BOOK: Fidel J. TAVÁREZ, Assembling an Imperial Machine: Spanish Commercial Reform in the Age of Enlightenment (Oxford: OUP, 2026), ISBN 9780197755051

 

(image source: OUP)

Abstract:

In the eighteenth century, a host of Spanish statesmen compared well-ordered empires to harmonious machines and devised a comprehensive plan to liberalize and integrate the imperial economy. The main initiative of this economic plan was a commercial policy that contemporaries called comercio libre, which entailed replacing the traditional fleets and galleons with a new system of free trade within the empire. The statesmen who designed this new imperial vision became convinced that the pursuit of markets, rather than military power alone, was the key to succeeding in a modern commercial society. But where their European counterparts remained committed to international trade, Spanish ministers focused on integrating Spain’s metropolitan and colonial territories. In fact, Spanish statesmen reasoned that the Hispanic world’s vast territories were a microcosm of the global economy that could become both self-sufficient and impervious to international commercial pressures. They also recognized that the viability of this closed commercial empire depended on synergizing millions of subjects across Spain’s dominions, which is why they insisted on the importance of integrating Indigenous and Afro-descendant wage workers and consumers. Combining intellectual history, Atlantic history, and the history of the Bourbon reforms, Assembling an Imperial Machine shows that, rather than a mercantilist atavism, the Hispanic world’s commercial reforms represented a genuine attempt to solve the dilemmas of early modern globalization, an endeavor that, in turn, inaugurated the enduring fascination with erecting a free trade bloc in Latin America.

Read more here: 10.1093/9780197755082.001.0001.

 

MAGAZINE: 1000 ans de capitalisme (L'Histoire, JUL-AUG 2026)

 

(image source: L'Histoire)

The French magazine L'Histoire devotes its Summer edition to "a thousand years of capitalism", with contributions by inter alios Prof. Wim Decock (Oxford/UCLouvain/ULiège).

Read more here. 

BOOK: Lukas HERGET, Wettbewerb oder Industriepolitik? Die Europäische Fusionskontrolle als Spielball nationaler Wirtschaftspolitiken (1958-1989) [Rechtsordnung und Wirtschaftsgeschichte; 27] (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2025), 260 p. ISBN 978-3-16-164390-3

 

 

 

ABOUT THE BOOK:

 

Lukas Herget untersucht die Entstehung der Europäischen Fusionskontrolle von den 1950er Jahren bis zum Erlass der Fusionskontrollverordnung 1989 und analysiert dabei die Rolle zentraler Akteure auf supranationaler, intergouvernementaler und nationaler Ebene. Im Fokus stehen zwei übergeordnete Fragen: Wie wirkten sich Pfadabhängigkeiten gegenüber nationalen Ordnungsvorstellungen auf die Verhandlungspositionen zur Ausgestaltung der Fusionskontrolle aus? Welche Strategien verfolgten die beteiligten Akteure, um ihre jeweiligen Interessen durchzusetzen? Der Autor stützt sich auf Archivmaterial aus deutschen und europäischen Archiven und verfolgt einen akteurszentrierten Ansatz, der personelle und rechtliche Kontinuitäten sowie Brüche offenlegt. Interdisziplinär werden dabei rechtsgeschichtliche, wettbewerbstheoretische sowie integrations- und politikgeschichtliche Perspektiven verbunden.

 

TABLE OF CONTENT:

 

