New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy Robert Fredona · Sophus A
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New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy Robert Fredona · Sophus A. Reinert Editors New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy Editors Robert Fredona Sophus A. Reinert Harvard Business School Harvard Business School Boston, MA, USA Boston, MA, USA ISBN 978-3-319-58246-7 ISBN 978-3-319-58247-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58247-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017943663 © Te Editor(s) (if applicable) and Te Author(s) 2018 Tis work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Te use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Te publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Te publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional afliations. Cover credit: © Photo 12/Contributor/Getty Images Printed on acid-free paper Tis Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature Te registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Te registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Contents Introduction: History and Political Economy xi Robert Fredona and Sophus A. Reinert Genoa, Liguria, and the Regional Development of Medieval Public Debt 1 Jefrey Miner Angelo degli Ubaldi and the Gulf of the Venetians: Custom, Commerce, and the Control of the Sea Before Grotius 29 Robert Fredona Capitalism and the Special Economic Zone, 1590–2014 75 Corey Tazzara Teatrum Œconomicum: Anders Berch and the Dramatization of the Swedish Improvement Discourse 103 Carl Wennerlind v vi Contents Gulliver’s Travels, Party Politics, and Empire 131 Steve Pincus Commerce, not Conquest: Political Economic Tought in the French Indies Company, 1719–1769 171 John Shovlin Te Economics of the Antipodes: French Naval Exploration, Trade, and Empire in the Eighteenth Century 203 Arnaud Orain A “Surreptitious Introduction”: Opium Smuggling and Colonial State Formation in Late Nineteenth-Century Bengal and Burma 233 Diana Kim A Place in the Sun: Rethinking the Political Economy of German Overseas Expansion and Navalism Before the Great War 253 Erik Grimmer-Solem Wesley Mitchell’s Business Cycles After 100 Years 289 Walter A. Friedman On a Certain Blindness in Economic Teory: Keynes’s Girafes and the Ordinary Textuality of Economic Ideas 319 C.N. Biltoft Between Economic Planning and Market Competition: Institutional Law and Economics in the US 349 Laura Phillips Sawyer Contents vii Punishment, Political Economy, and the Genealogy of Morals 375 Bernard E. Harcourt Epilogue 393 Index 399 Editors and Contributors About the Editors Robert Fredona is a Research Associate at Harvard Business School, USA, and an Associated Member of the Centre for Evolution of Global Business and Institutions at the York Management School, UK. Robert is interested in the intersection of law, politics, and commerce in the pre-modern world. Sophus A. Reinert is Marvin Bower Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Business, Government, and the International Economy Unit at Harvard Business School, USA. A student of political economy, Sophus works on the long histories of capitalism, globalization, development, and busi- ness-government relations from the Renaissance to today’s emerging markets. Contributors C.N. Biltoft Graduate Institute, Geneva, Switzerland Robert Fredona Harvard Business School, Boston, USA Walter A. Friedman Harvard Business School, Boston, USA ix x Editors and Contributors Erik Grimmer-Solem Wesleyan University, Middletown, USA Bernard E. Harcourt Columbia University, New York, USA Diana Kim Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington, USA Jefrey Miner Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, USA Arnaud Orain University of Paris 8, Paris, France Laura Phillips Sawyer Harvard Business School, Boston, USA Steve Pincus Yale University, New Haven, USA John Shovlin New York University, New York, USA Corey Tazzara Scripps College, Claremont, USA Carl Wennerlind Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, USA Introduction: History and Political Economy Robert Fredona and Sophus A. Reinert Te frst decade of the twenty-frst century, bookended by the terror- ist attacks of 9/11 and by a global fnancial crisis with aftershocks still resonating throughout the world, witnessed the clamorous and urgent return of both “the political” and “the economic” to historiographical debates. For some, this return could not have come sooner. Economics (both academic and “popular”) had, many argued, largely embraced increasingly abstract formal methods in the preceding decades. So much so that one economic historian could recently argue that the debate about the role of mathematics in economic theory can hardly be said to be of much signifcance in the modern literature, since there are no longer any leading economists who believe that academic economics can be a nonmathematical discipline.1 Yet, even if this debate is truly closed, an unanswered question remains: is mathematics enough? Whatever their role within econom- ics as an academic feld, these deracinated methods, for intrinsic but also complex sociological and political reasons, have tended to buttress clusters of interrelated ideological programs and proposals favoring xi xii Introduction: History and Political Economy laissez-faire policies and their global institutionalization. And these poli- cies, associated with the so-called “Washington Consensus‚” had been implemented with decidedly varying results.2 At the same time, the historical profession—ideally well positioned to provide realist ground- ing for theoretical extremes—undertook (or fell under the sway of) its “cultural turn‚” generally leaving historical economic analysis behind and relegating it to an arid subfeld of economics in the academic estab- lishment.3 Te sheer consequentiality of subsequent events, and what many—including, remarkably, even the rather partial Te Economist magazine [Fig. 1]—have seen as the manifest crisis of economic theory as such, reopened the eyes of scholars and laymen alike to the need for a more historical (or at least more historically aware) approach to eco- nomic phenomena.4 And, although far from moribund, the so-called “free trade” paradigm in Anglo-American economic thought on the one hand and the wider dominance of cultural concerns in the academic study of history on the other are at last beginning to fragment. As the cracks and fssures in their foundations continue to grow, it is becoming more important than ever to rethink the historical role of politics (and, indeed, of government) in business, economic production, (re)distribu- tion, and exchange, not to mention in the complex array of processes brought together under the umbrella of globalization.5 Indeed, although career prospects for young historians remain challenging at best, leading universities are increasingly hiring scholars working on “the history of political economy” in addition to “the history of capitalism‚” elevating the historical analysis of economic ideas and practices to new heights.6 To be blunt, “political economy” has again become something of an academic catchphrase, and it is now seen to ofer an important vantage point on the turmoil of our time. Introduction: History and Political Economy xiii Fig. 1 The Economist, July 18–24, 2009. Jon Berkeley for The Economist New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy contributes to this resurgent historiography and suggests new avenues and agendas for research on the political-economic nexus as it has developed in the Western world since the end of the Middle Ages. Far from procrustean, xiv Introduction: History and Political Economy the volume brings together purposefully selected young and estab- lished scholars from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds—his- tory, economics, law, and political science—in an efort to continue the ongoing reconceptualization of the origins and history of political economy through a variety of still largely distinct but complementary approaches—legal and intellectual, literary and philosophical, politi- cal and economic—and from a variety of related perspectives: debt and state fnance, tarifs and tax policy, the encouragement and discourage- ment of trade, accounting and bookkeeping, merchant communities and companies, smuggling and illicit trades, mercantile and colonial systems, empires and special economic zones, economic cultures, and the history of doctrines more traditionally construed. Tere are, of course, many ways of engaging with the history of polit- ical economy, and it is purposefully not our wish to suggest that there are right