Italy And China An Envolving Geographical Perspective

616.18

This book examines the political connections and trade relations between Italy and China, with particular emphasis on the second half of the 19th century and the period following the Second World War. In recent years, economic relations between the two countries have intensified as a result of increasing exchange and trade agreements, with positive impacts on their political and diplomatic relations. By studying original public sources such as the Archives of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Bank of Italy and the Central State Archives in Rome, the author offers a historical perspective on the evolution of the two countries’ economic and political ties. The respective chapters address e.g. the role of international governmental authorities, the role of the Italian Bank of China, the impact of trade agreements and foreign investment projects, etc. Given its scope, the book will appeal to scholars of economic history and international economics, as well as political scientists and legal scholars with an interest in international diplomacy and trade agreements.

This book offers a critical analysis of global mobilities across China and Italy in history. In three periods in the twentieth century, new patterns of physical mobilities and cultural contact were established between the two countries which were either novel at the time of their emergence or impactful on subsequent periods. The first two chapters provide overviews of writings by Italians in China and by Chinese in Italy in the twentieth century. The remaining chapters cover: Republican China’s relationships with Italy and Italian Fascist colonialism in China during the 1920s–1930s; Italian travelers to China during the Cold War from the 1950s to the 1970s; migrations between China and Italy during the 2000s–2010s. In analyzing these cultural mobilities, this book opens a new line of inquiry in Chinese-Italian Cultural Studies, which has been dominated by historical study, and contributes a significant case study to the scholarship on global cultural mobilities.

The book provides the first detailed account of the complex geographical dynamics restructuring China’s manufacturing industries from the evolutionary economic geography perspective. These geographical and industrial shifts have enormous implications in and beyond China for what is possible in the post-crisis global economy. The book demonstrates that the interface between evolutionary economic geography approaches and other approaches (e.g. global value chain, global production network, institutional economic geography) could be a fertile area for further consideration. The two main audiences that this book appeals to are economic geography and regional science. The topics covered in the book are also relevant to development studies, economics, economic sociology and international studies, offering academics, international researchers, post-graduate and advanced undergraduate students in these fields an accessible, grounded, yet theoretically sophisticated account of the evolutionary economic geography in China and its interaction with firm performance and regional economic development. The book is also attractive to national policy makers, since it engages directly with economic and industrial policy issues, such as industrial competitiveness, regional and national development, industrial and employment restructuring, and trade regulation.

This book seeks to deepen readers’ understanding of world history by investigating urbanization and the evolution of urban systems, as well as the urban world, from the perspective of historical analysis. The theoretical framework of the approach stems directly from space-economy, and, more generally, from location theory and the theory of urban systems. The author explores a certain logic to be found in world history, and argues that this logic is spatial (in terms of spatial inertia, spatial trends, attractive and repulsive forces, vector fields, etc.) rather than geographical (in terms of climate, precipitation, hydrography). Accordingly, the book puts forward a truly original vision of urban world history, one that will benefit economists, historians, regional scientists, and anyone with a healthy curiosity.

This book analyzes spatial and temporal patterns of international trade from a geographical perspective. Trade is an important key to understanding the changing dynamics of economic spaces over time. However, studies by geographers are largely confined to case studies, whereas the spatial dimension is often missing from the approach of economists. This study highlights spatial patterns and commodity composition of global trade and the nature of relationship between trade and other economic attributes. A case study of the MERCOSUR trade block examines inter-regional and intra-regional trade flows. The book captures a comprehensive picture of the structure of international exchange by using ample maps and illustrations as supporting features. Many different methods are applied such as the location quotient to capture concentration and diversification of commodity composition, data reduction techniques such as factor analysis and regression models for relating the economic structures and trade patterns as well as residual mapping among others. This book is a significant contribution to geographical, economical and social sciences research and very useful to graduate and post-graduate students as well as scientists of all related areas who have interest in exploring the changing dynamics of the global economy via trade flows. It provides a road map to further explore different dimensions of international trade and its role in understanding the transforming global economy.

The book aims to present “traditional features” of regional science (as geographical concepts and institutions), as well as relatively new topics such as innovation and agglomeration economies. In particular it demonstrates that, contrary to what has been argued by recent economics literature, both geography and institutions (or culture) are relevant for local development. In fact, these phenomena, along with the movement of goods and workers, are among the main reasons for persisting development differentials. These intriguing relationships are at the heart of the analysis presented in this book and form the conceptual basis for a promising institutional approach to economic geography.