I. Die Europäische Fusionskontrolle im Kontext des europäischen Wettbewerbsrechts - II. Forschungsstand - III. Fragestellung, Erkenntnisinteresse, Quellen
I. Die Aushandlung des gemeinsamen Wettbewerbsrechts des EWG-Vertrags - II. Die Durchsetzung der Kommission als Wettbewerbsbehörde - III. Zusammenfassung
I. Das Problem der Unternehmenskonzentration auf dem Gemeinsamen Markt - II. Der Paradigmenwechsel der Kommission - III. Zusammenfassung
I. Die Entscheidung der Kommission - II. Das Auseinanderfallen von wettbewerbspolitischem Anspruch und wettbewerbsrechtlichen Möglichkeiten. Das gerichtliche Verfahren im Fall Continental Can - III. Das EuGH-Urteil als Auslöser für den Rechtsetzungsprozess - IV. Zusammenfassung
I. Der »Ur-Vorschlag« der Kommission von 1973 - II. Die Resonanz auf den Verordnungsvorschlag - III. Zusammenfassung
I. Die ersten Verhandlungen auf Gemeinschaftsebene - II. Der Verordnungsvorschlag und die Entwicklungen in der zweiten Hälfte der 1970er Jahre - III. Zusammenfassung
I. Resignation und Neubeginn. Der Verordnungsvorschlag Anfang der 1980er Jahre - II. Das »Philip-Morris-Urteil« des EuGH als Wendepunkt für die Verhandlungen - III. Das finale Aushandeln und der Erlass der Fusionskontrollverordnung - IV. Zusammenfassung

 

Find more here. 

BOOK: Manuel HERRERO SÁNCHEZ, Jonatán OROZCO CRUZ & Pedro CARDIM (eds.), The Asiento System and the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans (circa 1580–1750) [The Atlantic World, ed. Benjamin SCHMIDT & Wim KLOOSTER; vol. 41] (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2026), xiv + 374 p. ISBN 978-90-04-54929-6, € €157.94

 

(image source: Brill)

Abstract:

This is the first edited volume to focus explicitly on the asiento, the contractual framework that regulated the transatlantic slave trade to Spanish America between the late sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries. As the mechanism that structured a vast system of human trafficking – one of the foundational tragedies of the modern world – the asiento functioned as a legal, political, and commercial instrument of empire. Drawing on new archival research in multiple languages and from repositories across the Atlantic, the chapters trace the negotiated nature of these contracts, the transimperial flows they enabled, and the roles played by formal and informal agents of diverse social, ethnic, and institutional backgrounds. Contributors are: Pedro Cardim, Christopher Ebert, Manuel F. Fernández Chaves, Alejandro García Montón, Miguel Geraldes Rodrigues, Manuel Herrero Sánchez, Wim Klooster, Thiago Krause, Maximiliano Mac Menz, Joseph Mainberger, Ramona Negrón, Linda Newson, Jonatán Orozco Cruz, Edgar Pereira, William Pettigrew, Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, Klaus Weber, and David Wheat.

 On the editors:

Manuel Herrero Sánchez is Professor of Early Modern History at Pablo de Olavide University in Seville. His research focuses on the comparative approach to the history of the Dutch Republic and Genoa, and on the Spanish Monarchy considered as a polycentric imperial structure composed of urban republics. Jonatán Orozco Cruz is Predoctoral Researcher at Pablo de Olavide University, where he is developing his PhD dissertation Transnational Social Networks Connecting Imperial Spaces: the Spanish Monarchy and the Slave Asiento (1675–1694) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Manuel Herrero Sánchez. Pedro Cardim is Associate Professor of History at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. He has published widely on Iberian history, early modern legal history, and Portuguese colonisation of Brazil.

Rad more here: DOI  10.1163/9789004549296.

BOOK: H. Alberto FEENSTRA, Frontiers of Finance: The Political Economy of Public Debt in the Dutch Republic [Library of Economic History, eds. Jeremy LAND, Tomoko SHIROYAMA & Jeroen TOUWEN] (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2025), ISBN

 

(image source: Brill)

Abstract:

This book analyses the political economy of provincial public debt within the federal Dutch Republic. Frontiers of Finance: The Political Economy of Public Debt in the Dutch Republic shows that the domestic effect of Holland's financial revolution and Amsterdam's subsequent rise to an international financial centre was limited. Instead, the fiscal and legal fragmentation caused differences in risk, capital supply, transaction costs and, consequently, borrowing costs. The merits of Holland’s financial revolution were thus not transferable to another context. The results are relevant for wider debates about the role of institutions and the financial sector for economic growth.

