Economic History

The paper aims to present the first results of an in-depth and source-based research about socio-economic inequalities and agricultural growth in the Late Medieval Florentine society.
This area has been intensively studied because of its economic relevance and the rise of a peculiar share-cropping system (mezzadria). Mezzadria lease contracts spread broadly in Tuscany at the end of the Middle Ages (13th c.), linked to the building of the regional city-state by the city-commune of Florence and its raising economy. The system developed before the demographic shocks of Late Middle Ages and continued to develop further during the decline of the Florentine economy in 15th-16th centuries. The role of mezzadria in shaping declining economic trends and socio-economic inequalities, as well as the causes of its rise, are still debated among scholars.
This research would offer an original contribute on these issues through a new in-depth consultation of the Florentine fiscal surveys of the 15th and 16th centuries (the Catasto of 1427 and the Decima repubblicana of the early 16th century) and the use of a social agro-systemic approach. The information entered from sources will be used to draw a picture of the social and property structure of four different sub-regional study-areas within the Florentine territory (characterized by differences in the importance of institutions, in property distribution, in environmental features), comparing the trends and their causal relations for regional differences. The goal is drawing: 1) a more complete figure of agricultural output of mezzadria –  comparing different systems of exploitation and subregions –; 2) an in-depth figure of socio-economic inequalities – property and income distribution, ownership of oxen, access to credit and fiscal incomes. In this way it will be possible to offer a more detailed pattern of explanation of the main dynamics of Late Medieval rural Tuscany.

From the foundation of the Order of St John in 11th century Syria as a community of lay brethren intent on providing shelter, care and assistance to pilgrims visiting the Holy Land, the destiny of the Hospitaller Knights was irremediably moulded for most of the next millennium. Geography, circumstance, religious ideology, and the pursuit of wealth all conspired to transform the future of the Hospitallers into a violent one, in keeping with the surrounding environment of the Middle East and the rest of the Mediterranean. The Order’s attitude to conflict changed, however, when the theatre of war shifted from the Mediterranean to mainland Europe. The acquisition of property in Latin Syria helped chart the course of the Order’s history, rendering the Hospitallers sensitive to events on the continent. Any land property in Europe was at risk of intrusion, occupation or exploitation by armies on the move, and the Hospital’s property was no exception. This study is an analysis of the Order of St John’s contrasting attitudes to violence, and the geographical, political, religious and historical situations that generated such an approach.

À la fin du XVIIIe siècle et au début du XIXe siècle, dans l’Europe Centrale et de sud-est, les échanges commerciaux se sont intensifiés grâce au développement des villes et des bourgs comme des centres artisanaux et administratifs.
Les crises politiques de cette période ont eu comme résultat la modification du régime de la navigation et du commerce sur l’eau et sur la terre dans le sud-est de l’Europe.
Dans ces conditions la ville de Brasov soutient son industrie et son commerce dans le butde s’assurer un marché de vente dans les Pays Roumaines.
Ce sont beaucoup de documents qui parlent des négociants roumaines de Brasov – comme Constantin Moroianu, Stanciu Atanasiu, Hagi Theodor, Gheorghe Blebe, Oancea Moroianu celui
avec ses fils Constantin et Ion, Roncea Dumitru, Stefan Sotir, Constantin et Radu Pascu etc. qui ont ouvert à Tulcea des magasins et ont développé un commerce très actif.
Ces négociants ont eu un rôle décisif dans l’entretien des liaisons entre les Roumains de laTransylvanie et de la Dobroudja.

This paper studies through a quantitative analysis at micro-scale (the pieve of San Giovanni in Petroio in Mugello) in 1427-1512 the relation between the growing economic inequality of the Florentine rural society found by recent research and a peculiar share-cropping system, the mezzadria. By focusing on the mechanisms of wealth redistribution of this system, the paper suggests the role of mezzadria whether in increasing in the long-run the concentration of land property and in providing for the poorest social layers of rural population at subsistence level. In this regard, the paper contributes to explore the role of institutions in increasing wealth concentration from Middle Ages to the Early Modern times.

The most common business enterprise form in Germany today is the Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (GmbH). The GmbH offers entrepreneurs the partnership’s flexibility combined with limited liability, capital lock-in, and other traits associated with corporations. Earlier enterprise forms such as the partnership and corporation were codified versions of longstanding practice; the GmbH, on the other hand, was the lawgiver’s creation. Authorized in 1892, the GmbH appeared during a period of ferment in German enterprise law and was an early example of the “Private Limited-Liability Company” (PLLC) prevalent in many economies today. This paper traces the debates and the legislative process that led to the GmbH’s introduction. The new form reflected challenges created by the corporation reform of 1884, problems in German colonial companies, and the view that British company law had put German firms at a competitive disadvantage. Many new enterprises adopted the GmbH, but significant sections of the financial and legal community harbored strong reservations about this legal innovation.

