Levantine Joint-Stock Companies, Trans-Mediterranean Partnerships, and Nineteenth-Century Capitalist Development

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen Alff
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Business Community ◽  
Business Practices ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
Labor Control

AbstractThe Levantine business community—the Sursuqs, Bustruses, Tuenis, Khuris, Debbases, Trads, Tabets, Naggiars, and Farahs—created large agricultural estates in the Levant and established company branches in Beirut, Alexandria, Haifa, London, Liverpool, Paris, and Marseille in the mid-nineteenth century. Against both culturalist and new institutional paradigms, I argue that the trajectories of the Levantine firms were much like those of their European counterparts; Dutch and English capitalism—what came to be recognized as modern forms of capitalism—developed out of long-distance trade and relied on forms of coerced and semi-coerced labor as well as other so-called “non-capitalist” or “precapitalist” elements. Beirut-based companies relied on tenant contracts, sharecropping, and other forms of labor control rooted in the Ottoman social formation. Drawing upon the unexplored private papers of these business families in Beirut and a diverse collection of documents from Istanbul, Beirut, Jerusalem, London, Liverpool, and Marseille in Arabic, German, Ottoman Turkish, and French, this paper examines the parallels and the links between the business practices of the Levantine joint-stock companies and their European partners. It contends that the development of nineteenth-century capitalism relied on several different institutions and relations of production formulated and articulated on both sides of the Mediterranean and in the competition between them. Only after World War I, because of settler-colonialism, the settlement of nomads, and large-scale European capital investment backed by imperial power, did Levantine capital accumulation begin to take a form that was subordinate to Europe.

Problems of the Development of Hungarian Industry, 1900–1944

1964 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
György Ránki
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Manufacturing Industry ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Agricultural Produce ◽  
Revolution Of 1848 ◽  
Favorable Conditions ◽  
The Revolution

The revolution of 1848, by ending the system of serfdom, had created the basic conditions of Hungary's industrialization; however, since the revolution had remained incomplete and the War of Independence had been lost, the ensuing suppression by Austrian absolutism and the considerable feudal survivals proved a strong barrier to the way of social and economic progress. The Austro-Hungarian monarchy, a product of the Compromise of 1867, offered somewhat more favorable conditions for economic development. Nevertheless, the structure of the dual monarchy kept Hungary's industrialization within rather narrow limits: the absence of independent statehood and the existence of a common customs area with Austria exposed the Hungarian market to devastating competition from Austria's more advanced manufacturing industry; and since these circumstances helped to consolidate the political and economic power of the large landowners, the capital accumulating within the country served above all the capitalist development of agriculture. So towards the end of the nineteenth century, nearly half a century after the bourgeois revolution, Hungary was still a wholly agrarian country whose major exports were foodstuffs and agricultural produce. The rapid development of manufacturing industry began as late as the last decade of the nineteenth century and continued until the beginning of World War I, over a span of some twenty-five years.

Sichuan: Driving Capitalist Development Westward

2004 ◽  
Vol 178 ◽  
pp. 426-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A. McNally
Keyword(s):  
Economic Reform ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
Investment Climate ◽  
Infrastructure Projects ◽  
Regulatory Structure ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
The Sichuan Basin

The central government's Open Up the West campaign has failed to reach one of its primary objectives in Sichuan: to diminish the large developmental gap between poor and affluent regions. In fact, most investment flows, policy initiatives and infrastructure projects initiated under the campaign concentrate on localities in or adjacent to the Sichuan basin, therefore widening the gap between Sichuan's poor western mountain regions and affluent basin cities. Notwithstanding this deficiency, significant effects have resulted from the campaign's initiation. First, the campaign is facilitating central government approval for large-scale environmental protection and infrastructure projects, thereby quickening the national integration of Sichuan's economy and society. Secondly, it is prodding government and business leaders to ameliorate the investment climate and regulatory structure. As a result of these two effects, the campaign is accelerating processes of economic reform, urbanization and globalization already under way. It is putting in place the infrastructure for accelerated capital accumulation, thus extending capitalist development from China's seaboard towards the interior.

