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\"The history of the modern world can be described through the history of the commodities that were produced, traded and consumed, on an increasingly global scale. The papers presented in this book show how in this process borders were transgressed, local agents combined with metropolitan representatives, power relations were contested and frontiers expanded. Including cases from Asia, Africa and the Americas, as well as a number of global commodities (sugar, tobacco, rubber, cotton, cassava, tea and beer), this collection presents a sample of the range of innovative research taking place today into commodity history. Together they cover the last two centuries, in which commodities have led the consolidation of a globalised economy and society - forging this out of distinctive local experiences of cultivation and production, and regional circuits of trade\"-- Provided by publisher.

01 02 The history of the modern world can be described through the history of the commodities that were produced, traded and consumed, on an increasingly global scale. The papers presented in this book show how in this process borders were transgressed, local agents combined with metropolitan representatives, power relations were contested and frontiers expanded. Including cases from Asia, Africa and the Americas, as well as a number of global commodities (sugar, tobacco, rubber, cotton, cassava, tea and beer), this collection presents a sample of the range of innovative research taking place today into commodity history. Together they cover the last two centuries, in which commodities have led the consolidation of a globalised economy and society – forging this out of distinctive local experiences of cultivation and production, and regional circuits of trade. 13 02 Jonathan Curry-Machado coordinates the British Academy Research Project, 'Commodities of Empire', and is currently researching the impact of the sugar frontier on rural society in the Hispanic Caribbean. His book Cuban Sugar Industry: Transnational Networks and Engineering Migrants in Mid-Nineteenth Century Cuba was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011. 02 02 The papers presented in this collection offer a wide range of cases, from Asia, Africa and the Americas, and broadly cover the last two centuries, in which commodities have led to the consolidation of a globalised economy and society – forging this out of distinctive local experiences of cultivation and production, and regional circuits of trade. 04 02 List of Figures Preface and Acknowledgements Contributors Global Commodities, Local Interactions: An Introduction; Jonathan Curry-Machado 1. Routeing the Commodities of the Empire through Sikkim (1817-1906); Vibha Arora 2. Indian Pale Ale: an Icon of Empire; Alan Pryor 3. The Control of Port Services by International Companies in the Macaronesian Islands (1850-1914); Miguel Suárez Bosa 4. Of Stocks and Barter: John Holt and the Kongo Rubber Trade, 1906-1910; Jelmer Vos 5. Coercion and Resistance in the Colonial Market: Cotton in Britain's African Empire; Jonathan E. Robins 6. A Periodisation of Globalisation According to the Mauritian Integration into the International Sugar Commodity Chain (1825-2005); Patrick Neveling 7. In Cane's Shadow: Commodity Plantations and the Local Agrarian Economy on Cuba's Mid-nineteenth Century Sugar Frontier; Jonathan Curry-Machado 8. Cuban Popular Resistance to the 1953 London Sugar Agreement; Steve Cushion 9. Tobacco Growers, Resistance and Accommodation to American Domination in Puerto Rico, 1899-1940; Teresita A. Levy 10. The Battle for Rubber in the Second World War: Cooperation and Resistance; William G. Clarence-Smith 11. Beyond 'Exotic Groceries': Tapioca-Cassava-Manioc, a Hidden Commodity of Empires and Globalisation; Kaori O'Connor 12. El Habano: The Global Luxury Smoke; Jean Stubbs

\"Diplomacy is essential to the conduct of foreign policy and international business in the twenty-first century. Yet, few international actors are trained to understand or practice effective diplomacy. Poor diplomacy has contributed to repeated setbacks for the United States and other major powers in the last decade. Drawing on deep historical research, this book aims to 'reinvent' diplomacy for our current era. The original and comparative research provides a foundation for thinking about what successful outreach, negotiation, and relationship-building with foreign actors should look like. Instead of focusing only on failures, as most studies do, this one interrogates success. The book provides a framework for defining successful diplomacy and implementing it in diverse contexts. Chapters analyze the activities of diverse diplomats (including state and non-state actors) in enduring cases, including: post-WWII relief, the rise of the non-aligned movement, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the U.S. opening to China, the Camp David Accords, the reunification of Germany, the creation of the European Union, the completion of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and relief aid to pre-2001 Afghanistan. The cases are diverse and historical, but they are written with an eye toward contemporary challenges and opportunities. The book closes with systematic reflections on how current diplomats can improve their activities abroad. Foreign Policy Breakthroughs offers rigorous historical insights for present policy\"-- Provided by publisher.

