This week’s review! - wrapping up Sven Beckert’s Capitalism: A Global History. The non-Eurocentric historian doth protest too much, methinks.
Beyond the Shadow
Capitalism: A Global History, Sven Beckert, 2025 (pt.II).
open.substack.com
Angus Bylsma
@angusbylsma.bsky.social
Writing about economic history at https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com
This week's review! - My attempt to tackle Sven Beckert's monstrous Capitalism: A Global History. The good, the bad, and the ugly of (trying to) imitate Fernand Braudel.
Cut Adrift
Capitalism: A Global History, Sven Beckert, 2025 (pt.I).
unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com
It's been great fun talking to @angusbylsma.bsky.social about coins, trade, the 'end of antiquity', and even a little bit about methods and questions in economics and economic history.
Angus Bylsma@angusbylsma.bsky.social · 2mo agoThis week’s post!—an interview with Johannes Boehm about his spectacular new paper with Thomas Chaney, ‘Trade and the End of Antiquity’. Whether your interests are early medieval history, trade theory, or just coins, this one is worth your time.
This one is a longer read than my usual reviews. So maybe sit down with a beer or a coffee. Here’s a taste—as you can see, I’ve got questions for historians, for economists, and for methodological navel-gazers!
Angus Bylsma@angusbylsma.bsky.social · 2mo agoThis week’s post!—an interview with Johannes Boehm about his spectacular new paper with Thomas Chaney, ‘Trade and the End of Antiquity’. Whether your interests are early medieval history, trade theory, or just coins, this one is worth your time.
This one is a longer read than my usual reviews. So maybe sit down with a beer or a coffee. Here’s a taste—as you can see, I’ve got questions for historians, for economists, and for methodological navel-gazers!
Angus Bylsma@angusbylsma.bsky.social · 2mo agoThis week’s post!—an interview with Johannes Boehm about his spectacular new paper with Thomas Chaney, ‘Trade and the End of Antiquity’. Whether your interests are early medieval history, trade theory, or just coins, this one is worth your time.
This week’s post!—an interview with Johannes Boehm about his spectacular new paper with Thomas Chaney, ‘Trade and the End of Antiquity’. Whether your interests are early medieval history, trade theory, or just coins, this one is worth your time.
Trade and the End of Antiquity
An Interview with Johannes Boehm
unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com
New from me, on the wonderful @angusbylsma.bsky.social's blog: an essay about the collapse of Bretton Woods and the possibility of building such a system anew today, and a review of Martin Daunton’s comprehensive history of The Economic Government of the World.
Slouching Towards Liberalization
The Economic Government of the World, Martin Daunton, 2023 (Pt.II).
unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com
@samthorpe.bsky.social also wrote the supplemental to this review, on recent research on the elasticity of taxable income. There is no paywall on this one, so take a look.
Supplemental: Slouching Towards Liberalization
The Elasticity of Corporate Taxable Income Across Countries, Agostini, Asatryan, Bach, et al., 2026.
open.substack.com
Angus Bylsma@angusbylsma.bsky.social · 2mo agoThis week’s review!—back to Daunton, this time on the demolition of Bretton Woods and the potential lessons within. A guest post by the brilliant @samthorpe.bsky.social.
This week’s review!—back to Daunton, this time on the demolition of Bretton Woods and the potential lessons within. A guest post by the brilliant @samthorpe.bsky.social.
Slouching Towards Liberalization
The Economic Government of the World, Martin Daunton, 2023 (Pt.II).
open.substack.com
Against my better judgement, I've finally started a (free) Substack. As I explain in my first post, I see this as an avenue to write on some of the big questions that economics research isn't well-suited to: normative claims, historical work, and thinking about the roots of economic analysis.
Kicking things off
About me, about this blog
thestockexchangeandtheholygrail.substack.com
This week's review! - Martin Daunton's The Economic Government of the World. Explaining why Bretton Woods was what it was, and wasn't what it wasn't.
Narrowed Vision
The Economic Government of the World, Martin Daunton, 2023.
open.substack.com
This week’s review! - Robert Yee's The City’s Defence. On economic knowledge, governance, empire, and the making of the postwar world.