On the author:

Alberto Feenstra, Ph.D. (2018), University of Amsterdam, is postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University. He publishes on Dutch financial history, including provincial debt and monetary colonial history. 

Read more here: DOI  10.1163/9789004745254.

PHEDRA WINTER SCHOOL: Corporate and mercantile bankruptcy, insolvency and debt: approaches from legal and economic history (Venice, 29-31 OCT 2024)

PHEDRA WINTER SCHOOL 

Corporate and mercantile bankruptcy, insolvency and debt: 

approaches from legal and economic history 

Venice, 29-31 October 2024 

Palazzi Minelli e Contarini - Sestiere Cannaregio, 3536 

Free entry 

Program 

October 29th 

12h00-13h15 Lunch 

13h15 Welcome words, introduction – Dave De ruysscher – Vrije Universiteit Brussels-Tilburg 

University  and Luisa Brunori – Cnrs/École Normale Supérieure. 

13h30-14h10 Albrecht Cordes – Goethe-Universität Frankfurt: The debtor's coat. Provisions on 

insolvency, bankruptcy and debtor protection in the law of Lübeck in the XIIIth century 

14h10-14h50 Giuseppe Speciale – Università di Catania: The relationship between ius commune and 

statutory law: bankruptcy procedures and the revocatory action 

14h50-15h10 Coffee 

15h10-15h50 Alarico Barbagli – Università della Magna Grecia: The "consilia" about insolvency and 

bankruptcy in the XIVth-XVth centuries 

15h50-16h30 Fleur Stolker – University of Cambridge: The forgotten history of bankruptcy, 1543- 

1624 

16h30-17h10 Jérôme Sgard – SciencesPo Paris: Insolvency proceedings in England (XVIIth-XVIIIth 

centuries) 

Drink at Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani 

20h30 Dinner 

October 30th 

9h00-9h40 Ron Harris – Tel Aviv University: The corporate attribute of limited liability in the XIXth 

century and its interaction with bankruptcy law 

9h40-10h20 Pierre-Cyrille Hautcœur – Paris School of Economics/EHESS: Bankruptcy history from 

the point of view of economic history 

10h20-10h40 Coffee 

10h40-11h20 Annamaria Monti – Università Statale di Milano: Insolvency and bankruptcy in 

XIXth and early XXth-century Italian legal doctrine 

11h20-12h00 Cristina Ciancio – Università del Sannio: Insolvency and bankruptcy in the Kingdom 

of Italy. Codes and commercial courts (XIX-XXth centuries) 

12h00-12h40 Justine Chauvel – Université Paris Est Créteil Val de Marne: The landlord's pledge over 

the commercial tenant's goods. A comparative study of its influence on tenant's bankruptcy in French, 

German, and English territories (XVIIIth-XIXth centuries) 

12h40-14h00 Lunch 

14h00-14h40 Thomas Max Safley – University of Pennsylvania – Law and institutions in early modern 

bankruptcy 

14h40-15h20 Maurits den Hollander – Tilburg University: Early modern insolvency legislation in 

Amsterdam 

15h20-15h40 Coffee 

15h40-16h20 Roberto Ganau – New York University: Imprisonment for debt and bankruptcy in 

Revolutionary England 

16h20-17h00 Mona Bouquin – Université de Dijon: Insolvency Law in the XIXth and XXth centuries: 

a Franco-German comparison 

17h00-17h40 Rodrick Van der Smissen – Vrije Universiteit Brussels: Roman law and the formative 

interpretation of history in the nineteenth-century insolvency law 

19h00 Dinner 

October 31st 

9h00-9h40 Francesca Fusco – Università di Padova: Italian insolvency and bankruptcy terms from the 

