The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.

Economy and Society

After World War II a select number of countries outside Japan and the West-those that Alice Amsden calls "the rest"-gained market share in modern industries and altered global competition. By 2000, a great divide had developed within "the rest", the lines drawn according to prewar manufacturing experience and equality in income distribution. China, India, Korea and Taiwan had built their own national manufacturing enterprises that were investing heavily in R&D. Their developmental states had transformed themselves into champions of science and technology. By contrast, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico had experienced a wave of acquisitions and mergers that left even more of their leading enterprises controlled by multinational firms. The developmental states of Mexico and Turkey had become hand-tied by membership in NAFTA and the European Union. Which model of late industrialization will prevail, the "independent" or the "integrationist," is a question that challenges the twenty-first century.

http://disciplinas.stoa.usp.br/pluginfile.php/347405/mod_resource/content/1/Amsden%20Rise%20of%20the%20Rest%20caps%2067.pdf

The Rise of "The Rest": Challenges to the West from Late-Industrializing Economies

Why did the industrial revolution take place in eighteenth-century Britain and not elsewhere in Europe or Asia? In this convincing new account Robert Allen argues that the British industrial revolution was a successful response to the global economy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He shows that in Britain wages were high and capital and energy cheap in comparison to other countries in Europe and Asia. As a result, the breakthrough technologies of the industrial revolution - the steam engine, the cotton mill, and the substitution of coal for wood in metal production - were uniquely profitable to invent and use in Britain. The high wage economy of pre-industrial Britain also fostered industrial development since more people could afford schooling and apprenticeships. It was only when British engineers made these new technologies more cost-effective during the nineteenth century that the industrial revolution would spread around the world.

/pdf/the-british-industrial-revolution-in-global-perspective-40efi3wwm8.pdf

The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective

The condition of the working class in England.

Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective: A Book of Essays

List of maps List of figures List of tables Genealogy of the Ottoman dynasty Chronology of Ottoman history, 1260-1923 Preface List of abbreviations General maps General introduction Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert Part I: The Ottoman State: Economy and Society, 1300-1600 Halil Inalcik Introduction A. The economic mind B. State revenues and expenditures: 1. Sources of revenue 2. The state treasury and budgets C. State, land and peasant: 3. State-owned lands (miri) 4. Land possession outside the miri system 5. Land surveying 6. The cift-hane system: the organization of Ottoman rural society 7. Settlements D. Trade: 8. Istanbul and the imperial economy 9. International trade: general conditions 10. Bursa and the silk trade 11. Dubrovnik and the Balkans 12. The Black Sea and Eastern Europe 13. The India trade 14. Northerners in the Mediterranean Bibliography List of weights and measures Glossary Index.

An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire

One important recent theme emerging from the literature on early modern Europe is that some of the key structural and institutional changes that are responsible for the increases in incomes may have taken place rather early, in the late medieval period or in the era of the Black Death. This study makes use of the recently compiled real wage evidence for different parts of Europe and the eastern Mediterranean to gain further insights into this period. The era of the Black Death witnessed a series of important long-term changes in demographic behaviour, in agriculture, in manufacturing, trade and technology. Real wage series reflect the productivity increases from these changes. They also suggest the Low Countries and England were able to resist to a greater extent the general tendency for wages to decline during the second leg of the demographic cycle that began with the Black Death. A wage gap thus began to emerge between the northwest and the rest of the continent after 1450. The last section of the article explores the reasons for this divergence.

The Black Death and the origins of the ‘Great Divergence’ across Europe, 1300–1600

Utilizing a large volume of archival documents, this study establishes for the first time the long-term trends in real wages of skilled and unskilled construction workers in Istanbul and other Ottoman cities in southeastern Europe and the Middle East, from the second half of the fifteenth century until World War I. A detailed consumer price index and nominal wage indices are constructed for the city of Istanbul for this purpose. These price and wage series are then inserted into a larger framework of price and wage trends in European cities during the same period.

Real wages and standards of living in the ottoman empire, 1489–1914

The early modern era witnessed the formation across Europe of centralized states that captured increasing shares of resources as taxes. These states not only enjoyed greater capacity to deal with domestic and external challenges, they were also able to shield their economies better against wars. This article examines the Ottoman experience with fiscal centralization using recently compiled evidence from budgets. It shows that due to high shares of intermediaries, Ottoman revenues lagged behind those of other states in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Ottomans responded to military defeats, however, and achieved significant increases in central revenues during the nineteenth century.

https://psi424.cankaya.edu.tr/uploads/files/Pamuk,%20Ott%20State%20Finances,%201500-1914%20(2010).pdf

Ottoman State Finances in European Perspective, 1500–1914

Acknowledgements Note on Transliteration List of Tables List of Acronyms General Introduction PART I: 1918-1945 Introduction to Part I 1. Turkey 1918-1945 2. Egypt 1918-1945 3. The Economies of the British and French Mandates 1918-1945 4. The States of the Arabian Peninsula 1918-1945 PART II: 1946-1990 Introduction to Part II 5. Turkey 1946-1990 6. Egypt 1946-1990 7. Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq 1946-1990 8. The Economies of Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank/ Gaza 1946-1990 9. The States of the Arabian Peninsula 1946-1990 Epilogue and Cocclusion: THE 1990s AND BEYOND Tables Statistical Appendix Bibliography Index

Şevket Pamuk

Papers

An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire

The Black Death and the origins of the ‘Great Divergence’ across Europe, 1300–1600

Real wages and standards of living in the ottoman empire, 1489–1914

Ottoman State Finances in European Perspective, 1500–1914

A history of Middle East economies in the twentieth century