Böcker av Harold James

This book presents a new history of economic crises, looking at seven crashes over the past two hundred years, showing how some pushed markets in the direction of more cross-border integration of labor, goods, and capital markets while others prompted substantial deglobalization.

A timely call for recovering the true meanings of the nineteenth-century terms that are hobbling current political debates

These papers were originally given at a conference organized by the Society for European Business History. They reflect the degree of interest and even urgency in the investigation of the involvement of business corporations and of individual businessmen in the politics of the 1930s and 1940s.

"The conception of this volume had its origin in the Conference 'Responding to Crises in the Global Financial Environment - Risk Management and Regulation,' that took place in 2010 in Brussels at the National Bank of Belgium, and that was organized by the European Association for Banking and Financial History (EABH)"--Page vi

Europe's financial crisis cannot be blamed on the Euro, James contends in this probing exploration of the whys, whens, whos, and what-ifs of European monetary union. The current crisis goes deeper, to conundrums that were debated but not resolved at the time of the Euro's invention. And, Euro or no Euro, these clashes will continue into the future.

Harold James examines the vulnerability and fragility of processes of globalization, both historically and in the present. This book applies lessons from past breakdowns of globalization-above all in the Great Depression-to show how financial crises provoke backlashes against global integration.

The history of Krupp is the history of modern Germany. No company symbolized the best and worst of that history more than the famous steel and arms maker. In this book, Harold James tells the story of the Krupp family and its industrial empire between the early nineteenth century and the present, and analyzes its transition from a family business to one owned by a nonprofit foundation. Krupp founded a small steel mill in 1811, which established the basis for one of the largest and most important companies in the world by the end of the century. Famously loyal to its highly paid workers, it rejected an exclusive focus on profit, but the company also played a central role in the armament of Nazi Germany and the firm's head was convicted as a war criminal at Nuremberg. Yet after the war Krupp managed to rebuild itself and become a symbol of Germany once again--this time open, economically successful, and socially responsible. Books on Krupp tend to either denounce it as a diabolical enterprise or celebrate its technical ingenuity. In contrast, James presents a balanced account, showing that the owners felt ambivalent about the company's military connection even while becoming more and more entangled in Germany's aggressive politics during the imperial era and the Third Reich. By placing the story of Krupp and its owners in a wide context, James also provides new insights into the political, social, and economic history of modern Germany.

Modern America owes the Roman Empire for more than gladiator movies and the architecture of the nation's Capitol. It can also thank the ancient republic for some helpful lessons in globalization. So argues economic historian Harold James in this masterful work of intellectual history. The book addresses what James terms "e;the Roman dilemma"e;--the paradoxical notion that while global society depends on a system of rules for building peace and prosperity, this system inevitably leads to domestic clashes, international rivalry, and even wars. As it did in ancient Rome, James argues, a rule-based world order eventually subverts and destroys itself, creating the need for imperial action. The result is a continuous fluctuation between pacification and the breakdown of domestic order. James summons this argument, first put forth more than two centuries ago in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, to put current events into perspective. The world now finds itself staggering between a set of internationally negotiated trading rules and exchange--rate regimes, and the enforcement practiced by a sometimes-imperial America. These two forces--liberal international order and empire--will one day feed on each other to create a shakeup in global relations, James predicts. To reinforce his point, he invokes the familiar bon mot once applied to the British Empire: "e;When Britain could not rule the waves, it waived the rules."e; ? Despite the pessimistic prognostications of Smith and Gibbon, who saw no way out of this dilemma, James ends his book on a less depressing note. He includes a chapter on one possible way in which the world could resolve the Roman Predicament--by opting for a global system based on values as opposed to rules.

James tells how "iron masters" of a classical industrial cast were succeeded by generations who wanted to shift to information-age systems technologies, and how families and firms wrestled with social and economic changes that occasionally tore them apart. The author shows how these firms illuminate a European model of "relationship capitalism."

The process of globalization seems irreversible. However, James provides a sobering historical perspective, exploring the circumstances in which the globally integrated world of an earlier era broke down under the pressure of unexpected events.