The papers presented in this collection offer a wide range of cases, from Asia, Africa and the Americas, and broadly cover the last two centuries, in which commodities have led to the consolidation of a globalised economy and society - forging this out of distinctive local experiences of cultivation and production, and regional circuits of trade

Few would dispute that many Western industrial democracies undertook extensive deregulation in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet this narrative, in its most familiar form, depends upon several historiographical assumptions that bely the complexities and pitfalls of studying the recent past. Across thirteen case studies, the contributors to this volume investigate this \"deregulatory moment\" from a variety of historical perspectives, including transnational, comparative, pan-European, and national approaches. Collectively, they challenge an interpretive framework that treats individual decades in isolation and ignores broader trends that extend to the end of the Second World War.

What causes democratic waves? This article puts forward a theory of institutional waves that focuses on the effects of systemic transformations. It argues that abrupt shifts in the distribution of power among leading states create unique and powerful incentives for sweeping domestic reforms. A variety of statistical tests reveals strong support for the idea that shifts in hegemonic power have shaped waves of democracy, fascism, and communism in the twentieth century, independent of domestic factors or horizontal diffusion. These “hegemonic shocks” produce windows of opportunity for external regime imposition, enable rising powers to rapidly expand networks of trade and patronage, and inspire imitators by credibly revealing hidden information about relative regime effectiveness to foreign audiences. I outline these mechanisms of coercion, influence, and emulation that connect shocks to waves, empirically test their relationship, and illustrate the theory with two case studies—the wave of democratic transitions after World War I, and the fascist wave of the late interwar period. In sum, democracy in the twentieth century cannot be fully understood without examining the effects of hegemonic shocks.

Invasions of leaf beetles can cause tremendous economic consequences because some of these insects become major pests in invaded territories. We present the first inventory of alien Chrysomelidae of European Russia that appeared in the region in the 20th and 21st centuries (9 species) with analysis of the history of their invasions and detailed maps of distribution. This case study revealed some general tendencies of invasions of leaf beetles: (1) Recently, a dramatic increase in the rate of Chrysomelidae invasions is observed, which reflects the increase in international trade of living plants; (2) Alien leaf beetles can spread quickly, occupying almost all of Europe within several decades; (3) When the range of some leaf beetle species is quickly expanding, or when the species has been recorded established somewhere outside the native range, this species should be regarded as a potential invader worldwide. and (4) Alien leaf beetles usually occur on alien or cultivated plants, but some become naturalized in native communities. The specific information was the following. Two species native to the Mediterranean region, Chrysolina americana (feeds on Rosmarinus and Lavandula) and Leptomona erythrocephala (feeds on Lotus corniculatus) were recorded in European Russia for the first time. A polyphagous pest of floriculture Luperomorpha xanthodera native to China and Korea and a pest of soybeans Medythia nigrobilineata native to east Asia have been in the region since 2016. A pest of tobacco Epitrix hirtipennis native to North America has occurred since 2011. A pest of corn Diabrotica virgifera was intercepted at the border of Russia in 2011 but has not established. Three alien species have been in the region since the 20th century: Zygogramma suturalis introduced from North America for control of Ambrosia, Phyllotreta reitteri native to Afghanistan and Tajikistan and feeding on Lepidium latifolium, and the Colorado potato beetle Leptinotarsa decemlineata.

This paper uses the case study of Gordon & Gotch, media import/exporters, to explore how the transnational sale of British media contributed to a common cultural identity within the British World. Gordon & Gotch, founded as a media import firm in Australia in 1853, opened a London branch in 1866 which became independently owned and operated in 1890. This paper argues that the London and Australasian firms of Gordon & Gotch played an important and understudied role in tying Australia to Britain through lines of business that benefitted men in Melbourne and London, creating an “imagined community” of British readers that spanned oceans. The paper also explores how the divergent strategies of the London and Australasian Gordon & Gotches in the wake of the Second World War help us to understand the timeline of Australia’s cultural disentanglement with Britain. As new political economies developed in Britain and Australia, the London firm was forced to pivot to a European or more generally “global” strategy, while the Australian firm refocused its energies to domestic and American media. The consequence for Australian consumers was a reduced presence of British media and a greater preponderance of American, Australian, and locally printed multinational media in Australia. The long history of the British and Antipodean Gordon & Gotches reveals the contingency of British media saturation in Australia and the value of business historical approaches to studying change in cultural markets.

