Economic History

George Woodcock compares Canada's two famous gold rushes and their differing economic and social effects on the Pacific West.

As Cyprus attempts to solve its debt problem by targeting private assets, Alexander Lee finds some ominous lessons in 15th-century Florence.

Some commentators predict that the 21st century will be the ‘Asian century’, marking a significant shift in power from West to East. If so, it will not be so different from the global order of the 19th century, says Thomas DuBois.

N.P. Macdonald explains how modern Brazil owes its extensive frontiers, and the discovery of many of its natural riches, to the journeys far inland, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, of pioneers in search of slaves.

2000 years ago, writes William Y. Willetts, magnificent Silks from China began to reach the wealthy families of Rome.

D.W. Brogan sketches the history of modern London.

The Monds were significant figures not only as the architects of a great modern industry but as representatives of a phase of industrial development that nowadays belongs to the past. Here Dr. W.H. Chaloner traces the rise of these determined individualists.

L.E. Harris shows how, by draining the Fens, Charles I hoped to replenish his Exchequer; but that the Dutch engineers he employed began a work that still continues.

Hugh Latimer unearths the role of the rubber plant in the story of empire and Malayan nation-building.

W.H. Chaloner profiles the contribution of Francis Egerton, the last Duke of Bridgewater, to the canal systems of Lancashire, and England at large.