This thesis explores the possibilities for a global intellectual history of nineteenth-century political economy. Using Italian trade legislation of 1878 as a case study, I describe the way in...Show moreThis thesis explores the possibilities for a global intellectual history of nineteenth-century political economy. Using Italian trade legislation of 1878 as a case study, I describe the way in which political economy was used as a necessary science for the Italian state-building process, what were the original meanings attached to political economic ideas and in which way the reforms performed the Italian domestic market in order to connect it to the nineteeth-century global market.Show less
This thesis examines the entrepreneurial reasons for establishing the Ostend Company (1722-1727) in the context of socio-political developments in the aftermath of the War of the Spanish Succession...Show moreThis thesis examines the entrepreneurial reasons for establishing the Ostend Company (1722-1727) in the context of socio-political developments in the aftermath of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1713). The thesis concludes that the Ostend Company could be established because: internal competition in the Southern Netherlands had to be eliminated to restore profitability of the Chinese tea trade; merchants from the Southern Netherlands could not gain trading concessions in Bengal without the institutional protection of a Company (under the Habsburg Emperor); the Habsburg administration judged that overseas trade was instrumental for the economic development of the Southern Netherlands, in turn strengthening Habsburg authority there; and the Dutch and English threat of waging war against the commercial initiatives in the Southern Netherlands turned out to be a hollow one.Show less
