The Market In History Routledge Revivals

First published in 1986. The free market is often associated with liberty and individualism, and this connection has been made for more centuries than is generally realised. This essays collected in this book trace the development, importance and influence of the market as a dominating component of the shared human life from classical antiquity to the present. The authors, from various backgrounds, keep constantly in view the moral and political questions raised by the role of markets, as well as laying out succinctly what can be known or deduced about the actual operation of the market in Western and other cultures. This book will be of interest to students of economics and history.

First published in 1987, this is a reissue of the first book to offer a detailed comparison of two of the foremost stock exchanges in world before 1914. It is not only an exercise in comparative economic history but it also relates these institutions to wider world markets, thereby clarifying their functions and how they related to the general financial and economic framework. Students and researchers in economic and social history will welcome the reissue of this groundbreaking account of two historically important institutions in a crucial period of their development. Financial practitioners and others will also find much of interest here, in terms of both fascinating history and of insights into an era when a global market was rapidly evolving largely free of the twentieth-century distortions and hindrances introduced by wars, interventionist governments and exchange controls.

First published in 1986. The free market is often associated with liberty and individualism, and this connection has been made for more centuries than is generally realised. This essays collected in this book trace the development, importance and influence of the market as a dominating component of the shared human life from classical antiquity to the present. The authors, from various backgrounds, keep constantly in view the moral and political questions raised by the role of markets, as well as laying out succinctly what can be known or deduced about the actual operation of the market in Western and other cultures. This book will be of interest to students of economics and history.

The Market and Its Critics, first published in 1988, considers the reaction of socialist writers to the growth of the market economy in nineteenth century Britain, and examines in detail the diverse elements of the critique which they formulated. Dr Thompson looks at the theoretic and thematic continuities and discontinuities over the century, structuring his study around the idea of a changing socialist response to the market economy. Much of the literature in question is comprehensive, perceptive and acute. However, the writers invariably discounted the possibility of the market playing a role in a future socialist or communist commonwealth. The solutions they posited to the problem were inapplicable to the increasingly industrial economy of the time. It was this that left their writing vulnerable to attack, and which had profound consequences both for the fate of the socialist political economy in nineteenth century Britain and its subsequent evolution in the twentieth century.

This edited collection, first published in 1991, focuses on the commercial relations, marketing structures and development of consumption that accompanied early industrial expansion. The papers examine aspects of industrial structure and work organisation, including women’s work, and highlight the conflict and compromise between work traditions and the emergence of a market culture. With an overarching introduction providing a background to European manufacturing, this title will be of particular interest to students of social and economic history researching early industrial Europe and the concurrent emergence of a material, consumer culture.

First published in 1981, Labour Market Economics develops the basic economic theory of introductory courses within the context of labour market analysis and applies it both to particular features and special problems of the subject. The author begins by outlining the nature of the area and the structure of the UK labour market at the time, and proceeds to explain and elaborate the tools of theoretical analysis. These are then applied in subsequent chapters to a variety of issues, including the economic analysis of trade unions, collective bargaining and the effects of unions, unemployment, wage inflation and the inequality of pay. Throughout the book, emphasis is placed on the economic theory of the labour market and the role of empirical work in testing its predictions, and wherever available, evidence from studies of the UK labour markets is cited.

First published between 1975 and 1991, this set reissues 13 volumes that originally appeared as part of the History Workshop Series. This series of books, which grew out of the journal of the same name, advocated ‘history from below’ and examined numerous, often social, issues from the perspectives of ordinary people. In the words of founder Raphael Samuel, the aim was to turn historical research and writing into ‘a collaborative enterprise’, via public gatherings outside of a traditional academic setting, that could be used to support activism and social justice as well as informing politics. Some of the topics examined in the set include: mineral workers, rural radicalism, and the lives and occupations of villagers in the nineteenth century; working class association; the development of left-wing workers theatre and the changing attitudes to mass culture across the twentieth century; the changing fortunes of the East End at the turn of the century; the position of women from the nineteenth century to the present; the miners’ strike of 1984-5; the social and political images of late-twentieth century London; and a three volume analysis of the myriad facets of English patriotism. This set will be of interest to students of history, sociology, gender and politics.