Series: Histories of Economic Life

How France's elites used soft power to pursue their imperial ambitions in the nineteenth century. After Napoleon's downfall in 1815, France embraced a mostly informal style of empire, one that emphasized economic and cultural influence rather than military conquest. A Velvet Empire is a new global history of French imperialism in the nineteenth century, providing new insights into the mechanisms...

During the late nineteenth century, opium was integral to European colonial rule in Southeast Asia. The taxation of opium was a major source of revenue for British and French colonisers, who also derived moral authority from imposing a tax on a peculiar vice of their non-European subjects. Yet between the 1890s and the 1940s, colonial states began to ban opium,...

During the late nineteenth century, opium was integral to European colonial rule in Southeast Asia. The taxation of opium was a major source of revenue for British and French colonisers, who also derived moral authority from imposing a tax on a peculiar vice of their non-European subjects. Yet between the 1890s and the 1940s, colonial states began to ban opium,...

A history that reframes the Bolsheviks' unprecedented attempts to abolish private property after the revolutions of 1917 The revolutions of 1917 swept away not only Russia's governing authority but also the property order on which it stood. The upheaval sparked waves of dispossession that rapidly moved beyond the seizure of factories and farms from industrialists and landowners, envisioned by Bolshevik...

By the late nineteenth century, Americans, both rich and poor, had come to expect high-quality fresh beef with almost every meal. Beef production in the United States transformed from small-scale, localised operations to a highly centralised industry spanning the country. This book tells the remarkable story of the violent conflict over who would reap the benefits of this new industry...

The unknown history of economic conservatism in India after independence Neoliberalism is routinely characterised as an antidemocratic, expert-driven project aimed at insulating markets from politics, devised in the North Atlantic and projected onto the rest of the world. Revising this understanding, Toward a Free Economy shows how economic conservatism emerged and was disseminated in a postcolonial society consistent with the...

How technological advances and colonial fears inspired utopian geoengineering projects during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the 1870s to the mid-twentieth century, European explorers, climatologists, colonial officials, and planners were avidly interested in large-scale projects that might actively alter the climate. Uncovering this history, Desert Edens looks at how arid environments and an increasing anxiety about climate...

A pioneering history that transforms our understanding of the colonial era and China's place in it. China has conventionally been considered a land empire whose lack of maritime and colonial reach contributed to its economic decline after the mid-eighteenth century. Distant Shores challenges this view, showing that the economic expansion of southeastern Chinese rivalled the colonial ambitions of Europeans overseas....