To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2017. Rescaling the local: Multi-academy trusts, private monopoly and statecraft in England. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 49 (2), 171-185

For the past six years successive UK governments in England have introduced reforms intended to usher in less aggregated, top-down, bureaucratically overloaded models of service delivery as well as secure conditions for greater school autonomy.  Yet the ‘hollowing out’ of local government has not resulted in less bureaucracy on the ground or less regulation from above, nor has it diminished hierarchy as an organising principle of education governance.  In some cases, monopolies and monopolistic practices dominated by powerful bureaucracies and professional groups persist, albeit realised through the involvement of new actors and organisations from business and philanthropy.  In this paper I adopt a governmentality perspective to explore the political significance of large multi-academy trusts (MATs) – private sponsors contracted by central government to run publicly funded schools – to the generation of new scalar hierarchies and accountability infrastructures that assist in bringing the gaze of government to bear upon the actions of schools that are otherwise less visible under local government management.  On this account, it is argued, MATs are integral to statecraft and the invention and assemblage of particular apparatuses for intervening upon specific organisations, spaces and peoples.

The expanding sugar trade linking Portugal, Brazil, and the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries required enforcement mechanisms to guarantee that overseas agents would act honestly and diligently. While the recent literature emphasizes that multiple mechanisms were substitutes in addressing this problem, this article highlights that merchants chose different mechanisms to govern distinct types of transactions and explains why. A reputational mechanism relying on social and economic constraints within an ethnic diaspora governed more complex and higher-value arrangements. A different mechanism linking economic incentives to professional reputations across the diasporas plying this trade route predominated in simpler and smaller transactions. Finally, long-distance and transnational judicial enforcement supplemented these two reputational mechanisms. Capable of matching the value and complexity of transactions with the attributes of governing mechanisms, merchants were able to diversify their transactions, expand the market for agents, better allocate agents to tasks, and stimulate competition among them. The resulting decrease in agency costs was critical in such a significantly competitive market as the sugar trade. Evolving institutional choice thus reinforced the expansion of trade. These hypotheses are corroborated by data from a prosopography of merchants of Jewish origin, derived from notarial records from Oporto and Amsterdam, and from Inquisition files. A t the turn of the sixteenth century, Europe experienced rapidly growing urban populations and dependence on trade for supplies of staple products, while overseas possessions contributed to a surging output of marketable commodities, including sugar. Brazil was turned into the first large-scale plantation economy and became the world's main sugar producer, with Amsterdam emerging as its main distribution and refining centre. Most of the Brazilian sugar trade was intermediated by merchants in Portugal, and traders of Jewish origin scattered along this trade route played a prominent role in the sugar trade. The rapid expansion, growing complexity, and increasing integration of these markets required traders to be confident that the parties with whom they were considering working would not cheat, renege on, or neglect their commitments.

Gaṇeśa is 1. Marut, kharva, 'dwarf', dancer, kavi, Brahmaṇaspati, Br̥haspati, 2. त्रिधातु, 'aggregate of 3 minerals', 3. R̥bhu founder of yajña, artist, rayi, 'wealth'.

Gaṇeśa is a कवि kavi, m. a singer , bard , poet (but in this sense without any technical application in the वेद) RV. VS. TS. AV. S3Br. i , 4 , 2 , 8Kat2hUp. iii , 14 MBh. Bhag. Bha1gP. Mn. vii , 49 R. Ragh.

Gaṇeśa is a scribe, a R̥bhu, 'artist' In the tradition of Indus Script, a scribe is also an artist because the writing system is composed with hypertextss incorporating hieroglyphs -- both pictorial motifs and 'signs or symbols', say, syllabic representations in Brāhmī or 'signs' of the Indus Script Corpora.

Since Mahābhārata is the fifth Veda itihāsa with ākhyāna-s and upākhyāna-s, the scribe of the sacred kāvya, by the kavi, -- is Gaṇeśa who is kavīnām kavi, he is the suprme kavi among kavi-s. The scribal narratiave is an affirmation of divine sanction for the documented narratives.

Hence, Gaṇeśa utters the praṇava, says 'om' accepting the terms stipulated by Vyāsa.

This tradition is exemplified by many manuscripts of Mahābhārata which are profusely illustrated to communicate the narrative effectivey.
Battle Between Ghatotkacha And Karna, Illustrated Folio

Battle of Kurukshetra.


