Economic History

Wars have left their impact in Sheffield, and the Crimean War perhaps more than any. W.H.G. Armytage marks the metamorphosis of a large-scale industrial city

During the fifteenth century the Medici banking house in Florence ‘almost passed belief’ in power and influence.

Alan Wharham describes how the tithing system, by which the Anglican Church took a regular share of the hard-working farmer’s produce, was not finally abolished until 1936.

After 1807, writes A.J.H. Latham, a Liverpool merchant and a Nigerian chieftain both profited from the palm-oil trade.

How one company opened an entire sub-continent to economic and political development, with huge ramifications for India, Britain, and the world.

The opening battle of the First World War was won by the Bank of England before the British had so much as fired a shot.

The early British engineers were masters of precise machinery; L.T.C. Rolt describes how sophisticated mass-production overtook them from America.

In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars, writes William Verity, the enterprising family of merchant bankers expanded their activities from Frankfurt to London and Paris.

In the 1860s a group of the younger Samurai launched the Meiji revolution in the Emperor's name. This event, writes Henry McAleavy, helped convert Japan into a modern country, with Western fashions and techniques imposed upon the national habits of centuries.

During an industrial conflict that lasted five weeks and brought the Port of London to a standstill, writes R.B. Oram, the “close fraternity of the docks” struck for better working conditions and more generous rates of pay.