Central banks were not always as ubiquitous as they are today. Their functions were circumscribed, their mandates ambiguous, and their allegiances once divided. The interwar period saw the establishment of twenty-eight new central banks - most in what are now called emerging markets and developing economies. The Spread of the Modern Central Bank and Global Cooperation: 1919-1939 provides a new account of their experience, explaining how these new institutions were established and how doctrinal knowledge was transferred. Combining synthetic analysis with national case studies, this book shows how institutional design and monetary practice were shaped by international organizations and leading central banks, which attached conditions to stabilization loans and dispatched “money doctors.” It highlights how many of these arrangements fell through when central bank independence and the gold standard collapsed.

It is impossible to understand societies without looking at their technological underpinnings. Technology constitutes the very fabric of societies' political, economic, cultural, and everyday realities. Building on recent historiography, this book offers the first overview of the global history of contemporary technology. Gathering more than fifty specialists of the history of technology, the collection of essays presents an overview of technological evolutions on a global scale. The book challenges both teleological approaches on progress and eurocentric perspectives. It explores the complex socio-economic implications of ‘techniques’ (and not simply technology) as well as the systems of representation and power structures that led to the emergence of today’s world. The purpose of the collected essays is to offer a new history of technology. In this perspective, a central question concerns the very category of the history of technology, i.e. the term ‘technology’ itself. Refusing both the limitations of ‘technology’ and of ‘useful knowledge’, the book stresses the necessity to study technology as embodying human activity as a whole. In that sense, history of technology, envisioned as techniques rather than purely technologies, is intrinsically linked to anthropology and ethnology.

Η μελέτη -αποτέλεσμα συστηματικής έρευνας σε κρατικά αρχεία στη Βιέννη, την Τεργέστη και την Αθήνα- καλύπτει ένα ιστοριογραφικό κενό γύρω από τη διπλωματική, στρατιωτική και οικονομική ιστορία της Ελληνικής Επανάστασης. Το κεντρικό θέμα, η δράση του αυστριακού αυτοκρατορικού πολεμικού στόλου στο Ιόνιο, στο Αιγαίο και γενικότερα στο Λεβάντε, πλαισιώνεται από την ανάδειξη της πολύπλευρης αυστριακής πολιτικής, τόσο του ενορχηστρωτή της, καγκελλάριου Μέττερνιχ, όσο και των Αυστριακών διπλωματών, προξένων, αξιωματικών. Επρόκειτο για μια πολιτική φαινομενικής ουδετερότητας, με στόχους τη διατήρηση του status quo και την αποτροπή της ρωσικής επιρροής στη Νοτιοανατολική Ευρώπη και βασικό άξονά της τη σταθερή εναντίωση προς επαναστατικά κινήματα. Στις σελίδες του βιβλίου ο αναγνώστης θα εντοπίσει τη δράση Φιλελλήνων, τον πόλεμο της ενημέρωσης (με τον δυναμικό ρόλο του Prokesch και των διοικητών της αρμάδας, Armeni και Dandolo), τις επιθέσεις των Αυστριακών σε νησιά (Μύκονο, Νάξο, Τήνο, Σπέτσες), τη Ναυμαχία του Ναβαρίνου, τον ανταγωνισμό των Δυνάμεων και των Ελλήνων για τον έλεγχο του Αιγαίου. Τέλος, ανέκδοτο επαναστατικό άσμα (1823) κλείνει την ιστορική αφήγηση, η οποία συμπληρώνεται από πίνακες (έντυπους και σε ηλεκτρονική μορφή), που έχουν αντληθεί από τις ανακρίσεις των λειοδικείων.

The article examines the price elasticities of the Greek tobacco supply at three different levels of analysis (cross-varietal, cross-regional, and two-dimensional) using secondary-level data published by the Greek National Tobacco Board for the years 1953 to 1964. The panel suggest that the development of postwar Greece’s tobacco sector was largely determined by market forces rather than by state-led purchasing programs. However, market pressures impacted production and sales volume to varying degrees, depending on the tobacco varieties grown in different parts of the country. Given that tobacco was postwar Greece’s most important export crop, and that it was the object of considerable state support, the often-made claim that state interventionism has disincentivized the adaptation of the Greek agricultural sector to evolving markets needs to be revised. The findings support Shultz’s poor-but-efficient hypothesis regarding farmers.