Economic History

From 1861-65, writes Richard Drysdale, during the American Civil War, Nassau in the Bahamas thrived on trade with the Confederacy.

Across the Pacific, writes C.M. Yonge, from northern Japan to the Californian coastline, the relentless hunt for the sea-otter’s precious fur had international consequences.

Windmills abounded in England from the twelfth century onwards. Terence Paul Smith describes how their bodies usually revolved on a vertical post so that the miller could face the sails into the wind.

C.R. Boxer describes how porcelain, silks and, above all, tea formed the basis of a lucrative trade between the Chinese and Dutch in the eighteenth century.

The English south coast lay at the mercy of smugglers, writes Christopher Lloyd, until a full-scale blockade from 1817 gradually brought them under control.

During the War of 1812, writes Harvey Strum, profit proved more persuasive than patriotism to many New Yorkers and Vermonters, who continued to supply the British forces in Canada.

William Gardener describes how silks, tobacco and tea from China were exchanged across the deserts northwest of Peking for furs, cloth and leather from Asiatic Russia.

An island in a sea of mountains, as Sarah Searight describes it, the Indian region of Ladakh was once a cosmopolitan centre of pilgrimage and trade.

J.R.S. Whiting recalls an era when tokens were used for propaganda rather than as currency.

Henry Marsh describes how England and Scotland became the first European countries to begin freeing their serfs, towards the close of the twelfth century.