"This volume compares early modern efforts to provide "public goods" defined as non-market mediated goods not limited to personal relations such as kinship. We examine poverty and famine relief, infrastructure, and forestry in East Asia and Europe, using Japan's Tokugawa era (1603-1868) as a...

Scholarly discussions on economic development in history, specifically those linked to industrialization or modern economic growth, have paid great attention to the formation and development of the market economy as a set of institutions able to augment people's welfare. The role of specific...

"The Routledge History of Poverty in Europe, c.1450-1800 is a pioneering exploration of both the lives of the very poorest during the early modern period, and of the vast edifices of compassion and coercion erected around them by individuals, institutions, and states. By exploring poverty and...

The new Routledge History of Poverty, c. 1450-1800 provides neither a "history" nor a coherent concept of "poverty" and rests on an inappropriate time scale. However, a closer discussion of these flaws enables a more consistent perspective, based on the idea that the interplay of "labour" and...