Nyungu-ya-Mawe and the ‘Empire of the Ruga-rugas’

1968 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aylward Shorter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Economic Agents ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Political Complexity ◽  
Political Units ◽  
And Control

The introduction by the Arabs of new forms of storable wealth, together with fire-arms and gunpowder, into the interior of nineteenth century East Africa gave a direct stimulus to tribal warfare. Among the Nyamwezi of West Central Tanzania, who had practised long-distance trade in ivory before the Arab penetration took place, charismatic war-leaders appeared who created new hegemonies over the smaller, traditional units of these multi-chiefdom societies. These leaders attempted to capture the trade and control the main lines of communication. Mirambo was the most famous of them, but Nyungu-ya-Mawe, who was his exact contemporary (both died in 1884) was, perhaps, more successful. Nyungu created a polity which outlasted his own lifetime by more than a decade.Like Mirambo, he used a corps of professional soldiers called Ruga-ruga to carry out his conquests. The latter included most of the 20,000 square miles of Ukimbu and a part of southern Unyamwezi as well. He skilfully adapted the chiefly institutions of the Kimbu to a wider hegemony, and to an economy based on the large-scale exploitation of Kimbu resources in ivory. By his appointment of vatwale, lieutenants or military governors, as his military, political and economic agents in the various provinces of Ukimbu, he was able to hold his ‘empire’ together. The proliferation of small chiefdoms had been endemic to the Kimbu, a people with a forest economy that imposed both the need for small, political units, and for freedom of movement over a wide area. Nyungu and his vatwale halted this process.Nyungu was Mirambo’s ally in the early years, and was supported by him as the loyalist candidate for the important Nyamwezi chiefdom of Unyanyembe (Tabora). Later, however, in 1880, when Nyungu defeated Mirambo’s powerful vassal, Mtinginya, and seized control of the central caravan route to the coast, relations between the two men became strained. When the Germans dismantled Nyungu’s hegemony in 1895, they destroyed the only realistic attempt ever made to unify an area of extreme political complexity.

Going the Distance

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ron Harris
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Family Firms ◽  
Global Trade ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Business Corporation ◽  
Modern Economy ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Silk Route ◽  
Passive Investors

Before the seventeenth century, trade across Eurasia was mostly conducted in short segments along the Silk Route and Indian Ocean. Business was organized in family firms, merchant networks, and state-owned enterprises, and dominated by Chinese, Indian, and Arabic traders. However, around 1600 the first two joint-stock corporations, the English and Dutch East India Companies, were established. This book tells the story of overland and maritime trade without Europeans, of European Cape Route trade without corporations, and of how new, large-scale, and impersonal organizations arose in Europe to control long-distance trade for more than three centuries. It shows that by 1700, the scene and methods for global trade had dramatically changed: Dutch and English merchants shepherded goods directly from China and India to northwestern Europe. To understand this transformation, the book compares the organizational forms used in four major regions: China, India, the Middle East, and Western Europe. The English and Dutch were the last to leap into Eurasian trade, and they innovated in order to compete. They raised capital from passive investors through impersonal stock markets and their joint-stock corporations deployed more capital, ships, and agents to deliver goods from their origins to consumers. The book explores the history behind a cornerstone of the modern economy, and how this organizational revolution contributed to the formation of global trade and the creation of the business corporation as a key factor in Europe's economic rise.

Utopias of One

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Kotin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War I ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Original Research ◽  
The Soviet Union

This book is a new account of utopian writing. It examines how eight writers—Henry David Thoreau, W. E. B. Du Bois, Osip and Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Anna Akhmatova, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and J. H. Prynne—construct utopias of one within and against modernity's two large-scale attempts to harmonize individual and collective interests: liberalism and communism. The book begins in the United States between the buildup to the Civil War and the end of Jim Crow; continues in the Soviet Union between Stalinism and the late Soviet period; and concludes in England and the United States between World War I and the end of the Cold War. In this way it captures how writers from disparate geopolitical contexts resist state and normative power to construct perfect worlds—for themselves alone. The book contributes to debates about literature and politics, presenting innovative arguments about aesthetic difficulty, personal autonomy, and complicity and dissent. It models a new approach to transnational and comparative scholarship, combining original research in English and Russian to illuminate more than a century and a half of literary and political history.

The Fascist Turn in the Dance of Serge Lifar

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Franko
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
World War ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
Critical Discourses

This book is an examination of neoclassical ballet initially in the French context before and after World War I (circa 1905–1944) with close attention to dancer and choreographer Serge Lifar. Since the critical discourses analyzed indulged in flights of poetic fancy a distinction is made between the Lifar-image (the dancer on stage and object of discussion by critics), the Lifar-discourse (the writings on Lifar as well as his own discourse), and the Lifar-person (the historical actor). This topic is further developed in the final chapter into a discussion of the so-called baroque dance both as a historical object and as a motif of contemporary experimentation as it emerged in the aftermath of World War II (circa 1947–1991) in France. Using Lifar as a through-line, the book explores the development of critical ideas of neoclassicism in relation to his work and his drift toward a fascist position that can be traced to the influence of Nietzsche on his critical reception. Lifar’s collaborationism during the Occupation confirms this analysis. The discussion of neoclassicism begins in the final years of the nineteenth-century and carries us through the Occupation; then track the baroque in its gradual development from the early 1950s through the end of the 1980s and early 1990s.

