Treaties in Global Perspective, 1500–1800

he tiny Indonesian island of Run, one of ten volcanic is- lands in the Banda grouping in the Banda Sea, 2,000 kilo- meters east of Java, is seldom in the news these days. Four centuries ago, however, it was all the rage, at least among European merchants and consumers. For Run, the worlds leading source of nut- meg, was the most lucrative, and thus sought after—and fought over—of the so- called Spice Islands, i.e., the Moluccas, located between Sulawesi (Celebes) and todays Papua New Guinea.