In defence of Heckscher and the idea of Mercantilism

Abstract

In his recent reappraisal of Heckscher's Mercantilism ² Dr. Coleman raised certain questions concerning Heckscher's methodological approach which transcend the immediate problem of the nature and validity of the idea of ‘mercantilism’ and have a bearing upon the broader issue of the relationships between economic conditions, ideas and policy. To the present writer, the danger that Heckscher's development of the idea of mercantilism will drive yet another wedge between the political and the economic historians as Dr. Coleman fears,³ is less serious than the danger that Heckscher's apparent reluctance to admit the influence of economic conditions upon economic ideas,⁴ and his readiness to pass directly from generalizations about economic ideas to generalizations about economic policy, will widen the existing gap between economic historians and historians of economic doctrine, two groups of scholars whose mutual services should be considerable. To the student of economic ideas who seeks to rescue his discipline from the sterile pursuit of tracing the genealogy of particular analytic propositions, of which some of his colleagues seem inordinately fond, the matter is one of crucial importance.     

Mercantilism: a materialist approach

ABSTRACT

Historians and economists have shown renewed interest in mercantilism over the last couple of years. From this interest, a dispute has arisen about whether mercantilism should be seen as an incoherent economic thought or if it is possible to ‘reconstruct’ its basic principles. In line with this latter attempt, this paper is intended to provide a materialist explanation for varying degrees of belief in shared mercantilist assumptions. My hypothesis is that belief in mercantilist assumptions is significantly dependent upon how economic and security issues materially interact in a given time and space, with uncertainty and insecurity profoundly favouring mercantilist dispositions in economic thought. To analyse this hypothesis, the paper sets the first steps for relating the credibility of mercantilism with changes in British economic and military history from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Section 3 presents ideas to further investigate this hypothesis. Section 4 concludes the paper.     

SEHR & IEHA — the early years

Abstract

In January 1952, Professor Astrid Friis asked me to accompany her and our colleague Aksel E Christensen to Stockholm for the inaugural meeting of a closed circle of Nordic historians who had set themselves the task of publishing an English-language journal of economic history. The meeting was arranged by Professor Ernst Söderlund. By way of introduction he brought us greetings from Eli F Heckscher, who by his work and debating ability had done more than anyone else to create respect for the subject of economic history in Sweden, and whose name was also renowned internationally thanks in part to his book on mercantilism. His latest achievement was the second volume of his mammoth work of Swedish economic history. Heckscher was in hospital at the time and died shortly afterwards. Thus it came about that the torch was passed on, but still it was clear that the Heckscher era was ebbing to its close.     

Serfdom in esthonia during the period of Swedish rule

Abstract

For quite some time after World War II peasant behavior in less developed countries was ‘unproblematic’. There was a general consensus that peasants were not ‘economic men’, in the sense that they tried to maximize profits as postulated by mainstream economic theory. Instead, their acts were assumed to be governed by ‘tradition’, or ‘conservatism’, which by and large had nothing to do with the type of maximizing or minimizing behavior which acquired prominence in economic theory not least by the central role that was conferred on it in Paul Samuelson's Foundations of Economic Analysis.¹ Their ambitions and horizons were thought to be limited in such a way as to render standard economic theory inapplicable in the study of peasant behavior. The discussion focused on the ‘inert’, or ‘lazy’, (satisficing) peasant.²     

Macroeconomic history in Sweden

Abstract

The term macrohistory can have reference to the overall history of large units, e.g. world development during the last two hundred years, or European history in the Middle Ages. Another example is the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Yet another is the macrohistorical problem posed by Jones in a recently-published book. He pursues the thesis that tendencies to economic growth have been present in most societies but that for various reasons they have been prevented from becoming more than just tendencies: “Why Europe rather than China?”¹     

Corruption and civic order — natural law and economic discourse in Sweden during the age of freedom

Abstract

Views on the history of economic thought have changed during recent decades, with regard both to content and to how it should be written. This special discipline was formerly dominated by an approach that was in principle anachronistic: modern economic theory functioned as the starting point and was projected backwards in time. The task of the history of economic thought was to depict the gradual perfecting of concepts and theories — the “box of tools” of which Schumpeter spoke.¹     

The economic background to the union of 1707

Abstract

The view that Scotland was in a state of economic stagnation in the seventeenth century, particularly in the years between the Restoration and the Union, is one which has long been held. Once economic and political historians have read Dr. Smout's book, however, this view will no doubt be greatly modified¹.     