Middle Ages to the XXIst  century 

9h40-10h20 Emanuela Fugazza – Università di Pavia: A crime in search of definition: The bankruptcy 

of the merchant from the Ordonnance du Commerce to the Bankruptcy Law of 1942 

10h20-11h00 Thomas Telfer – Western University: Justifying a provincial bankruptcy and 

insolvency power for municipalities:  An analysis of Ladore v Bennett (1939) and its divergence from 

twentieth century federalism jurisprudence in Canada 

11h00-11h20 Coffee 

11h20-12h00 Virginia Torrie – Western University: The influence of Saskatchewan and Alberta in 

the development of the Canadian bankruptcy and insolvency law 

12h00-12h40 Juma Noah Omollo – Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory: 

Legal transfer of the English fraud doctrine for the regulation of bank failure to the Uganda Protectorate 

c. 1885-1965 

12h40-13h20 Máté Pétervári – University of Szeged: The compulsory non-bankruptcy settlement 

procedure in the practice of the Royal Regional Court of Kalocsa (1915-1929) 

13h30 Lunch 

https://phedraproject.wordpress.com/ 

Scientific committee: 

Dave De ruysscher – University of Tilburg/VUB     dave.de.ruysscher@vub.be 

Luisa Brunori – École Normale Supérieure / CNRS     luisa.brunori@ens.psl.eu

BOOK: Marc-William PALEN, Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2024), 328 p. ISBN 9780691199320

 

(image source: Princeton)

Book abstract:

Today, free trade is often associated with right-wing free marketeers. In Pax Economica, historian Marc-William Palen shows that free trade and globalisation in fact have roots in nineteenth-century left-wing politics. In this counterhistory of an idea, Palen explores how, beginning in the 1840s, left-wing globalists became the leaders of the peace and anti-imperialist movements of their age. By the early twentieth century, an unlikely alliance of liberal radicals, socialist internationalists, feminists, and Christians envisioned free trade as essential for a prosperous and peaceful world order. Of course, this vision was at odds with the era’s strong predilections for nationalism, protectionism, geopolitical conflict, and colonial expansion. Palen reveals how, for some of its most radical left-wing adherents, free trade represented a hard-nosed critique of imperialism, militarism, and war. Palen shows that the anti-imperial component of free trade was a phenomenon that came to encompass the political left wing within the British, American, Spanish, German, Dutch, Belgian, Italian, Russian, French, and Japanese empires. The left-wing vision of a “pax economica” evolved to include supranational regulation to maintain a peaceful free-trading system—which paved the way for a more liberal economic order after World War II and such institutions as the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization. Palen’s findings upend how we think about globalisation, free trade, anti-imperialism, and peace. Rediscovering the left-wing history of globalism offers timely lessons for our own era of economic nationalism and geopolitical conflict.

On the author:

Marc-William Palen is a historian at the University of Exeter and the author of The “Conspiracy” of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle over Empire and Economic Globalisation, 1846–1896. 

Read more here. 

COURSE: XVI Collegio di Diritto Romano / Collegium of Roman Law - CEDANT 2024: 'Taxation in Rome, from City to Empire: History, Economy and Law' [DEADLINE 16 October 2023]

(Source: Fondazione Ghislieri)

CEDANT - Center for Studies and Research of Ancient Law, University of Pavia, organizes the XVI Collegium of Roman Law on: Taxation in Rome, from City to Empire: History, Economy and Law (III sec. BCE - III sec. CE). The activities will be held in person at Collegio Ghislieri, partner of the Center, under the direction of Jerôme France and Alberto Dalla Rosa (University of Bordeaux Montaigne) from January 8th to 26th, 2024.

Further information will soon be available at https://www.ghislieri.it/en/foundation-ghislieri/cedant/. 

To access the application form, please use the following link: https://forms.gle/w9XrvP5Ebc5jiEpr9

The DEADLINE for application is Monday, October 16th, 2023.

CFP: Workshop 'Sovereignty and Commercial Cities (c. 1400 - c. 1650)' - Tilburg University, 14-15 December 2023 [DEADLINE 1 OCTOBER 2023]

On the 14th and 15th of December a two day workshop will be held at Tilburg University in order to bring together scholars working on urban history, legal history and economic history of the later medieval and early modern period.

