Abstract

The involvement of intellectuals in politics is a topic of continuous interest in the social sciences. The present paper analyses the career of Panagis Papaligouras, who was the main economics minister of the Centre-Right in Greece from the early 1950ies to the late 1970ies. Papaligouras held degrees in Law and Economics and followed graduate studies in international relations in Geneva. Initially he wrote philosophical essays before turning to politics after 1944 and evolving into the main speaker of the Right in economic policy issues. The roots ofhis thought and his political decisions are analyzed, in particular his blend of government action with a European/ internationalist agenda.

Michalis Psalidopoulos is Chief Consultant and Chair of the Advisory Board, Institute for Hellenic Growth and Prosperity, American College of Greece (ACG) . He is Professor Emeritus, Department of Economics, University of Athens, Greece.  He was holder of the Constantine Karamanlis Chair for Hellenic and European Studies at the Fletcher School, Tufts University (2010-2014) and Alternate Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund (2015-2020). His latest book  “The loans of Greece: 200 years of growth and crises” (Athens, Papadopoulos , in Greek) came out in  2019.

Date: Monday 15 May 2023, 16:00-18:00

The Seminar will be held in a hybrid format.

Venue: National Hellenic Research Foundation (48, Vas. Konstantinou av., Athens). Groundfloor, Seminars' room. 

Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87344361590?pwd=YzR3TWJJTmZ4Q0lzWDhLaXc4aThKdz09

Abstract

Between the mid-19th century and the 1950s, the Mediterranean mining basin participated in the development of contemporary industry both in terms of economic expansion and technological circulation. In mining and metallurgy,  this period was characterized by a alternatively dynamic of rushes and crises, in which companies of all sizes and players from various backgrounds tried to structure their activities coping with extreme price volatility. In that context, the Peñarroya Mining and Metallurgical Company (SMMP) became one of the leading European multinationals and the first Mediterranean multinational specialized in the extraction of non-ferrous minerals. The growth of this firm and its peculiar strategies are strictly related to this time of crises. Especially during the Great Depression, the SMMP implemented its structure by absorbing and reshaping a network of existing mining and metallurgical companies in the Mediterranean and continental Europe. The result was a complex and multipolar industrial and financial architecture, which connected the fragments of the Mediterranean mining basin in a new dynamic network. Those interconnections, animated by technological and financial circulations, transformed and propelled the flow of mining resources into the metallurgical integration and, eventually, into the market. To this extent, management was the key to guarantee the technical and administrative continuity of the productive space and the implementation of scientific management became fundamental to develop the industrial network of SMMP.  Through a multilevel micro-analytical perspective, the history of SMMP reveals the strategies of the growth of the firm and within a space, the Mediterranean, animated by economic an technological circulations and innovation, even in a time of crises.

Francesca Sanna, Post-doc fellow, University of Reims - Champagne Ardenne. Specialized in economic and history, Francesca Sanna holds a Phd in History and Civilization from Paris Cité University (Organiser la Méditerranée minière : gestion d’entreprise, contrôle des ressources et rationalisation du travail à la Société minière et métallurgique Peñarroya (1881-1950)). She currently works as a post-doc in the ANR-Me3dAx Project (University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne)

Date: Monday 6 March 2023, 16:00-18:00

The Seminar will be held in a hybrid format.

Venue: National Hellenic Research Foundation (48, Vas. Konstantinou av., Athens). Groundfloor, Seminars' room. 

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMlfuyvqjsrHdf7h6Fhwe4Jp-3V_ql2dbr5

Abstract 

Using probate inventories and tax data from two provincial centers and their rural hinterland, this paper presents long-term estimates of wealth inequality in northwestern Ottoman Anatolia. The study finds two waves of inequality growth and long-term net increase in Hüdavendigar and Saruhan from 1460/1550 to 1800. A sharp reversal ensues, but regional simulations still indicate an increase until 1870. Available demographic, economic and fiscal evidence suggests that political economy, involving fiscal consolidation and elite enlargement may have acted as long-term propellants of inequality while demographic change and economic performance echo medium-term fluctuations without conclusive evidence for long-term effect. At the same time, differences in the growth and inequality trajectories of the two provinces point to the possibility of diverse outcomes within the same institutional set up, contingent on geography and changes in the global division of labor.
This is an outcome of research jointly prepared with Alpay Filiztekin (Sabancı University)
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Hülya Canbakal received her Ph.D. in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University, in 1999. She taught at Sabanci University, Istanbul, in 1999-2017, and continues her research career as network faculty at the same institution. She is specialized in the socio-economic history and legal culture of the Ottoman Empire in the early modern period. Her recent research focuses on long-term economic change with specific reference to different forms of wealth, property relations, and inequality. She is particularly interested in the causes of regional diversity in economic performance. Most of her work utilizes a database of Ottoman probate records that she started compiling as part of a project called “Distribution of Wealth in the Ottoman Empire, 1500-1840”, supported by TÜBİTAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey). With about 18,000 inventories from different parts of the Empire and covering several centuries, the database is currently one of the largest quantitative resources for early modern Ottoman history.
Her works in progress include “Sex ratios in the late Ottoman Empire and Republican Turkey”, “Gender inequality in 18th-century Iraklion (Kandiye)”, “House prices in Anatolia and Macedonia, 1460-1920” and “Land and livestock prices in Anatolia, 1500-1920”.