A chronology of cycles in real economic activity for Norway, 1867–1914

Abstract

Business cycles, defined as “recurrent sequences of persistent and pervasive expansions and contractions in economic activities”¹, have been a distinctive feature of the experience of capitalist countries as far back as our historical records on aggregate economic activity go. Indeed, Schumpeter maintained that “[a]nalyzing business cycles means neither more nor less than analyzing the economic process of the capitalist era … Cycles are not, like tonsils, separable things that might be treated by themselves, but are, like the beat of the heart, of the essence of the organism that displays them”.²     

The Danish cattle trade during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Abstract

Danish production and exports of oxen have been the subject of frequent investigation from various points of view. Historians have chiefly tended to stress the social lop-sidedness of the trade and the dependence of these exports on the vicissitudes of the international market. While the dominant political position of the Danish nobles enabled them to monopolize the production of oxen, their economic prosperity depended on the successful maintenance of the exports.¹ Against this interpretation, however, some historians have argued that the cattle production was not only of fundamental importance to Danish agriculture but that it also made a significant contribution to the European supply. According to Erik Arup, oxen provided Denmark in the fifteenth century with an export commodity of high quality, and Astrid Friis has stressed the fundamental importance of oxen exports to the economic development of sixteenthcentury Denmark. Both interpretations, however, maintain that the production and export of oxen provided a solid economic foundation for the aristocratic rule of Denmark.²     

English and French mercantilist thought and the matter of colonies during the 17th century

Abstract

Monetary enrichment was among the hottest topics in mercantilist writings of France and England in the 17^th century. How might wealth best be increased in a world that, until the close of this period, was to remain largely without the concept of the market? Colonies came to be seen as a means of increasing the home nation's wealth given the right political and economic conditions. The economists of the day enquired into whether colonies could enrich the nation, and if so, how they might best contribute to this. Three views on this formed over the course of the period. The first view was that the economic development of the colonies should be promoted as a basis for trade on a more equitable, albeit exclusive, basis with the home nation. The ‘predatory’ view saw the colonies as a means of enrichment through unfair trade with no major local investment. The third view held that colonies were the road to the impoverishment of the home country rather than its enrichment. These three views underpinned discussion of the colonial question throughout the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th centuries.     

Technical change and the ‘technology’ myth

Abstract

In recent years, historians and other English-speaking commentators on technical change and technical functions have often chosen to discuss these matters under the heading ‘technology’. Thus, there have been discussions about such matters as ‘echnological innovation’, ‘technological invention’, and even ‘the imperatives of technology’, ‘the technostructure’ and ‘technological drivenness’.¹ One economist with a special interest in historical matters, Kuznets, has virtually defined a separable condition of ‘modernity’ as the era of ‘technology’ — ‘The epochal innovation that distinguishes the modern economic epoch is the extended application of science to problems of economic production’ alternatively, it is ‘the utilization of a potential provided by modern technology’. An economic historian (Musson) has it that ‘applied science is … the major force behind modern economic growth’. And a prominent historian of the so-called ‘technology’, Forbes, has argued that in ‘our modern world both technology and engineering are branches of applied science’.²     

English mercantilist influences on the foundation of the Portuguese School of Commerce in 1759

The Portuguese School of Commerce, founded in 1759, is promoted frequently as the world's first official, government-sponsored school to offer formal instruction in commerce. This paper contends that Sebastião Carvalho e Melo (1699–1782), the Marquis of Pombal, was responsible for the transfer, from England to Portugal, of the educational “know how” instrumental to the School's success. Pombal was influenced by the English mercantilism he observed as the Portuguese ambassador to England (1738–43), particularly proposals by a writer on mercantilism, Malachy Postlethwayt, for academy-based commercial education in England. Another influence on Pombal was former East India Company employee, John Cleland. Pombal's motives were to imitate the success of British mercantilism, develop trade and economic activity in Portugal, and improve and expand Portugal's merchant class.     

The growth of a population research group in economic history

Abstract

In Sweden there is a long tradition of studying the relationship between population and economic and social history. We have only to mention names such as Eli Heck-scher during the 40s and Gustaf Utterström during the 50s. Now population studies within the discipline of economic history are centered on the University of Lund. In the other departments of economic history population studies have had an occasional character. In Lund, however, they have been more “institutionalized” and for ten years have formed a special section of the Department, the “Research Group in Population Economics” with its own seminars, courses, etc. The causes are obvious: the different institutions are too small separately to carry out such a cost- and resource-intensive topic. A dispersion of the resources would also be an obstacle to develop its necessary research-continuity. In the following short survey of the development of the topic in Sweden it is therefore natural that I should concentrate on the population group in Lund. To characterize our research profile in a few words I emphasize     