The focus of this workshop is the sovereignty of cities of trade. If interested, please send in an abstract of 500 words to d.deruysscher@Tilburguniversity.edu before 1 October 2023. 

More information 

BOOK: Stefano MALPASSI. LA «DEMOCRAZIA ECONOMICA» AMERICANA Alla ricerca di un ordine giuridico del mercato, tra cultura individualistica e tentazioni corporativistiche (1919-1939). (Milano, Giuffrè, 2023). ISBN 9788828850229. 49,40€

 

(Source: https://shop.giuffre.it/024218850-la-democrazia-economica-americana)

Nel Novecento il rapporto tra diritto ed economia ha condizionato grandemente l’evoluzione del pensiero giuridico americano, a partire da quelle teorizzazioni dell’ordine del mercato che nel ventennio fra le due guerre mondiali si fondavano sempre più spesso sul ripensamento, o persino sul rifiuto, dell’individualismo. Le soluzioni istituzionali create per far fronte all’emergenza bellica, prima, e per rispondere alla Grande depressione, poi, facevano emergere un protagonismo nuovo dello Stato ma anche dei gruppi sociali, che ha condizionato la disciplina della concorrenza e del credito imponendo, infine, una trasformazione dell’ordine giuridico-costituzionale. Un processo che s’inseriva in un contesto culturale popolato sempre più da teorizzazioni ultra-individualistiche e nel quale il corporativismo appariva una riflessione capace di conciliare, invece, iniziativa privata e regolazione pubblica, alimentando così l’interesse per il modello fascista, pur lontano dalla tradizione (giuspolitica) e dal contesto (geografico e nazionale) americano. Corporativismo e New Deal possono essere riletti, allora, anche alla luce di questi studi incrociati, i quali, al di là del successo o dell’insuccesso delle diverse soluzioni immaginate, hanno favorito un ripensamento del rapporto diritto-economia capace di condizionare i contorni della nuova «democrazia economica» americana.

REMINDER CFP: International conference celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Ostend Company (1723-2023) - Ostend, Belgium - 21-24 November 2023 [DEADLINE 31 JAN 2023]

   

Call for papers 

International conference celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Ostend Company (1723-2023)

 Location: Ostend, Belgium 

Dates: 21-24 November 2023 

Organisers: Royal Belgian Marine Society, Flanders Marine Institute, City of Ostend 

In 2023, it will be 300 years ago that the General Indian Company, better known as the Ostend Company, was founded. It all started in August 1723, when a considerable financial capital was collected by means of an issue of shares at the Antwerp stock market. Most subscribers belonged to the Austrian Netherlands’ aristocracy, financial and commercial elites in Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent, Bruges and Ostend. With the collected funds silver bullion was acquired, crews were enlisted, ships were bought and equipped in Ostend. Bruges’s outer port thus became the centre of the eighteenth century Habsburg overseas trade expansion. From Ostend, dozens of ships sailed via Brazil to India (Coromandel and Bengal) and China (Canton). Thanks to a number of niche products, such as tea (more than 50% of the European market), the Ostend Company became a major global competitor in the China trade in the 1720s. Its shareholders were rewarded with a net profit of approximately 150%. The port and the city of Ostend flourished and the whole of the Austrian Netherlands reaped the benefits of this newly established maritime trade. Despite its commercial success, the Austrian Netherlands had to put an end to the Ostend Company’s trading activities due to the mounting pressure of their British, Dutch and French neighbours in 1731. 

Even if it only existed for a short period (1723-1731), the importance of the Ostend Company for maritime history cannot be underestimated and reaches far beyond the Belgian context, as it also concerns political, diplomatic, social, commercial, military, intercultural and global aspects of both European and Asian eighteenth-century history. The mixed public-private chartered company can be seen as a Belgium-based multinational corporation avant la lettre, which proved to be an important and innovative global player. But it is also the story of people from different cultures coming together and exchanging views and commodities, highlighting equally the circulation of ideas and practices, and therefore implying knowledge transfers. Although these encounters were generally peaceful, violence did sometimes occur.

