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Origins and Growth of the Global Economy From the Fifteenth Century Onward
Ronald E. Seavoy
Book Code: C7912
ISBN: 0-275-97912-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-97912-6
312 pages, maps
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 5/30/2003
List Price: $79.95 (UK Sterling Price: £44.95)
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: Reviews:
  • Encompassing a broad topic, this well-written account surveys the development of the global economy since the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of discovery in the 1400s....Recommended. Public and academic library collections, upper-division undergraduate and up.
    —Choice     November 2003
  • For undergraduates and readers who require a short readable Eurocentric account of how our world economy evolved in a linear way from imperialism throught to globalization, then Seavoy's book must be recommended as exemplary.
    —International Journal of Maritime History     .
  • [S]erves as a reminder that simple solutions (including those of the accuser and the accused in this case) will not solve complex problems with deep historical roots. Few readers will be able to deny that he has provoked them to think about the difficulties that underlie underdevelopment, even if the main source of that provocation is disagreement.
    —EH.Net     November 2003
Description: The global economy rests on the foundation of imperial commercial rivalries that began when Columbus sailed west to America and da Gama sailed east to India. Thereafter, Spanish and Portuguese global commerce was challenged by the Dutch, English, and French. During the 19th century these nations rapidly expanded into the political vacuum of Africa and elsewhere because industrialization gave them--and Germany, Japan, and Russia--the power to intrude into subsistence cultures worldwide. After World War II the political leaders of the United States and Western Europe were determined to end the imperial commercial rivalries that had contributed to World War I and World War II. Imperial commercial rivalries would be replaced by cooperative commercial politics among the principal industrial nations. Behind the shield of NATO, Western European nations and the United States devised rules and institutionalized them in the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, European Union, and NAFTA that rapidly increased the volume of global trade. As Seavoy points out, increasing trade had three purposes, full employment in industrial nations which, in turn, would create the political stability needed for democratic governance, and the production of an abundance of products so that the citizens of participating nations could enjoy the benefits of consumer cultures. The creation of consumer cultures required the dissolution of obsolete empires and concentrating production on products for export among industrial nations. Nations that failed to fully participate rapidly fell behind in acquiring the technologies and management skills necessary to produce the abundance of products that could create consumer cultures. The global market and its derivative, consumer cultures, could only have come into existence during the peace following World War II. In Seavoy's analysis the absence of world wars results in a world where global economy and peace are synonymous terms. This is a sweeping synthesis that will be of interest to scholars, students, and the reading public interested in economic development and world economic history.
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction
  • Beginnings of European Commercial Expansion
  • Commerce and Taxation in England in the 17th and 18th Centuries
  • Industrialization and Imperialism
  • Imperial Governance as Revolution
  • Imperial Commerce Becomes Global Commerce
  • Global Corporations in the 21st Century
  • Conclusion
  • Bibliography
  • Index
  • Maps
LC Card Number: 2002029898
LCC Class: HF352
Dewey Class: 382
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