International Opera in Nineteenth-century New York

2020 ◽  
pp. 244-269
Author(s):  
Karen Ahlquist
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
World War I ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Considerable Extent ◽  
World War ◽  
Metropolitan Opera ◽  
The City

This chapter charts how canonic repertories evolved in very different forms in New York City during the nineteenth century. The unstable succession of entrepreneurial touring troupes that visited the city adapted both repertory and individual pieces to the audience’s taste, from which there emerged a major theater, the Metropolitan Opera, offering a mix of German, Italian, and French works. The stable repertory in place there by 1910 resembles to a considerable extent that performed in the same theater today. Indeed, all of the twenty-five operas most often performed between 1883 and 2015 at the Metropolitan Opera were written before World War I. The repertory may seem haphazard in its diversity, but that very condition proved to be its strength in the long term. This chapter is paired with Benjamin Walton’s “Canons of real and imagined opera: Buenos Aires and Montevideo, 1810–1860.”

Ephemera

2020 ◽  
pp. 168-188
Author(s):  
Catherine Massip
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Short Life ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Major Medium

Among the documents which give access to musical life and its various events, ephemera occupy a special field. The word (ephemeron singular; ephemera plural) covers several kinds of written or printed documents largely scattered but being produced for a short life and not subject to be handled and stored in a permanent way. “Those papers of the day” as defined in eighteenth century were produced on a large scale in the nineteenth century when newspapers became the major medium for publicity. The main purpose of these documents was primarily information and publicity. This chapter argues how ephemera may be read not as mere sidelines to culture but as central documents pertaining to the wide and complex intellectual issues in music.

scholarly journals Future Power Train Solutions for Long-Haul Trucks

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2225
Author(s):  
Ralf Peters ◽  
Janos Lucian Breuer ◽  
Maximilian Decker ◽  
Thomas Grube ◽  
Martin Robinius ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fuel Cells ◽  
Co2 Emissions ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Co2 Reduction ◽  
Road Transport ◽  
Transport Sector ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Production Of Hydrogen

Achieving the CO2 reduction targets for 2050 requires extensive measures being undertaken in all sectors. In contrast to energy generation, the transport sector has not yet been able to achieve a substantive reduction in CO2 emissions. Measures for the ever more pressing reduction in CO2 emissions from transportation include the increased use of electric vehicles powered by batteries or fuel cells. The use of fuel cells requires the production of hydrogen and the establishment of a corresponding hydrogen production system and associated infrastructure. Synthetic fuels made using carbon dioxide and sustainably-produced hydrogen can be used in the existing infrastructure and will reach the extant vehicle fleet in the medium term. All three options require a major expansion of the generation capacities for renewable electricity. Moreover, various options for road freight transport with light duty vehicles (LDVs) and heavy duty vehicles (HDVs) are analyzed and compared. In addition to efficiency throughout the entire value chain, well-to-wheel efficiency and also other aspects play an important role in this comparison. These include: (a) the possibility of large-scale energy storage in the sense of so-called ‘sector coupling’, which is offered only by hydrogen and synthetic energy sources; (b) the use of the existing fueling station infrastructure and the applicability of the new technology on the existing fleet; (c) fulfilling the power and range requirements of the long-distance road transport.

scholarly journals International Trade and Human Capital Investment with Heterogeneous Firms and Workers: Modeling and Analysis

Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 1106
Author(s):  
Jaewon Jung
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Organizational Behavior ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Investment Decision ◽  
Heterogeneous Firms ◽  
Modeling And Analysis ◽  
Trade Model

Though the importance of organizational behavior and human decision processes within firms for the firm performance has largely been recognized in the business and management literature, much less attention has been devoted to studying such implications in the international trade context. This paper develops a general-equilibrium trade model in which heterogeneous workers make an investment decision in acquiring advanced managerial skills and choose their optimal effort level based on their comparative advantage. In doing so, we show how globalization-induced human capital accumulation within firms leads to sustainable economic growth. We also show that workers’ organizational belief and CEO’s managerial vision may be an important element for the human capital formation within firms and for the performance of firms in a global economy.

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