The history of the Ostend Company is also one about the economic development of the Austrian Netherlands, the participation of the Habsburg Monarchy in a globalizing world and the opening up of Asian markets to European colonial enterprises. The aim of this international conference is to shed light on a number of as yet unknown aspects, but also to reassess the state of the art from new perspectives or complementary and innovative angles. 

We invite scholars to send in abstracts focusing on the Ostend Company, for instance on the following themes: 

 The juridical aspects of the Ostend Company as a chartered company in a European context (corporate structure, capital base and shareholder involvement, labour relations, trade) 

 Life of the seafarers on board the East Indiamen 

 Intercultural relations between the Ostenders and Indians, Chinese, etc. 

 Military aspects of the Ostend Company at sea and in Asia 

 The impact of the Ostend Company on the economy of the Austrian Netherlands 

 The Ostend Company as focus of European politics and diplomacy in the early eighteenth century, including the legal debate on the freedom of the seas and the establishment of comptoirs 

 Logistic, commercial and financial organisation of the Ostend Company 

 The role of the Ostend Company in globalisation and imperial history

 The Ostend Company compared to other East India Companies, especially with the other smaller companies, e.g. the Danish, Swedish and Prussian companies. 

 The political perception of the Ostend Company in Europe 

 Changes in research topics in historiography with regard to the Ostend Company, especially linked to the Belgian nation-state’s colonial ambitions 

Other themes on the Ostend Company are equally welcome. 

The three day conference will take place at the Flanders Marine Institute in Ostend, Belgium from Wednesday 22 November to Friday 24 November 2023. Travel and accommodation costs will be covered by the hosts. The conference language is English. Participants will be asked to submit an article for a peer-reviewed publication after the conference. 

Participants to the conference are invited to submit an abstract of maximum 400 words with a short CV (5 to 10 lines) to stan.pannier@vliz.be by January 31st, 2023. The applicants will be informed by the conference’s scientific committee by mid-February 2023.

REMINDER CFP: International conference celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Ostend Company (1723-2023) - Ostend, Belgium - 21-24 November 2023 [DEADLINE 31 JAN 2023]

  

Call for papers 

International conference celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Ostend Company (1723-2023)

 Location: Ostend, Belgium 

Dates: 21-24 November 2023 

Organisers: Royal Belgian Marine Society, Flanders Marine Institute, City of Ostend 

In 2023, it will be 300 years ago that the General Indian Company, better known as the Ostend Company, was founded. It all started in August 1723, when a considerable financial capital was collected by means of an issue of shares at the Antwerp stock market. Most subscribers belonged to the Austrian Netherlands’ aristocracy, financial and commercial elites in Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent, Bruges and Ostend. With the collected funds silver bullion was acquired, crews were enlisted, ships were bought and equipped in Ostend. Bruges’s outer port thus became the centre of the eighteenth century Habsburg overseas trade expansion. From Ostend, dozens of ships sailed via Brazil to India (Coromandel and Bengal) and China (Canton). Thanks to a number of niche products, such as tea (more than 50% of the European market), the Ostend Company became a major global competitor in the China trade in the 1720s. Its shareholders were rewarded with a net profit of approximately 150%. The port and the city of Ostend flourished and the whole of the Austrian Netherlands reaped the benefits of this newly established maritime trade. Despite its commercial success, the Austrian Netherlands had to put an end to the Ostend Company’s trading activities due to the mounting pressure of their British, Dutch and French neighbours in 1731. 

