The City of London and slavery: evidence from the first dock companies, 1795–18001

Through analysing the composition of the founding shareholders in the West India and London Docks, this article explores the connections between the City of London and the slave economy on the eve of the abolition of the slave trade. It establishes that over one‐third of docks investors were active in slave‐trading, slave‐ownership, or the shipping, trading, finance, and insurance of slave produce. It argues that the slave economy was neither dominant nor marginal, but instead was fully integrated into the City's commercial and financial structure, contributing materially alongside other key sectors to the foundations of the nineteenth‐century City.     

The early modern great divergence: wages,prices and economic development in Europe and Asia, 1500–18001

Contrary to the claims of Pomeranz, Parthasarathi, and other ‘world historians’, the prosperous parts of Asia between 1500 and 1800 look similar to the stagnating southern, central, and eastern parts of Europe rather than the developing north‐western parts. In the advanced parts of India and China, grain wages were comparable to those in north‐western Europe, but silver wages, which conferred purchasing power over tradable goods and services, were substantially lower. The high silver wages of north‐western Europe were not simply a monetary phenomenon, but reflected high productivity in the tradable sector. The ‘great divergence’ between Europe and Asia was already well underway before 1800.     

‘The rules of the game’: London finance,Australia, and Canada,c.1900–14

It is often asserted that, between 1865 and 1914, economic dependence on British capital subjected settler societies to an unofficial imperialism wielded by the City of London. This article argues that both advocates and critics of such models, particularly in the recent controversy over ‘gentlemanly capitalism’, pay insufficient attention to the City itself. Using the Edwardian City's connections with Australia and Canada, it illustrates the range of financial intermediaries involved and explores their perceptions of political economy in these countries. It concludes that the City's influence (or ‘structural power’) was limited by its internal divisions and hazy conceptions of political economy.     

Commerce,clusters, and community: a re‐evaluation of the occupational geography of London,c. 1400–c. 1550

The economic geography of cities is often thought to have changed dramatically between the medieval and early modern eras. The medieval city is seen as having been strictly regulated, both in terms of markets, and in terms of space. The early modern city, by contrast, is associated not only with growth, but with the breakdown of rigid regulation by guilds and a new commercial outlook. However, empirical studies of the spatial organization of medieval cities have been limited, and quantitative surveys of urban economic geography have focused on the seventeenth century and later. This article analyses the spatial distribution of occupations in the City of London between the 1370s and the 1550s using a large probate dataset. It examines occupations that remained clustered or dispersed, but concentrates on the apparent breakdown in economic clustering among London's leading trades. Prosopographical analysis reveals that merchants and retailers became more specialized, but that this was accommodated within London's existing guild‐based occupational identities, which had become ossified. Rather than the end of the middle ages having marked a dramatic change from guild‐based spatial organisation, occupational clusters simply continued to evolve in line with the principles of locational economics throughout the period.     

Long‐term trends in economic inequality: the case of the Florentine state,c. 1300–1800

This article provides an overview of economic inequality, particularly of wealth, in the Florentine state (Tuscany) from the early fourteenth to the late eighteenth century. Regional studies of this kind are rare, and this is only the second‐ever attempt at covering such a long period. Consistent with recent research conducted on other European areas, during the early modern period we find clear indications of a tendency for economic inequality to grow continually, a finding that for Tuscany cannot be explained as the consequence of economic growth. Furthermore, the exceptionally old sources we use allow us to demonstrate that a phase of declining inequality, lasting about one century, was triggered by the Black Death from 1348 to 1349. This finding challenges earlier scholarship and significantly alters our understanding of the economic consequences of the Black Death.     

European integration and corporate restructuring: the strategy of Unilever,c.1957–c.19901

European integration and corporate restructuring: the strategy of Unilever, c.1957‐c.1990. While much has been written about the politics of European integration, discussion about the role of business in this process has been largely confined to lobbying activities. This article focuses on the business reaction to European integration. It highlights the constraints facing one of Europe's largest firms in building a regional detergents business. These included divergences in market demand and political obstacles to rationalization, but more serious was a corporate culture based around local decision making and consensus. The study demonstrates that a full understanding of the European integration process must incorporate a firm‐level analysis of how Europe‐wide businesses were built after 1957.     

Villeinage in England: a regional case study,c.1250–c.13491

Between 1200 and 1349, villeinage was not prominent in Suffolk, and, even in those places where it was locally significant, many of its exactions were lightly enforced. The gap between the theory and practice of villeinage was maintained by custom, although this article emphasizes both the importance of regional custom and its mutability. The relative insignificance of villeinage here has two main implications: first, villeinage cannot have caused any crisis of agrarian productivity before the Black Death; and second, its subsequent dissolution cannot have been the prime mover behind the transformation of the landholding structure and the emergence of agrarian capitalism.