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Economic history

Essays and videos on social issues, history, political life and the future

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Medieval painting of a circular walled city with towers and a large lamb statue on a roof, surrounded by countryside.

essayPolitical philosophy

The allure of autarky

Liberal thinkers are shocked that nations are once again isolating from the world. The real surprise would be if they didn’t

Ben Chu

An urban slum with people, horses and goats amidst debris, shacks and informal structures in the background.

essayPoverty and development

Raising the threshold

The World Bank’s poverty line is inaccurate and out of date – an error that obscures the feebleness of market solutions

Attrishu Bordoloi

A suburban street with mountains in the background, featuring a girl on a bike, parked cars, and old furniture on the sidewalk in front of a house.

essayProgress and modernity

The great wealth wave

The tide has turned – evidence shows ordinary citizens in the Western world are now richer and more equal than ever before

Daniel Waldenström

Shopfront of NY 99 Cent Fresh Pizza restaurant with an open sign, vaccine notice, and menu visible through the window.

essayEconomic history

Economics 101

Why introductory economics courses continued to teach zombie ideas from before economics became an empirical discipline

Walter Frick

A medieval painting shows three figures: one holds a balance scale, weighing objects; two robed figures stand nearby. There are coins on the table and intricate border details.

essayHistory of ideas

Reimagining balance

In the Middle Ages, a new sense of balance fundamentally altered our understanding of nature and society

Joel Kaye

A collage showing a ‘just married’ car, a couple speaking with a bank teller, a couple by a crib, and a close-up of a BankAmericard with a gold coin in a money clip.

essayEconomic history

Credit card nation

Americans have always borrowed, but how exactly did their lives become so entangled with the power of plastic cards?

Sean H Vanatta

A street intersection; a wall is painted with the word Soulsville in large letters with peeling paint

essayEconomic history

The southern gap

In the American South, an oligarchy of planters enriched itself through slavery. Pervasive underdevelopment is their legacy

Keri Leigh Merritt

Close-up of an orange Mercedes car with the focus on the front tyre, which is inscribed with ‘In Crypto We Trust’

essayEconomics

The cruelty of crypto

Selling itself as the new American dream, crypto exposes the vulnerable to fraud and scams, and loads risk onto the poor

Rachel O’Dwyer

A person adjusts a digital board displaying red illuminated numbers, possibly currency exchange rates, against a blurred background of people.

essayEconomics

Finance as alchemy

Finance fraud is not a deviation from an essentially rational system but a window onto the reality-distortion of markets

Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou

An older man stands proudly in front of his house near Leipzig, east Germany after reunification in 1990. A German flag hangs from a ground floor window.

essayEconomic history

Deservingness

In post-communist eastern and central Europe, history is intensely personal and economics is saturated with moral feeling

Till Hilmar

Massive explosion with bright orange and yellow flames in the sky, seen from a distance on a country road with trees and fields nearby.

essayGlobal history

The polycrisis

Is this the word we need to describe unprecedented convergences between ecological, political and economic strife?

Ville Lähde

Painting of a lively medieval village with men and women dancing and socialising in colourful traditional clothing on a grassy area.

videoArt

Why European artists shifted their focus from power to peasants in the 16th century

5 minutes

Traditional Chinese landscape painting depicting misty mountains, trees, and a river with boats, accompanied by Chinese calligraphy in the upper right corner.

essayEnvironmental history

Masts like a forest

How the trees of China – fir, camphor, ironwood and nanmu – were used to build an empire that lasted for centuries

Ian M Miller

A monk in a robe holds up a small glass, inspecting its contents, with a serene expression and industrial equipment in the background.

essayEconomic history

A gospel of enjoyment

The French idea of the good life doesn’t always make rational economic sense. So much the worse for traditional economics

Charly Coleman

A cityscape view with reflections of people on windows and a dramatic cloudy sky in the background.

essayEarth science and climate

Deep warming

Even if we ‘solve’ global warming, we face an older, slower problem. Waste heat could radically alter Earth’s future

Mark Buchanan

A man and a woman with tattoos are standing in a kitchen, one shirtless and the other in a blue top, both in a contemplative mood.

essayEconomic history

Matrimony and the market

The sexual revolution promised new norms of intimacy based on egalitarianism. So far, only the rich have cashed in

Daniel Tutt

Abandoned shopping trolley beside a closed, grey roller shutter, surrounded by fallen autumn leaves.

essayEconomics

The empty basket

Economics is the language of power and affects us all. What can we do to improve its impoverished menu of ideas?

Ha-Joon Chang

A group of uniformed school students, with a boy holding a yellow flag, gathered outside a traditional-looking building.

essayEducation

Hitozukuri

Japan’s Cold War education policy used religion to ‘make’ the ideal humans needed by its nascent economy. Did it work?

Jolyon Baraka Thomas

An elderly person holding a bowl with a baby on their back, standing in front of rows of hanging maize cobs.

essayEconomic history

The golden fuel

Asia’s rise to economic power and food security has been powered not by rice but by American maize, the ultimate flex-crop

Peter A Coclanis

Priests in white robes stand in a dimly lit church, with beams of light shining through smoke from a window above.

essayEconomic history

Jesuits in the boardroom

As corporations struggle to survive in a more uncertain world, they should look to the success of the Society of Jesus

Paolo Quattrone

Man carrying a bundle of sticks on his shoulder, walking across a plank over a ditch in a barren, harvested field; another person carrying sticks in the background.

essayGlobal history

Ever more land and labour

Centuries of capitalism saw the global countryside ruthlessly converted into cheap commodities. But at what cost?

Sven Beckert & Ulbe Bosma

Man with glasses and a moustache, mid-sentence, wearing a jacket over a white shirt and black tie, seated on a sofa for an interview.

videoHistory of ideas

Peter Singer charts the path from Hegelian philosophy to Marxist revolution

43 minutes

A group of children perform on stage with a woman playing piano, in a room with stained glass windows and Christmas decorations.

essayHistory

History by numbers

Is history a matter of individual agency and action, or of finding and quantifying underpinning structures and patterns?

Claire Lemercier & Claire Zalc

Two people walking with a shopping trolley past old, weathered buildings on a narrow street, with a blue arrow sign pointing left.

essayDemography and migration

The ungreat replacement

Workers in the West have indeed been repressed – but not by immigrants. The policies of their own governments are to blame

John Rapley