While the direct impact of geographic endowments on prosperity is present in all countries, in former colonies, geography has also affected colonization policies and, therefore, institutional outcomes. Using non-colonized countries as a control group, I re-examine the theories put forward by La...

Tax havens have become a subject of great interest among policymakers, scholars and the general public, and are central to many important current policy debates. This chapter provides an overview of the scholarly literature on the characteristics and origins of tax havens. The earlier...

The book brings together original, state-of-the-art historical research from several continents and examines how mainly local peasant societies responded to colonial pressures to produce a range of different commodities. It offers new directions in the study of African, Asian, Caribbean, and...

The papers presented in this collection offer a wide range of cases, from Asia, Africa and the Americas, and broadly cover the last two centuries, in which commodities have led to the consolidation of a globalised economy and society - forging this out of distinctive local experiences of...