Page from a Manuscript of the Mahabharata: Kichaka and Draupadi Disguised as the Maidservant Shairandhri 1670.
Indian, India, Deccan, Southern Karnataka 17th century opaque watercolor, ink, gold on paper 8 x 19⅜ in 20.32 x 49.21 cm Friends of Indian Art in memory of Dr. Meena Hazra 95.6

Read more at https://vmfa.museum/collections/art/page-manuscript-mahabharata-kichaka-draupadi-disguised-maidservant-shairandhri/#OpbYhP0yIZ7h6MRW.99

Illustrated palmleaf manuscripts in the collection of Orissa State Museum. Read more at:  http://www.harekrsna.com/sun/features/02-07/features555.htm

H: 11.8 W: 16.6 cm. Probably Seringapatam, South India, India


Newari Mahabharata, 14th-15th c. Philadelphia Museum of Art

Gaṇeśa is 1. scribe of Mahābhārata, 2. kavi; Brahmaṇaspati, Br̥haspati, 3. त्रिधातु, 'aggregate of 3 minerals', 4. R̥bhu founder of yajña, artist, rayi, 'wealth' Gaṇeśa is a Marut, R̥bhukṣa, who wields a thunderbolt. This is a metaphor for his tusk used as a writing instrument. That Gaṇeśa is a member of Marut Gaṇa is signified on a sculptural frieze of Kanchipuram Kailāsanātha temple.

See:

Bhāratīya ādhyātmikā itihāsa of tridhātu Gaṇeśa, śarva Śiva, Rāma, Kr̥ṣṇa 
https://tinyurl.com/yc95usjo

Tridhātu as Gaṇeśa, Tridhātu on Indus Script metalwork for crucible steel, ādhyātmikā metaphor pr̥thvyaptejorūpadhātu (R̥gveda)
http://tinyurl.com/kptlbz3

Gaṇeśa is Brāhmī scribe of Mahābhārata in the tradition of Indus Script cipher of Bronze Age
https://tinyurl.com/y79j8rxp

http://sanskritdocuments.org/mirrors/mahabharata/mahabharata-sarit.html

Gaṇeśa -- the leader of Marut Gaṇa, a scribe with dāt, an ivory stylus -- and Kṣṇadwaipāyana Vyāsa -- the black narrator, a Ganga-island dweller --  unite together after Gaṇeśa consents to be a scribe utteringom and together start with an invocation for success to Nara and Nārāyaṇa (nārāyaṇaṃ namaskṛtya naraṃ caiva narottamam; 1.1.0) and to goddess Sarasvatī (devīṃ sarasvatīṃ caiva tato jayam udīrayet; 1.1.0). Om is part of the iconography, pratimā, 'ādhyātmikā symbol' which refers to ātman (soul, self within) and Brahman (ultimate reality, entirety of the universe, truth, divine, supreme spirit, cosmic principles, knowledge). So, they start with ओम् Om pratimā which is प्रणव, praṇava. Om is the last sound a Yogi hears before entering the state of Turīya level of language, script and reality. The mystic syllable is affirmation of something divine in the narration and scripted text of Mahābhārata.

Why does Gaṇeśa uttar Om assenting to be a scribe of Vyasa's oral narrative?

Om (ॐ) is the pratigara (agreement) with a hymn. Likewise is tatha (so be it) with a song. But Om is something divine, and tatha is something human.
— Aitareya Aranyaka 23.6

तस्य वाचकः प्रणवः ॥२७॥

His word is Om.

— Yogasutra 1.27

ओं नमः (Oṃ namaḥ) Siddhanam (6 syllables), Om Nhi (2 syllables) and just Om (1 syllable) are the short forms of the Paramesthi-Mantra, also called Namokar Mantra or Navkar Mantra in Jainism

"Om Mani Padmi Hum" to be AUM,  the totality of sound, existence and consciousness in Bauddham

Oankar ('the Primal Sound') created Brahma, Oankar fashioned the consciousness,
From Oankar came mountains and ages, Oankar produced the Vedas,
By the grace of Oankar, people were saved through the divine word,
By the grace of Oankar, they were liberated through the teachings of the Guru.

— Ramakali Dakkhani, Adi Granth 929-930, Translated by Pashaura Singh.

Tamil version of the great epic venerates Gaṇeśa as scribe of the epic:

The information is given in the very first verse of Villi Bharatham and is quite famous as the "Kadavul Vaazhththu" (Prayer to the Divine). A rough/prosaic but literal translation would be:
"To make it firm as the fifth along with the four Vedas
On this sea-girt earth,
When the Mahabharata was spoken by the King of sages
Who possess unfading askesis and Truth,
Vinayaka wrote with the Mount Meru
As the cadjan leaf,
And His own tusk as the sharp stylus.
I salute Him with shoreless love."

