| 1. |
- Rönnbäck, Klas, 1974
(författare)
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On the economic importance of the slave plantation complex to the British economy during the eighteenth century: a value-added approach
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of Global History. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 1740-0228 .- 1740-0236. ; 13:3, s. 309-327
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There has been a long-standing debate on the global importance of the African external slave trades. While many scholars believe these to have been detrimental to African development, they were clearly a determining factor in the development of the Americas. What role they played for the European colonial powers is, however, hotly debated. This article contributes to the debate by estimating value added in the Triangular Trade and the American plantation complex. The article empirically studies the case of British connections to the African slave trade and the American plantation complex during the eighteenth century, since these have been the focus of much previous scholarly debate. The estimates suggest that these trades grew substantially over the period, reaching a magnitude equivalent to about 11% of the British economy by the early nineteenth century.
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| 2. |
- Rönnbäck, Klas, 1974
(författare)
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New and old peripheries - Britain, the Baltic and the Americas in the Great Divergence
- 2010
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Ingår i: Journal of Global History. - 1740-0228. ; 5:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In his seminal book The Great Divergence, Kenneth Pomeranz has argued that access to inputs from the vast acreages available in the Americas was crucial for the industrial revolution in Britain. But could no other regions of the world have provided the inputs in demand? Recent research claims that this could have been the case. This paper takes that research one step further by studying Britain’s trade with an old and important peripheral trading-partner, the Baltic, contrasting this to the British trade with America. This paper finds that production for export was not necessarily stagnating in the Baltic, as Pomeranz has claimed. Qualitative aspects of the factor endowment of land did however not enable the production of specific raw materials such as cotton, to meet the increasing demand. Thus, the decreasing role of the Baltic ought to a large extent be attributed to the patterns of British industrialization, and the demand it created for specific raw materials, rather than internal, institutional constraints in the Baltic region.
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