Even if it only existed for a short period (1723-1731), the importance of the Ostend Company for maritime history cannot be underestimated and reaches far beyond the Belgian context, as it also concerns political, diplomatic, social, commercial, military, intercultural and global aspects of both European and Asian eighteenth-century history. The mixed public-private chartered company can be seen as a Belgium-based multinational corporation avant la lettre, which proved to be an important and innovative global player. But it is also the story of people from different cultures coming together and exchanging views and commodities, highlighting equally the circulation of ideas and practices, and therefore implying knowledge transfers. Although these encounters were generally peaceful, violence did sometimes occur.

The history of the Ostend Company is also one about the economic development of the Austrian Netherlands, the participation of the Habsburg Monarchy in a globalizing world and the opening up of Asian markets to European colonial enterprises. The aim of this international conference is to shed light on a number of as yet unknown aspects, but also to reassess the state of the art from new perspectives or complementary and innovative angles. 

We invite scholars to send in abstracts focusing on the Ostend Company, for instance on the following themes: 

 The juridical aspects of the Ostend Company as a chartered company in a European context (corporate structure, capital base and shareholder involvement, labour relations, trade) 

 Life of the seafarers on board the East Indiamen 

 Intercultural relations between the Ostenders and Indians, Chinese, etc. 

 Military aspects of the Ostend Company at sea and in Asia 

 The impact of the Ostend Company on the economy of the Austrian Netherlands 

 The Ostend Company as focus of European politics and diplomacy in the early eighteenth century, including the legal debate on the freedom of the seas and the establishment of comptoirs 

 Logistic, commercial and financial organisation of the Ostend Company 

 The role of the Ostend Company in globalisation and imperial history

 The Ostend Company compared to other East India Companies, especially with the other smaller companies, e.g. the Danish, Swedish and Prussian companies. 

 The political perception of the Ostend Company in Europe 

 Changes in research topics in historiography with regard to the Ostend Company, especially linked to the Belgian nation-state’s colonial ambitions 

Other themes on the Ostend Company are equally welcome. 

The three day conference will take place at the Flanders Marine Institute in Ostend, Belgium from Wednesday 22 November to Friday 24 November 2023. Travel and accommodation costs will be covered by the hosts. The conference language is English. Participants will be asked to submit an article for a peer-reviewed publication after the conference. 

Participants to the conference are invited to submit an abstract of maximum 400 words with a short CV (5 to 10 lines) to stan.pannier@vliz.be by January 31st, 2023. The applicants will be informed by the conference’s scientific committee by mid-February 2023.

BOOK: Elina KUORELAHTI, The Political Economy of International Commodity Cartels: An Economic History of the European Timber Trade in the 1930s (London: Routledge, 2020). ISBN 9780367376390, 120.00 GBP

 

(Source: Routledge)

Routledge is publishing a book on the political economy of international commodity cartels on the basis of the European timber trade in the 1930s.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Political Economy of International Commodity Cartels examines how international commodity cartels in the 1930s were impacted not only by commercial rivalry, but also by international trade political and diplomatic concerns.

This work presents the rise and decline of the European Timber Exporters’ Convention (ETEC) and analyses how firms navigated through the cartel game under increasing international competition, pressures from the national governments, and the interventionist endeavours of the League of Nations. Cartels are often associated in the standard economic interpretation as business collusion. However, in using vast archive sources and historical methodology, the chapters in this book shed light onto how international relations shaped cartels. The rise of British protectionism, the emergence of the Soviet Union as an industrial power, and the economic rapprochement of the League of Nations in the early 1930s created a wave of trade political and diplomatic challenges in the timber trading countries and affected cartelisation. Timber firms in the biggest producer countries - Finland and Sweden - were uninterested in international cartel collaboration, but under pressure joined the ETEC nevertheless.

This book makes a strong contribution to the fields of business history and cartel studies. It is an essential read for economic historians interested in how political pressure shaped international cartels, and how cartels became avenues of diplomacy.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elina Kuorelahti received her PhD in 2018 and is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher on international commodity cartels and peace in the interwar period at the University of Helsinki, Finland.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

1. The timber problem

2. Commodity cartels and the League of Nations

3. Goodbye, League of Nations

4. Implementing international commodity cartel

 

More info here