(fifth along with the four Vedas -- Bharatah Panchamao Vedah; Vyasa is described as the king of sages; the sages are described as possessing unfading askesis and Truth (vaadaa thavam meymmai muni raajan); Mount Meru is described as "edu" which is palm or cadjan leaf).
Some copies of the work tack this and the following verse which is also a prayer to Vinayaka to the verses of praise by Villi's son Varantharuvaar that are always printed as a preface to the work.
http://mahabharata-resources.org/variations/prema-villi1.html

Two anient manuscripts announce Gaṇeśa as scribe of the epic:

Arrival of Heramba Gaṇeśa to write Mahābhārata announced in ādiparva:
सौतिरुवाच ।
एवमाभाष्य तं ब्रह्मा जगाम स्वं निवेशनम् ।
भगवान्स जगत्स्रष्टा ऋषिदेवगणैः सह ॥
ततः सस्मार हेरम्बं व्यासः सत्यवतीसुतः ॥
स्मृतमात्रो गणेशानो भक्तचिन्तितपूरकः ।
तत्राजगाम विघ्नेशो वेदव्यासो यतः स्थितः ॥
पूजितश्चोपविष्टश्च व्यासेनोक्तस्तदानघ ।
लेखको भारतस्यास्य भव त्वं गणनायक ॥
मयैव प्रोच्यमानस्य मनसा कल्पितस्य च ॥
श्रुत्वैतत्प्राह विघ्नेशो यदि मे लेखनी क्षणम् ।
लिखतो नावतिष्ठेत तदा स्यां लेखको ह्यहम् ॥

व्यासोऽप्युवाच तं देवमबुद्ध्वा मा लिख क्वचित् ।
ओमित्युक्त्वा गणेशोपि बभूव किल लेखकः ॥
ग्रन्थग्रन्थिं तदा चक्रे मुनिर्गूढं कुतूहलात् ।
यस्मिन्प्रतिज्ञया प्राह मुनिर्द्वैपायनस्त्विदम् ॥
अष्टौ श्लोकसहस्राणि अष्टौ श्लोकशतानि च ।
अहं वेद्मि शुको वेत्ति संजयो वेत्ति वा न वा ॥
तच्छ्लोककूटमद्यापि ग्रथितं सुदृढं मुने ।
भेत्तुं न शक्यतेऽर्थस्यं गूढत्वात्प्रश्रितस्य च ॥
सर्वज्ञोपि गणेशो यत्क्षणमास्ते विचारयन् ।
तावच्चकार व्यासोपि श्लोकानन्यान्बहूनपि ॥
तस्य वृक्षस्य वक्ष्यामि शाखापुष्पफलोदयम् ।
स्वादुमेध्यरसोपेतमच्छेद्यममरैरपि ॥
अनुक्रमणिकाध्यायं वृत्तान्तं सर्वपर्वणाम् ।
इदं द्वैपायनः पूर्वं पुत्रमध्यापयच्छुकम् ॥
ततोऽन्येभ्योऽनुरूपेभ्यः शिष्येभ्यः प्रददौ प्रभुषष्टिं शतसहस्राणि चकारान्यां स संहिताम् ।
त्रिंशच्छतसहस्रं च देवलोके प्रतिष्ठितम् ॥
पित्र्ये पञ्चदश प्रोक्तं रक्षोयक्षे चतुर्दश ।
एकं शतसहस्रं तु मानुषेषु प्रतिष्ठितम् ॥

http://sarit.indology.info/exist/apps/sarit/works/%C4%81diparva.html
 





http://asi.nic.in/asi_books/9002.pdf






Gaṇeśa with Gaṇa-s in Kailasanatha temple, Kanchipuram (685 to 705 CE, Rajasimha, Pallava dynasty)
Source: http://swamisblog.blogspot.in/2009/12/
These Marut Gaṇa are associated with the smelter work as seen on Bhuteshwar sculptural friezes.


 
Smelter. Kharva, dwarfs venerate linga atop smelter and tree (kuṭi 'tree' rebus: kuṭhi 'smelter'). Ekamukha Sivalinga atop smelter.

Gaṇeśa with Saptamatrikas, Aihole, Karnataka, 8th century CE.

The Devi Matrikas (flanked by Shiva and Ganesha), representing various Shakti aspects, from 9th-century Madhya Pradesh

Saptamātr̥kā-s with Gaṇeśa, at Panchalingeshvara temple in Karnataka.

Gaṇeśa. Entrance to Ellora caves.


Ellora Caves - Kailasa Temple - Group Of mātr̥kā-s with Gaṇeśa

Stone sculpture in National Museum, New Delhi, India. Śiva and Saptamātr̥kā-s.

