Quest For Economic Empire

German unification evoked ambivalent reactions outside its borders: it revived disquietingmemories of attempts by German big business during the two world wars to build an economic empire in Europe in conjunction with the military and the government bureaucracy. But thereare also high hopes that German finance and industry will serve as the engine of reconstruction in eastern Europe, just as it played this role in the postwar unification of western Europe.

The First World War marked the end point of a process of German globalization that began in the 1870s. Learning Empire looks at German worldwide entanglements to recast how we interpret German imperialism, the origins of the First World War, and the rise of Nazism.

Over the past decade, the "German Model" of industrial organization has been the subject of vigorous debate among social scientists and historians, especially in comparison to the American one. Is a "Rhenish capitalism" still viable at the beginning of the 21st century and does it offer a road to the New Economy different from the one, in which the standards are set by the U.S.? The author, one of Germany's leading economic historians, analyzes the special features of the German path to the New Economy as it faces the American challenge. He paints a fascinating picture of Germany Inc. and looks at the durability of some of its structures and the mentalities that undergird it. He sees a "culture clash" and argues against an underestimation of the dynamics of the German industrial system. A provocative book for all interested in comparative economics and those who have been inclined to dismiss the German Model as outmoded and weak.

A comprehensive history of German society in this period, providing a broad survey of its development. The volume is thematically organized and designed to give easy access to the major topics and issues of the Bismarkian and Wilhelmine eras. The statistical appendix contains a wide range of social, economic and political data. Written with the English-speaking student in mind, this book is likely to become a widely used text for this period, incorporating as it does twenty years of further research on the German Empire since the appearance of Hans-Ulrich Wehler's classic work.

Car manufacturing involves the movement of large numbers of heavy, awkward objects incorporating some 20,000 parts, through a large number of short cycles. As to be expected the constant flow of the processes involved is disrupted by both the inherent complexities of production and those of market restrictions. This study, a unique blend of analysis, history and case studies, not only characterizes the essence of car manufacturing but also explains the links between production, market conditions and financial results and constraints. At the same time, it challenges fashionable views on the car industry and rejects the current preference for facile dichotomies (e.g. mass production vs. lean production; Japan vs. America; freedom vs. regulation). However, it also shows that the failure of BMC, the largest failure in the industry to date, cannot be attributed to its incomplete adoption of the best system. Ford and Toyota were exceptionally successful in their production organization but their solutions had more in common than is generally acknowledged, and those solutions also required exceptional market conditions for their successful implementation.

This engrossing popular history makes many intriguing connections between precious metals like gold and silver as sources of economic wealth and the rise of empires, showing that the forces of globalization have been five centuries in the making.

In Imperialism and Global Political Economy Alex Callinicos intervenes in one of the main political and intellectual debates of the day. The global policies of the United States in the past decade have encouraged the widespread belief that we live in a new era of imperialism. But is this belief true, and what does ‘imperialism’ mean? Callinicos explores these questions in this wide-ranging book. In the first part, he critically assesses the classical theories of imperialism developed in the era of the First World War by Marxists such as Lenin, Luxemburg, and Bukharin and by the Liberal economist J.A. Hobson. He then outlines a theory of the relationship between capitalism as an economic system and the international state system, carving out a distinctive position compared to other contemporary theorists of empire and imperialism such as Antonio Negri, David Harvey, Giovanni Arrighi, and Ellen Wood. In the second half of Imperialism and Global Political Economy Callinicos traces the history of capitalist imperialism from the Dutch East India Company to the specific patterns of economic and geopolitical competition in the contemporary era of American decline and Chinese expansion. Imperialism, he concludes, is far from dead.

We have seen many empires come and go. From the Roman Empire to the British Empire, we are now witnessing the decline of the US as a superpower. How do economic innovations foster global economic dominance, and how does the natural evolution of an economic empire eventually bring about its demise and replacement by other economic superpowers?