Ronald Findlay, Kevin H. O'Rourke, Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium, Princeton University Press (2007)

摘要

Two distinguished scholars of international trade - one an economic theorist, the other an economic historian - have combined to produce an outstanding survey of world history recounting the evolution of world commerce in tandem with the ebb and flow of military expansion. This impressive and sweeping work is likely to be required reading for many students and professors for years to come. The authors confront us with the sobering fact that trade may be the handmaiden of prosperity, but profitability rarely was the sole reason for enhanced commerce. Politics determined when trading was feasible at least as often as commercial opportunities shaped political institutions. Findlay and O'Rourke show that force was often necessary to safeguard trading routes and shipping lanes on the one hand, but that the potential for improved commerce was just as often warped by the colonial and military ambitions of the great powers. Furthermore, improved trade was often the secondary byproduct of complex struggles for regional domination.