Nataraja–Shiva (left) with Virabhadra and the first three mātr̥kā-s depicted with children – Ellora

Early modern India was an economic core region producing manifold textiles for export. During the sixteenth century a new customer entered the stage and expanded its influence from the city of Goa – Portugal. From early times, the Portuguese had bought and commissioned textiles, among them large embroideries from Bengal and Gujarat, which are the focus of this study. By providing European prints as models for the professional local embroiderers they created a novel product that was successful in Portugal and beyond throughout the seventeenth century. The textiles were deemed valuable and rare enough to be included in different travel accounts, letters and inventories, enabling us to trace their place of production, their transportation to Europe and their reception. Their intricate iconographies reflect political problematics of the time and shed light onto the intercultural circumstances of Portuguese colonial life. Barbara Karl is Curator of Textiles and Carpets at the MAK – Museum für Angewandte Kunst/Gegenwartskunst in Vienna. WEITERE INFORMATIONEN UND DOWNLOADS FINDEN SIE UNTER WWW.BOEHLAU-VERLAG.COM. böhlau verlag ges.m.b.h. & co. kg, wiesingerstrasse 1, 1010 wien, österreich, t: + 43 1 330 24 27-0, f: + 43 1 330 24 32-77 info@boehlau-verlag.com, www.boehlau-verlag.com | wien köln weimar

A BYU course paper where I examine how some more isolated areas of the would-be Confederacy fared better than the South as a whole during the economic plummet that devastated the region in the aftermath of the Civil War and years of Reconstruction.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century the commercial commune of Pisa was one of the two most powerful maritime forces in the Mediterranean, alongside Venice and ahead of Genoa. By the end of the century, however, the city had declined to a position of solely regional political and economic importance. This dissertation delves into the reasons behind Pisa’s decline during the very period when Italy’s three most famous commercial economies of Venice, Genoa, and Florence were experiencing their greatest growth. This study primarily utilizes traditional historiographic approaches for examining Pisa during the long thirteenth century, but also incorporates the interdisciplinary use of statistical and social network analyses to uncover facets of the socio-economic landscape during the final decades of the century.

The strength of the present work lies in the chronological breadth of its study, encompassing just over a century of Pisan history. Unlike previous scholarship which has focused more narrowly on a few decades, a broader period of study permits the uncovering of communal behavioral trends and patterns in decision making. The causes of thirteenth-century decline can generally be divided into four categories: imperial allegiance at all costs, ignoring structural changes in the global economy, unquenchable Sardinian aspirations, and the consequences of the traumatic naval defeat at Meloria in 1284. Since at least 1081 Pisa had traded its allegiance for imperial commercial concessions, often to the consternation of the city’s mostly papally-aligned neighbors. During the thirteenth century, as imperial power in Italy waned and factional conflict intensified, Pisa adherence to the imperial strategy repeatedly brought them into military conflict with the rest of Tuscany, ultimately isolating Pisa politically on the mainland. Pisa had built its economic-political prominence primarily through the spice trade with the East and the success of its leather industries at home. Political events and changing consumer preferences conspired to move the primary trade routes northward and westward while market demand for spices was eclipsed by demand for woolen textiles; while Pisa was slow to respond to these changes, the city’s chief competitors adapted quickly and reaped the bulk of the benefits, largely excluding Pisa from later entry.

In Sardinia, what had begun as a twelfth-century argument with Genoa over episcopal supremacy evolved into a land grab by Pisa’s most powerful families. As these families wielded significant political power, their personal ambitions bent communal policies to their own interests, repeatedly bringing the commune into violent competition with Genoa. One such encounter was the Battle of Meloria in 1284 which resulted in the death or capture of over 10,000 Pisan men, possibly 25% of the city’s population. This demographic tragedy, combined with the counterproductive policies of a series of strongmen and oligarchies, sent the city spiraling into a protracted economic depression. This depression, discovered for the first time by the statistical and social network analyses of the present study, crippled the already declining economic and political importance of the city, permanently removing any hope of the municipality achieving anything beyond regional importance.

