Though written at different times, and in response to different occasions, the essays in this book aim to offer a convincing and coherent approach to the interpretation of the topic referred to in the title. The initial impetus for this long course of historical research came in 1976, with a...

Did Russia's emancipated serfs really pay too much for too little land? : statistical anomalies and long-tailed distributions -- On good numbers and bad : Malthus, population trends, and peasant standard of living in late Imperial Russia -- Serfs in Imperial Russia demographic insights -- Serf...

"This book brings together André Tchernia's previously published essays, updated and revised, with recent notes and prefaced with an entirely new synthesis of his views on Roman commerce with a particular emphasis on the people involved in it"--Book jacket

This work is split up into four parts. These are 'Overviews', 'The Pacific as Linchpin of World Trade', 'Winners and Losers in the Global Silver Trade', and 'Birth of Globalization Debate: Ecological, Economic, Epidemiological, and Demographic Interactions'