Date: Monday 6 February 2023, 16:00-18:00

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86465945286?pwd=amlCenplMGZMNjREWG5jYlRZZ0VSQT09

Abstract

This presentation proposes another interpretation of the Europe/China divergence, based on a redefinition of capitalism in much broader terms than its mere reduction to the industrial revolution. It recalls the reasons why Chinese merchant networks were unable to formalize autonomous institutions, in order to confer a perennial scope to their affairs. What was the cause of this endogenous business practices structural weakness? It revisits the paradox of Chinese economic history where the emergence of rich merchants does not translate into steady capital accumulation. Collecting savings and making them available to entrepreneurs in the form of long-term capital is traditionally the task of banks. What credit institutions facilitated the collection of capital in China? How did it circulate? Where were capital markets developing credit instruments, allowing a wide exchange of information and the diffusion of financial innovations? If very few of the Chinese financial institutions that handled these operations was like a bank, in the sense of the term as used in the Middle Ages in Europe, did they nevertheless fulfil, its functions, even partially? This presentation raises the issue of capital sterilization, due to the fragmentation of financial institutions and high interest rates. The Ming commercial revolution was not the premise of a new world, but rather the sign of a dying economy whose dynamism had been exhausted. There was indeed a socio-economic  transformation of China under the Qing, but it took place in a political framework and geopolitical context very different from Europe. The transformation towards a capitalist economy was halted, while the rise of the market economy paradoxically contributed to the weakening of the imperial administration.

Date and Time: Monday 5 December 2022, 16:00-18:00

The Seminar will be held in a hybrid format.

Venue: National Hellenic Research Foundation (48, Vas. Konstantinou av., Athens). Groundfloor, Seminars' room. 

Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87489166053?pwd=VGwvMURKY3h1Q2xLZWdxdHNVY2w2UT09

Abstract

Bulgaria as one of the leading industrial districts of the late Ottoman Empire features prominently in the de-industrialization debate during the First Globalization. Gerschenkron, and recently Palairet, see Bulgaria as the epitome of a failed industrialization with secondary sector on the eve of Balkan Wars much smaller than in c. 1870. Compiling a large set of fresh data I am able to produce several spot estimates of Bulgarian textile output from c. 1870 to 1912. They allow to track the broad contours of the textile boom until mid-1870s, the deep and prolonged recession that followed, and the re-industrialization phase after 1902. Different to what earlier scholarship believed, by 1911-12 textile production was significantly higher than in 1870 and more importantly, factory manufacturing had replaced the old proto-industry.
Astonishingly, Bulgarian textile sector flourished between 1820s and early 1870s when, according to the terms of trade reconstructions by Williamson et al., the ‘periphery’ experienced the most devastating wave of de-industrialization. Moreover, Bulgarian woollen production sunk into protracted recession from mid-1870s onwards, at a time of considerable weakening of de-industrialization forces. Rich qualitative and quantitative information analysed in this study point to geography, remoteness and high inland transportation costs. Specialization in wool, rather than cotton, was also instrumental for Bulgaria’s successful sailing against the terms of trade tide. 

Martin Ivanov is Associate Professor of Economic History at the University of Sofia. He has worked many years as a researcher at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He has also served as Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Bulgaria to Finland and Estonia (2016-2020), Minister of Culture (2014) and National Archivist of Republic of Bulgaria (2011-2013). His books (in Bulgarian) include Sailing against the Wind: Bulgarian Textile Industry, ca. 1800-1912. (2022); The Gross Domestic Product of Bulgaria, 1870–1945. (2012); The Networking Capitalism: Bulgarian Commercial Bank and its Dependent Companies, 1890–1914. (2010); Bulgarian Business Elites, 1912–1947, 1989–2005, (2009, co-authored with Georgi Ganev).

Date: Monday 7 November 2022, 16:00-18:00

Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83535108092?pwd=Nnk2YTdDMVJGTTR1KzVzK2hndVMvQT09