La presenza femminile è cresciuta rapidamente, negli ultimi anni, nella fascia più alta della stratificazione socio-professionale, in molte professioni che implicano un certo grado di autonomia e di responsabilità, e garantiscono redditi elevati: le donne sono divenute, più spesso che in passato, magistrati e avvocati, medici e architetti, ricercatrici e docenti universitarie.
L’ingresso "nelle professioni degli uomini" ha trovato una chiave di lettura, ormai consolidata, e a nostro avviso ineludibile, nella distinzione fra i modi di agire di generazioni diverse (Vicarelli, 1994). Se infatti solo un limitato nucleo di donne, definite come le "grandi emancipate", era presente nel mondo professionale degli anni Sessanta, la generazione nata fra il 1947 e il 1956, che ha maturato il suo percorso di studio e le prime esperienze di lavoro negli anni Settanta, è stata protagonista di una significativa rottura e di una intensa accelerazione. Queste figure sono state definite "innovative" perché molte di loro hanno rifiutato in modo esplicito un progetto di vita che subordinava il lavoro alla famiglia, sono entrate in gran numero nel mercato del lavoro e, in misura più limitata, anche in professioni tradizionalmente maschili. Questa generazione emerge ancora per la sua specificità negli studi sul mercato del lavoro. Le analisi delle forze di lavoro mostrano infatti che queste coorti, oggi in età fra i 45 e i 55 anni, costituiscono la prima generazione femminile diffusamente secolarizzata; a differenza delle generazioni precedenti, anche a causa delle riforme previdenziali, sono rimaste fino a quest’età nel mercato del lavoro formale . Questo ampio gruppo ha aperto la strada alla generazione alle quarantenni di oggi, le "neo-emancipate", nate a cavallo degli anni Sessanta che, inserendosi in un solco già tracciato, hanno potuto vivere la doppia presenza in modo meno conflittuale.
Questo saggio indaga sulla presenza femminile nel ricambio generazionale delle imprese con particolare riferimento al caso toscano.

A B S T R A C T
This paper aims at the fullest possible presentation of the numismatic history of Venetian occupied Crete in the opening three decades of the 17th century. To date, this period has preoccupied researchers mainly with regard to socio-political aspects and cultural activity.
The above goal was attained by recourse both to written testimony and to numismatic remains from the period. The detailed cataloguing of Venetian state archives (reports by the general provveditori of Crete, provveditori in the Venetian Zecca, senate decisions) offers a wealth of unknown or unused evidence on existing numismatic conditions on the island, endemic and chronic problems, as well as desperate attempts by the central administration to control monetary circulation and overcome obstacles of various kinds.
Record is made of established or unusual administrative measures aimed at dealing with lack of coinage; tackling forgery in Cretan markets; rectifying anomalies in currency exchange rates; limiting dependency on foreign numismatic issues from political and commercial rivals (mainly Spain and the Ottoman Empire) etc.
Strictly numismatic concerns seriously affected financial life in the Regno di Candia: they hampered large-scale commercial transactions and day-to-day dealings, limited trade liquidity and had a knock-on effect on tax income, forcing local public treasuries and citizens to jump through all manner of fiscal and numismatic hoops.
In turn, this led to the proliferation of problems in society: problems paying employees and soldiers created social tensions, upsetting social harmony and contributing to the degradation of the lower classes.
Day to day financial reality is also reflected by individual finds, and still better by hoards located in Cretan museums, which are virtually unrecorded in the international bibliography. These vividly portray the means used in small transactions and savings on Crete, when taken together with the mass issues from the Venetian mint destined for exclusive use on the island, which were often ideologically loaded by the choice of Greek-language inscriptions.
So as to examine market practice in medium or large scale transactions over the widest possible financial and geographical range, statistical analysis was carried out on all the legal dealings recorded in the surviving ledgers of two notaries: M. Varouchas (Amari, 1579-1613, published) and J. Da Scitia (Chandax, 1613-1625, unpublished).
These quantitative data permit us to make observations that both support and add substantially to other testimony. Matters addressed include: the liquid assets of townsfolk and country dwellers; the extent and intensity of barter; currency used in transactions on the island, in contrast to those carried out in the mother city; the frequency of bills of exchange; the abundance of bronze and rarity of gold and silver; measures taken to protect transactions against rampant forgery; language used on coinage and related issues etc.

This monograph posits the presence of Meluhha artisans and seafaring merchants in Dilmun and failaka. This presence explains the decipherment of Dilmun seals, Barbar temple bronze bull's head and Failaka seals as Indus Script inscriptions constituting wealth-accounting ledgers, metalwork catalogues. Dilmun and Failaka seals are archives recording trade transactions with Meluhha (Sarasvati Civilization). Dilmun finds mention in cuneiform texts as a trade partner and as a trading post of the Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley Civilization trade route. The bronze bull's head found in Barbar Temple of Bahrein is paralleled by the artifacts of Early Dynastic Sumer as posited by Elisabeth CL During Caspers and also by the Indus Script rebus representation of ḍhangra 'bull' Rebus: ṭhakkura m. ʻ idol, deity (Pkt.); Mth. ṭhākur ʻ blacksmith.ʼ Thus, the deity venerated as the bull's head is a veneration of the ancestor blacksmith who has attained divinity; hence, ṭhakkura m. ʻ idol, deity in Meluhha (Indian sprachbund, 'speech union'). Three temples were discovered in Barbar village, Bahrein, and the oldest is dated to 3000 BCE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbar_Temple

