This is a concise economic history of the global economy over the past thousand years, exploring the main waves of globalization, starting from the trade revolution of the Middle Ages, focusing on the Great and Little Divergence between the West and the East and the North and the South of the World.

The Global Economy: A Concise History traces the history of the global economy over the past thousand years. In doing so, it explores all the main waves of globalization, from the trade revolution of the Middle Ages, to the Great and Little Divergence between the West and the East, as well as the North and the South of the world. This book examines the Industrial Revolution and the World Wars, and their respective consequences, as well as the interaction between technological shifts and the transition in geopolitical equilibria. The last chapters are dedicated to an in-depth examination of the transformation which occurred in the global economy after 1989. The chronological structure of the book is designed to help students memorize and understand key events. This book also discusses broader themes, such as convergence-divergence, growth and decline, development, and industrial revolutions. This will make it of interest not only to students and academics, but to all readers wishing to gain a deeper understanding of the history and current state of the global economy.

Living up to its title, this volume puts the global economy front and center in a concise history that covers the Neolithic Revolution through the 2008 financial crisis in only a few hundred pages. Editors Colli and Amatori (both, Bocconi Univ., Italy) focus on how goods, services, and resources moved across national boundaries, using the experiences of individual countries in service to the larger theme. Chapters elucidate how these systems evolved in response to flows of goods and resources and in turn shaped them over time, primarily centering on the period since roughly AD 1700, what economic historians have come to call "the Great Divergence." This is when western European (and later North American) incomes per person started growing much more rapidly than in the rest of the world. The book grapples with both the causes of this divergence and the consequences for the global economy. The text's greatest strength is its up-to-date scholarship, bringing the latest findings to bear on classic issues such as late-19th-century globalization and the origins of the Great Depression, making this an excellent addition to any economic historian's or library's collection. --L. D. Johnston, College of St. Benedict/St. John's University