In Control
The City's Defence: The Bank of England and the Remaking of Economic Governance 1919-1939, Robert Yee, 2025.
open.substack.com
This week’s (not) review! - a very short discussion of, and excerpt from, Vasily Grossman’s Everything Flows. For those who prefer their novels unabashedly world-historical…
History's Decree
Everything Flows, Vasily Grossman, 1994 (2011)
open.substack.com
This week’s review! - Michael Albertus’ Land Power. A book as filled with interesting vignettes as it is devoid of interesting ideas.
Reshuffled, Reframed?
Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn’t, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies, Michael Albertus, 2025.
open.substack.com
This week's review! - Claudia Goldin's Career and Family. History, the Pill, and the Pay Gap. Check it out!
Ticking Clocks
Career and Family: Women's Century Long Journey Towards Equity, Claudia Goldin, 2021.
open.substack.com
Something a little different this week: my thoughts about (Ashley Kahn’s book on) Miles Davis, Kind of Blue, and when Eric Hobsbawm was really, really wrong.
On a Tightrope
Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and the Making of a Masterpiece, Ashley Kahn, 2000.
open.substack.com
This week’s review! — Peter Temin’s Lessons from the Great Depression. It’s all expectations, baby! (and history, and politics)
Expecting Worse
Lessons from the Great Depression, Peter Temin, 1991.
open.substack.com
This week's review! - C. B. Schedvin's Australia and the Great Depression. Because I know that what excites your minds most of all are old monographs about the economic history of insignificant countries (seriously though, I promise it is interesting).
Paying Up
Australia and the Great Depression, C. B. Schedvin, 1970.
open.substack.com
This week’s review! — Douglass North’s Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. On changing your mind, Marxism and neoclassical economics, and, of course, institutional change.
A Big Price
Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance, Douglass C. North, 1990.
open.substack.com
Fact of the day: the first steam engine was brought to Australia in 1813 by a guy named John Dickson. But no-one knew how to assemble, let alone use it, and so it didn’t begin operating until a mechanic could be brought over from the UK two years later.
This week's review! - @brankomilan.bsky.social's The Great Global Transformation. On political economy of our moment.
Within and Between
The Great Global Transformation: National Market Liberalism in a Multipolar World, Branko Milanovic, 2025.
unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com
Can’t believe no-one has yet written a history of Germany in the 19th/20th century called “Guns, Germans, and Steel”.
I’m not convinced this ‘historyLLM’ business is anything other than an amusing toy. Great fun for sure, but let’s not pretend we can actually learn anything of historical interest from an LLM trained on pre-1913.
This week’s review! — Joel Mokyr’s The Enlightened Economy. A big book with a lot to say on what did, and did not, cause the British Industrial Revolution.
Cutting Through
The Enlightened Economy: Britain and the Industrial Revolution 1700-1850, Joel Mokyr, 2011.
unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com
This week’s review! — seizing the moment to start a belated Joel Mokyr journey with The Lever of Riches. While the book’s title reminds one of a second-rate fantasy novel, it is actually anything but. In fact, Mokyr surprised (almost) all my expectations.
Catching Sparks
The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress, Joel Mokyr, 1992
unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com
This week’s review! — my no doubt highly unoriginal take on an old classic, Gregory Clark’s A Farewell to Alms. Malthus, wages, and the question of whether everything is downstream of demography.
Downstream
A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, Gregory Clark, 2007
unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com
This week’s review! — Jessica Goldberg on Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean. A book which leaves Avner Greif’s thesis in the same place as the French fleet in 1798: lying at the bottom of the Nile.
Postmen & Police
Trade and Institutions in the Mediaeval Mediterranean: Evidence From the Genizia, Jessica Goldberg, 2012.
unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com
This week’s review! — on Avner Greif’s Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy. Games, institutions, and mediaeval Jewish-Egyptian merchants. Also the closest I’ve ever come to reviewing a work of fiction…
Cultivating Seeds
Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy, Avner Greif, 2006.
unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com
This week’s review — THE FINAL WICKHAM POST. Sizing up the mediaeval Italian city-states properly.
Sharks and Remoras
The Donkey and the Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950-1180, Chris Wickham, 2023.
unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com
This week’s review! — more Chris Wickham, this time about the mediaeval commercial revolution. What, where, why and whether it was even a thing.
Out of Italy
The Donkey and the Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950-1180, Chris Wickham, 2023.
open.substack.com