The article presents an analysis of bankruptcy as an important event of the market relations during the Bulgarian National Revival period. The problems arising around bankruptcies are the main motives for the creation of modern commercial law. The many bankruptcies in Europe in the early 19 th century caused by the wars and the crises necessitated the codification of the commercial law. Then the French 'Code de commerce' appeared, promulgated in 1807. The first commercial laws of most countries in Europe and the world were created on the model of the French 'Code'. The Ottoman Commercial Law, promulgated in 1850, was also created on the basis of French 'Code de commerce'. Most of its content is aimed at bankruptcies. The article presents data on bankruptcies of Bulgarian merchants and companies in the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s-how, when, and for what reasons they happen. Bankruptcies of some of the rich and well-known Bulgarian companies are also presented. At the end of the article the following main conclusions are made: 1/ On the Bulgarian market, as part of the Ottoman market, the bankruptcy was documented only in the third quarter of the 19 th century, i.e. after the promulgation of the Ottoman Commercial Law. 2/ Most bankruptcies are caused by the general economic situation in the region and in Europe-the crises in the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s, uncollected debts from traders and companies, bankruptcies of partners. The reason for the bankruptcies is also the poorly kept commercial documentation of the traders and the companies. 3/ There are also intentional bankruptcies ("cunning bankruptcies" as defined by the Ottoman Commercial Law), but the data about them are incomplete and doubtful, as the real situation in most cases remains hidden from the authorities and the commercial courts. 4/ Bankruptcies directly concern the main professional and moral categories, assessed as important during the era-the honesty, locality, reputation, self-consciousness of the commercial class. A larger study is needed to show in which direction these categories are developing in the process of formation of the Bulgarian economic culture after 1878.

This chapter makes a contribution to the scholarship on household-formation, inheritance and class-formation in European rural societies through a detailed examination of household and landholding patterns in two parishes in County Fermanagh, Ireland, between 1821 and 1862.  The analysis draws principally on a sample of households from the surviving census schedules for 1821, supplemented by land valuation data from 1832 and 1862, and by data from published census sources.
I argue that the changes in marriage and household formation that occurred in 19th century Ireland might more fruitfully be understood as adaptations within a dynamic system of inheritance, than as consequences of a transformation from one system to another.  We may need to change our focus away from models that rest on stylized assumptions about “rules” in favour of those that emphasize flexibility in response to changing circumstances, and that recognize the extent to which relationships within wider community and kin circles formed part of the set of resources and constraints that framed people’s actions.

The present paper attempts to study the economic and financial crises of 15th century Egypt, which was ruled by Mamluk dynasty. Two social thinkers of the time – al-Maqrizi at the beginning of the century and al-Asadi at the middle – addressed the situation. To the former, deterioration of Egypt’s monetary system was the single most important cause of its economic and financial difficulties. As a panacea, he prescribed a return to gold and silver standard and restricting copper coinage to petty transactions. The latter divided the factors responsible for economic and financial crises into socio-economic factor and monetary factor. He advocated for an overall reform and strict management of the whole economy. The main financial problem, in his opinion, was debasement of currency leading to unrestricted supply of money, not the issue of copper coins. The paper concludes with an appraisal of their diagnosis of the problem, the solution suggested by them and the lessons learned from them.

The economic and financial history of Greece offers interesting in- sights into the current worldwide economic crisis. In the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Greece went through a series of financial disasters due to external factors and to policies that failed to take fiscal stability into account, insofar as they relied heavily on foreign loans. These, in many cases, led to real bankruptcies. This article compares the attempted bailout by a British bank in 1893 with the salvage operation of 2010 that avoided the technical bank- ruptcy of Greece. Although the outcomes differed, owing to sharply different geopolitical and geo-economic contexts and to the amount of money committed to these financial operations, in both cases Greece relied on Europe to avoid impending financial disaster.

1. Phd dissertation Synopsis: Dynamic and continuously evolving social policy, with its diverse approaches and vague delineation that illustrate the continuous engagement of the individual with the collective, the social with the economic and the political with the cultural element, constitutes a field of robust study and reflection on the implementation of social policy in the particular circumstances of each state. The inability of the Greek social security system to meet the needs of society as mandated by the institutional framework since the mid-1980s has provided the evidence for this study on the institutional development of social policy in Greece. There are weaknesses in the Greek welfare system. Similar problems were observed in almost all countries since the 1980s, and they were attributed to the growth of the welfare state with its high operational and provisional costs. Within this framework, the extensive international literature highlights the pluralism of approaches to the issue, thus reinforcing the need for a multidisciplinary approach to the subject matter of social policy. Such an approach draws the necessary theoretical and methodological knowledge primarily from sociology as well as from legal, economic, political and administrative sciences, but mainly from history. Thus the role of Economic History becomes very important. Economic History shows that different characteristics of the shape and growth of the economies in European countries determined the institutional formation of social policy. This study, based on both qualitative and raw quantitative data, focuses on the institutional dimension of social policy in the Hellenic State for more than two centuries (1828-2008), with an emphasis on the redistribution mechanisms of social security.