美国“新重商主义”中的“出口垄断”探析——基于对中美文化贸易冲突的考察

重商主义作为一种思想学说和经济政策,对后世影响深远。随着金融危机的不断深化,美国的"新重商主义"也有抬头的趋势。近年来中美文化贸易领域的摩擦,就是美国"新重商主义"中的"出口垄断"的集中体现。文化产业的不断发展和文化贸易的强势竞争力是其推行"出口垄断"的现实基础;完善的知识产权体系和双边、多边贸易体制是其制度保障;通过输出美国的文化价值观,实现"文化霸权主义",又是美国推行"出口垄断"的终极目的。     

‘Where there Aren't no Ten Commandments…’

Abstract

The changes in income distribution ensuing from industrialisation constituted subject of lively interest towards the end of the 19th century. We might say that the main problem in the discussions at the time was whether Marx was right in maintaining that industrialisation would make the condition of the working class even more miserable, or whether Bernstein was right in maintaining the opposite. These discussions took place mostly in Germany. The distribution of income was again taken up as a subject for discussion on a larger scale in the 1950s, when Simon Kuznets suggested that industrialisation first increases the concentration of income which will, however, even out later on. In literature on economic growth, reference is also often made to the importance of income inequality for the accumulation of capital necessary for economic expansion. The former tradition was in Finland represented by Heikki Renvall through his studies on changes in income distribution in the largest cities. Adherents of the latter tradition are Riitta Hjerppe and John Lefgren who have written an article on features of the long-term development of income distribution in Finland.¹ During the last ten years, historical research into income distribution have again gained in popularity, inspired especially by the studies carried out by Peter H. Lindert and Jeffrey G. Williamson.²     

Business history as economic history

Abstract

Since economic history became established as an academic discipline in the Swedish universities in the 1950s, more than ISO doctoral dissertations have been published. Of these, about 10% can be characterized as business monographs, while roughly another 10% deal with aspects of trade and industry, relying mainly on business archives. Business history, accordingly, has become an established part of economic history in Sweden. Most of the literature dealing with the history of firms does not, however, appear in the form of doctoral theses, a wide range of books has been published, from sometimes heavy, academic works by established scholars, to glossy anniversary pamphlets lacking scholarly interest.¹     

Wealth and credit in the Finnish countryside, 1850–1910

Abstract

In Finland, the early phase of industrialisation, that period of transition when trade and industry began to assume modern form, commenced around the middle of the nineteenth century. A legislative programme of economic liberalism was implemented: steam sawmills were permitted, the customs system reformed, foreign trade freed from controls and rural trade allowed. The supply of credit to farming was eased by the mortgage credit institute. The Free Trade Act of 1879 was based on completely free entrepreneurial activity. These measures, together with exogenous economic factors, stimulated new economic and intellectual forces.¹     

Relief works,the world bank and private business:

Abstract

In an extended review of the arguments advanced by Mancur Olson concerning the economic rise and decline of nations Angus Maddison drew an interesting distinction between ultimate and proximate causality which implicitly invited consideration of both the nature of the discipline of economic history and the key causal factors influencing the rate of economic growth in both the short and long run.¹ To my knowledge nobody has taken the opportunity to build upon this distinction, although sustained analyses of deeper causality are less rare than when Maddison was writing.²     

Judiskt liv i Stockholm och Norden: ekonomi,identitet och assimilering 1850–1930

Abstract

The Viking Age has a remarkable place in Scandinavian economic history. The source material for this study is copious and takes the form of lots of silver coins minted during the Viking Age in many different places, chiefly in the Caliphate, the Byzantine Empire, Central Europe and England and exported to Scandinavia, particularly to Gotland, where they were hoarded and sometimes buried. Those which have been recovered, some two hundred thousand, are now preserved in various museums, chiefly in the unique collection in Kungl. myntkabinettet, Statens museum för mynt-, medalj- och penninghistoria, (The Royal Coin Cabinet, National Museum of Monetary History), Stockholm.     

Europe,Germany and “The German Model”: Economic Links and Implications for China

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the economic links first between the European Union (EU) and China and then I focus on the economic relationships between Germany and China. The links I will consider include international trade and direct investment. Lastly I highlight some elements of the so-called “German Model” or the “Berlin Way” and examine if they can be of policy relevance to China. There are four main results: first, EU-China trade and investment relationships are strong, deepening rapidly but they are somewhat unbalanced and asymmetric. Second, the economic relationships between Europe and China are focused on manufacturing. Third, the EU-China relationships are primarily Deutschland-centric. Lastly, elements of the “German Model” such as Mitbestimmung, Mittelstand and the German apprenticeship system can have important structural and policy implications as China continues to grow and experiment with reforms aiming at combining stability, harmony and competitiveness.