Societal Impact Statement Increasing crop productivity is often proposed as a key goal for meeting the food security demands of a growing global population. However, achieving high crop yields alone without meeting end‐use quality requirements is counter to this objective and can lead to negative environmental and sustainability issues. High yielding feed wheat crops in the United Kingdom are a typical example of this. The historical context of UK agricultural industrialisation, developments in plant breeding and wheat end‐use processing are examined. We then outline how employing innovations in plant breeding methods offer the potential to redress the balance between wheat quantity and quality. Summary Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) has historically been an important crop for many human civilisations. Today, variability in wheat supply and trade has a large influence on global economies and food security. The United Kingdom is an example of an industrialised country that achieves high wheat yields through intensive cropping systems and a favourable climate. However, only a minority of the wheat grain produced is of suitable end‐use quality for modern bread baking methods and most wheat produced is fed to livestock. A large agricultural land area and input use dedicated to producing grain for animal rather than human food has wide‐ranging negative impacts for environmental sustainability and domestic food production. Here we present an historical perspective of agricultural and economic changes that have resulted in UK production primarily focussing on wheat quantity over quality. Agricultural intensification, liberalisation of free trade in agricultural commodities, innovations in the milling and baking sector, developments in scientific understanding of genetics and plant breeding, and geopolitical changes have all played a role. We propose that wheat breeding plays a crucial role in influencing these issues and although wheat breeders in the United Kingdom have historically applied the most‐up‐to‐date scientific advances, recent advances in genomics tools and quantitative genetics present a unique opportunity for breeders to redress the balance between quantity and quality. El incremento en la producción de cultivos es un objetivo clave comúnmente propuesto para atender las demandas de seguridad alimentaria de una población global en crecimiento. Sin embargo, un aspecto detrimental para este objetivo es alcanzar altos rendimientos de los cultivos sin los requerimientos de calidad de uso final y puede generar problemas de tipo ambiental y de sostenibilidad. En el Reino Unido, los altos rendimientos de grano de cultivos de trigo usados para alimentación son un ejemplo típico de esto. Hemos examinado el contexto histórico de la industrialización de la agricultura, desarrollos en el fitomejoramiento y calidad de uso final del grano del trigo en el Reino Unido. En este contexto, hemos descrito como el uso de innovaciones en los métodos de fitomejoramiento ofrecen el potencial para compensar el balance entre la cantidad y la calidad del grano del trigo. Pour assurer la sécurité alimentaire d'une population mondiale qui continue de croitre, il est souvent proposé d'augmenter les rendements agricoles. Cependant, il est aussi important de s'assurer que la qualité des récoltes soit suffisante pour l'alimentation humaine, faute de quoi les conséquences environnementales sont très lourdes. La production de blé à hauts rendements destinée à l'alimentation animale au Royaume‐Uni est un exemple intéressant sur lequel nous nous penchons dans cet article. Le contexte historique, l'industrialisation de la production de blé, le développement de sélection de variétés et les procédés d'utilisation de blé pour le pain et autres produits qui ont conduit à la situation actuelle y sont discutés. Des méthodes innovantes dans le domaine de la sélection du blé sont aussi présentées. Celles‐ci offrent des opportunités permettant d'assurer une production de blé de qualité et en quantité suffisante pour l'alimentation humaine. Increasing crop productivity is often proposed as a key goal for meeting the food security demands of a growing global population. However, achieving high crop yields alone without meeting end‐use quality requirements is counter to this objective and can lead to negative environmental and sustainability issues. High yielding feed wheat crops in the United Kingdom are a typical example of this. The historical context of UK agricultural industrialisation, developments in plant breeding and wheat end‐use processing are examined. We then outline how employing innovations in plant breeding methods offer the potential to redress the balance between wheat quantity and quality.

To what extent are the outcomes of economic regulation intended and desired by its proponents? To address that question, we combine Stigler’s theory of regulatory capture with the Austrian theory of the dynamics of interventionism. We reframe Stigler’s theory of regulatory capture as an analytical starting point for a dynamic theory of interventionism, one accounting for the unintended consequences that emerge from regulation, even if the origins of such regulation were designed to benefit a particular industry or special interest group. Therefore, we argue that regulatory capture is not necessarily inconsistent with a dynamic theory of intervention. We illustrate our theoretical point by applying it to an econometric case study of electric utility regulation and its eventual nationalization in both Ontario and Quebec in the early twentieth century, resulting in unintended and undesirable consequences that deviated from the interests of the regulation’s intended beneficiaries.