In this book, originally published in 1937, Jacob Viner traces, in a series of studies of contemporary source-material, the evolution of the modern orthodox theory of international trade from its beginnings in the revolt against English mercantilism in the 17th and 18th centuries, through the English currency and tariff controversies of the 19th century, to the late 20th century. The author offers a detailed examination of controversies in the technical literature centering on important propositions of the classical and neo-classical economists relating to the theory of the mechanism of international trade and the theory of gain from trade.

Studies in the Theory of International Trade

Intra- and international commodity market integration in the Atlantic economy, 1800–1913

The history of prices in Europe from the mid-fifteenth to the mideighteenth century is a very large problem indeed, and not to be undertaken in a single chapter without some trepidation. It is easy enough to outline the framework for such a history, but there is little possibility in the present state of our knowledge of discovering all the facts, or even of interpreting them with confidence. The principal advantage of such an enquiry is to establish once more the validity and basic characteristics of price history. The first difficulty is that the economy under review is old, and now largely superseded, with structures and rhythms very different from those of industrializing Europe in the nineteenth and even more in the twentieth century. A readjustment of basic concepts is thus required on the part of the reader and of the historian of this economy. Then again, price history has not yet succeeded in acquiring its own tools of analysis. For better or worse, it must rely on those provided by economists and statisticians. This has meant a constant effort to define terms, and in turn as a result, the methodological refinements have imposed uncertainties and repeated changes of view. It is as though each scholar believed in the persuasive value of a single method – his own – which‘ in the name of Science’ made him free to dispense with, and even reject, the contributions of his predecessors.

Prices in Europe from 1450 to 1750

Introduction Among historians—as distinguished from administrators and writers on political arithmetic, both of whom were concerned with the present rather than the past—interest in demographic data was slow in arising. As late as 1764 Voltaire found it necessary to admonish his fellow-historians to pay more attention to questions of population. ‘On exige’, he wrote in his programmatic article ‘Histoire’ ( Dictionnaire philosophique ), ‘des historiens modernes plus de details,…des dates precises,….plus d'attention a la population.’ Few modern historians, presumably, will demur at Voltaire's injunction; but most of us would protest that, in the field of population at least, his demand for ‘ details’ and ‘ dates precises’ is difficult to meet. Indeed, the historian who undertakes to trace the demographic development of Europe in the early modern period has more than once occasion to recall Professor See's emphatic disclaimer, ‘Nous n'en savons rien et nous n'en pouvons rien savoir.’ Even if he does not fully subscribe to this declaration the historian of early modern population cannot fail to recognize that his task is formidable. Admittedly, the period to be covered is no longer innocent of statistical inquisitiveness. What seems to be the oldest reference to a count of ‘hearths’ ( focaticum ) dates from 1092; and Italian cities, no less precocious in this respect than in so many others, are known occasionally to have collected quasi-demographic intelligence as early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. On the eve of the modern era enumerations of one sort or another had long since ceased to be a novel feature of public administration, though it was only in sixteenth-century Italy (in Venice, on the island of Sicily, and a little later in Tuscany) that census-like data would be gathered as a matter of routine.

The Population of Europe from the Black Death to the Eve of the Vital Revolution

The Mediterranean Trades The Mediterranean at the beginning of the sixteenth century was still very much a world of its own. It was still a large world, not yet dwarfed by comparison with the world of great oceans beyond Suez and Gibraltar. A ship – an ordinary merchant ship, with reasonable weather – took up to two months to make the passage, say, from Cartagena or Alicante to Alexandria; perhaps two or three weeks from Messina to Tripoli of Barbary; ten or twelve days from Leghorn to Tunis. There was plenty of space, plenty of elbow room; and the area as a whole was almost self-supporting. The sixty million or so people who inhabited the countries bordering the inland sea produced between them most of the food, many of the raw materials and almost all the manufactured goods which they consumed. They built their own ships and carried their own trade. The richest, liveliest and most varied economic activity of the region was concentrated in the relatively small area of northern Italy comprising Milan, Florence, Genoa, Venice, and their smaller neighbours and satellites. Florence and Milan were primarily manufacturing centres – Florence had little success in developing its own trading fleet, and Milan never possessed one – but Venice and Genoa, both great industrial centres, were also major naval powers and bases of great merchant fleets. Outside Italy, Ragusa specialized in very large ships for carrying bulky goods, grain, salt and wool. France, growing in unity and prosperity, attracted an increasing volume of Mediterranean traffic into the Rhone Valley by way of Marseilles, with its busy fleet of light lateen-rigged craft.

William Jacob

Papers

An historical inquiry into the production, and consumption of the precious metals

Report On the Trade in Foreign Corn: And On the Agriculture of the North of Europe