The Hungarian Historical Review invites submissions for its third issue in 2022, the theme of which will be Economy, the Connecting Force in Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages The deadline for the submission of abstracts: January 31, 2022.

This study seeks to ascertain the identification and origins of the commodities in trade between the Levant and Aegean during the Persian period, ca. 540-330 B.C.  Using Semitic and Greek textual sources, as well as numismatic, epigraphic and archaeological evidence, I identify and discuss nearly 200 commodities, including spices, pigments, dyes, chemicals, and manufactured items such as coinage and ceramics.  In the final chapter, a synthesis of the material is presented along with the historic and economic conclusions for Persian period trade that can be drawn from the assembled evidence.

Los Encuentros Internacionales del Medievo de Nájera se vienen planteando como un congreso internacional en el ámbito de estudio y difusión de la Historia Medieval desde su creación en el año 2003. Debido a la pandemia del COVID’19 la edición de este año se desarrollará de forma virtual.

La ciudad atlántica, surgida en la Edad Media, se fundamentó sobre una serie de factores, tales como las condiciones geográficas, las infraestructuras y unas sociedades muy dinámicas, pero también a que, en los centros portuarios atlánticos, en su mayor parte periféricos por su ubicación, las políticas urbanas adoptaron unas características comunes y distintas de las ciudades del interior del continente, cuyas estrategias económicas nos proponemos analizar en este congreso.

Los XVII Encuentros Internacionales del Medievo de Nájera invitan a enviar propuestas (presentación oral o con póster) sobre los siguientes temas:
Eje 1: Intervención de las autoridades concejiles en la administración portuaria.
Eje 2: Navegación, construcción naval y potenciación de las flotas mercantes y de guerra.
Eje 3: Asociaciones profesionales portuarias.
Eje 4: Diplomacia económica: naciones y consulados.
Eje 5: Regulación de la actividad portuaria y marítima.
Eje 6: Políticas y estrategias financieras.
Eje 7: Las mujeres emprendedoras.
Eje 8: Los puertos en la política comercial y fiscal de la Corona.
Eje 9: El control de la jurisdicción marítima y costera. 
Eje 10: Políticas de fomento del transporte marítimo y las infraestructuras portuarias.

PROPUESTAS COMUNICACIONES
El plazo de entrega de las propuestas de comunicaciones libres finalizará el día 30 de septiembre de 2020.
Los participantes deberán enviar: resumen de la comunicación de máximo 500 caracteres, que deberá incluir objetivos, fuentes, metodología y aportación, así como un breve CV, Las comunicaciones, que sean aprobadas por los revisores, serán publicadas en 2021. Dirección de envío: neim@unican.es
Las lenguas científicas de los encuentros son el español, inglés, francés, portugués e italiano.
Los textos de los power points deberán estar en inglés.
Todas las presentaciones se realizarán por medio de plataforma virtual WEBINAR.
Cada comunicante dispondrá de 20 minutos para realizar su presentación.
La organización comunicará la aceptación de las comunicaciones, por correo electrónico, antes del 15 de octubre.

Writing scientific biographies evokes the problem of representativeness or of integrating the single case into more general questions of scholarly interest. The establishment of a link between micro and macrolevels inspired the present paper, which attempts to conceptualize the link between the individual biographical case and more general questions via the concept of microhistory. Microhistory does not present an easy solution to this problem, but it can generate sensitivity for the epistemological problems and narrative pitfalls of the biographical genre
After presenting a brief overview of the methodological foundations of microhistory, I evaluate publications on German sweets manufacturer Gebrüder Stollwerck AG as examples of microhistories of globalization and of kinship in entrepreneurial families. In a third step, I examine the specifics of entrepreneur biographies, paying particular attention to their narrative structure, as they tend to explain developments from within the black box of the entrepreneur or his family. There exists a broad spectrum of research questions that may go way beyond the chronological sequence of a biographical subject’s life course.
I suggest avoiding the pitfalls of the biographical method by linking the life of the subject to a reference value, to a research question that, in the best case, provides an experimental cardinal point outside of the object of study. In this sense, biographies — as well as case studies on companies — can be understood as microhistories of X.