Economic History

It has been 60 years since the Aberfan disaster of 1966, but memories of corporate failings and injustice persist.

Charles Hatry’s fraudulent business empire collapsed on 20 September 1929. It was the biggest crash the London stock market had ever seen.

Capitalism: A Global History by Sven Beckert looks beyond the cities to the coffee and cotton that fuelled a global market.

Never again – until next time. 1873: The First Great Depression and the Making of the Modern World by Liaquat Ahamed explores one financial panic amongst many.

In 1903 a group of politicians tried to sell tariffs as a panacea to all of Britain’s problems. Would the public buy it?

Russia’s entry into the global economy was met with glee by international firms in the early 1990s. The exodus has been just as sudden.

Forty years of opening and reform persuaded a lot of people that the Chinese are not really communists. But modern China was modelled on the USSR, and its leaders want to revert to their Leninist roots.

The term ‘money laundering’ is often associated with mobsters, drug lords and morally dubious executives. But the expression’s first use was far less lawless. 

Eli and the Octopus: The CEO Who Tried to Reform One of the World’s Most Notorious Corporations by Matt García is a human story amid mergers, sales, profits and losses.

Privatisation of Chile’s natural resources was a pillar of Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship.