Angus Bylsma
@angusbylsma.bsky.social
📤 98
📥 249
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Writing about economic history at
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com
pinned post!
This week’s review! — pt. 2 on Chris Wickham’s Framing the Early Middle Ages. Peasants, Pots, and Pirenne!
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Peasants and Pots
Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400-800, Chris Wickham, 2004.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/peasants-and-pots
3 months ago
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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.
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Postmen & Police
Trade and Institutions in the Mediaeval Mediterranean: Evidence From the Genizia, Jessica Goldberg, 2012.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/postmen-and-police?r=rfxq8
18 days ago
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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…
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Cultivating Seeds
Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy, Avner Greif, 2006.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/cultivating-seeds
about 1 month ago
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This week’s review — THE FINAL WICKHAM POST. Sizing up the mediaeval Italian city-states properly.
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Sharks and Remoras
The Donkey and the Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950-1180, Chris Wickham, 2023.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/sharks-and-remoras
about 2 months ago
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This week’s review! — more Chris Wickham, this time about the mediaeval commercial revolution. What, where, why and whether it was even a thing.
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Out of Italy
The Donkey and the Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950-1180, Chris Wickham, 2023.
https://open.substack.com/pub/unevenandcombinedthoughts/p/out-of-italy
about 2 months ago
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This week’s review — on central bank independence and… wait no, not that! Actually a much more relevant topic: Chris Wickham’s Inheritance of Rome. On the Byzantine economy, mediaeval Egypt, and the Arab conquest.
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Downsizing
The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000, Chris Wickham, 2009.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/downsizing
2 months ago
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This week’s review! — pt. 2 on Chris Wickham’s Framing the Early Middle Ages. Peasants, Pots, and Pirenne!
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Peasants and Pots
Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400-800, Chris Wickham, 2004.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/peasants-and-pots
3 months ago
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This week’s review! — beginning a medieval odyssey with Chris Wickham’s mammoth book, Framing the Early Middle Ages. Taxes, demesnes, slaves, and why Britain really dropped the ball in the 5th century.
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The Heights of Darkness
Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400-800, Chris Wickham, 2004.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/the-heights-of-darkness
3 months ago
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This week’s review! — on Catherine Schenk’s superb The Decline of Sterling, and how sterling can and can not help us think about the dollar today (plus some personal news).
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Surprising Persistence
The Decline of Sterling: Managing the Retreat of an International Currency, 1945-1992, Catherine R. Schenk, 2010.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/surprising-persistence
4 months ago
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reposted by
Angus Bylsma
David Edgerton
5 months ago
This is a wonderful discussion of my Rise and Fall of the British Nation, and the first to note the importance to it of my critique of Cain and Hopkins, which I took, along with that of Anderson and Nairn, to be richest existing analyses of the twentieth century British nation and empire.
add a skeleton here at some point
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This week’s review! — on
@davidedgerton.bsky.social
’s The Rise and Fall of the British Nation. Well, less of a review than a discussion of how Edgerton sheds light on the pitfalls of gentlemanly capitalism. Plus a bit about Hobsbawm the nationalist at the end!
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Out of Empire
The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth Century History, David Edgerton, 2018.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/out-of-empire
5 months ago
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Final maths exam next week… here we go!
5 months ago
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Some absolutely fantastic Grossberg paintings here
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5 months ago
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This week’s review! - finishing up my look at Cain and Hopkins’ British Imperialism, on the 20th century. There’s something for everyone - expansion, decline, Sterling, and Eurodollars!
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Reglued, Unstuck
British Imperialism 1688-2015, P. J. Cain and A.G Hopkins, 2016.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/reglued-unstuck
5 months ago
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Economic historians getting creative
6 months ago
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The Apple Music Classical app has no right being as good as it is
6 months ago
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This week’s review! — part one of my look into Cain and Hopkin’s monumental book, British Imperialism 1688-2015. Gentlemanly capitalism, services, and who ran the British Empire (supposedly)…
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The City and the Mill
British Imperialism 1688-2015, P. J. Cain and A.G Hopkins, 2016 (1993).
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/the-city-and-the-mill
6 months ago
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For this week’s review, I read
@jamestwotree.bsky.social
’s new history of Taiwanese agrarian development at home and abroad, In the Global Vanguard. Land reform, Africa, and Straw Hat Diplomats!
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Development and Diplomacy
In the Global Vanguard: Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan, James Lin, 2025.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/development-and-diplomacy
6 months ago
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This week’s review! — something a little bit different (and more light-hearted) to wrap up my focus on interwar monetary history, for now. Liaquat Ahamed’s very entertaining if dubious Lords of Finance!
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The Helmsmen
Lords of Finance: The Bankers who Broke the World, Liaquat Ahamed, 2009.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/the-helmsmen
7 months ago
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The right to watch television should be conditional on first having seen Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation. The Peano axioms of culture.
7 months ago
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More brilliant Minard flow-maps — here we have the impact of the American Civil War on European Cotton Imports! I can’t get enough…
7 months ago
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This week’s review — my brief reflections on Charles Kindleberger’s World in Depression 1929-1939. I couldn’t resist thinking about our present moment… a very timely read! (With unavoidable reference to
@adamtooze.bsky.social
and
@delong.social
)
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Couldn't, Wouldn't
The World in Depression 1929-1939, Charles P Kindleberger, 1973 (2012).
https://open.substack.com/pub/unevenandcombinedthoughts/p/couldnt-wouldnt?r=rfxq8&utm_medium=ios
7 months ago
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Fantastic paintings from an artist I had never heard from before. The art is what keeps bringing me back to chartbook - helps break me out of my futurism/expressionism shell!
add a skeleton here at some point
8 months ago
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You can’t help but fall in love with Charles Joseph Minard’s flow maps! The godfather of data visualisation.
8 months ago
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This week’s review! - on Charles Kindleberger’s unrealised vision for the dollar system, according to Perry Mehrling.
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Crime and Responsibility
Money and Empire: Charles P Kindleberger and the Dollar System, Perry Mehrling, 2022.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/crime-and-responsibility
8 months ago
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This week’s review! - on how a changing money market changed central banking, according to Perry Mehrling. Check it out!
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Pipes and Pipemakers
The New Lombard Street: How the Fed Became the Dealer of Last Resort, Perry Mehrling, 2011.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/pipes-and-pipemakers
8 months ago
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Central bankers need to bring back the pointy beards! Adds mystique befitting a bearer of arcane knowledge… how could anyone believe in CBI if they don’t look a little bit like wizards? (Pictured: Montagu Norman and Rudolf Havenstein)
8 months ago
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Alright I thought no one could match Braudel in retro-chart game but Kindleberger gives it a red hot crack…
8 months ago
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Does this debate exist online? I can’t seem to find it, but if it does, it is surely the econ version of Chomsky-Foucault!
9 months ago
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Bretton Woods, capital controls, and collective action…. my thoughts on Eric Helleiner’s States and the Reemergence of Global Finance!
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Out of the Woods
States and the Reemergence of Global Finance, Eric Helleiner, 1994.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/out-of-the-woods
9 months ago
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Time for urgently reading Eric Monnet — or at least, the review of his book I wrote about a month ago ;)
add a skeleton here at some point
9 months ago
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Likely the most scattered review I’ve written of late, but hopefully interesting nonetheless! On the spread of the central bank and what the BIS might have been.
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Untimely Births
The Spread of the Modern Central Bank and Global Cooperation, Ed. Barry Eichengreen and Andreas Kakridis, 2024.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/untimely-births
9 months ago
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My review of Barry Eichengreen’s Globalizing Capital — well, the first third of it, but with an eye to reading international monetary history on the most abstract level. On why the gold standard could never be replicated…
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Tarnished Gold
Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System, Barry Eichengreen, 2018.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/tarnished-gold
9 months ago
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For my first review of the year, I read Èric Monnet’s Balance of Power! On what needs to be done with central bank independence.
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Cracking Glass
Éric Monnet, Balance of Power: Central Banks and the Fate of Our Democracies, 2024.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/cracking-glass
10 months ago
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For something a little bit different than usual, I’ve reviewed Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War! Grossman, suffering, hatred, and Gaza.
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The Highest Form
The Unwomanly Face of War, Svetlana Alexievich, 1983 (2017).
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/the-highest-form
11 months ago
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reposted by
Angus Bylsma
Benjamin Braun
11 months ago
[Perry Mehrling voice:] “Consider: You’re amphibiously landing but there’s no water – you’re dead. It’s all about liquidity.”
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Isaac Newton accidentally inventing the Gold Standard is one of those facts which has no right being true
11 months ago
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Don’t know why I find this surprising but I do… nineteenth century swap lines
11 months ago
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Monnet’s Balance of Power is fantastic — not just great economic history, but also a great manifesto!
11 months ago
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add a skeleton here at some point
11 months ago
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The things you could think in 2007…. My review of Giovanni Arrighi’s Adam Smith in Beijing! Can Smith explain Chinese development? Probably not. But maybe?
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Paths to Opulence
Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century, Giovanni Arrighi, 2007.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/paths-to-opulence
11 months ago
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My brief review of Giovanni Arrighi’s The Long Twentieth Century — on modelling Braudel, trends and cycles, and Tooze’s recent critique!
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Braudel in New York
The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times, Giovanni Arrighi, 1994.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/braudel-in-new-york
12 months ago
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Finally seen throne of blood and it is an improvement on Macbeth in every way — lady Macbeth is cogent, the ‘ripped untimely from the womb’ is cut, and the trees and castle bit works much better
12 months ago
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Stalingrad, Life and Fate, The Unwomanly Face of War… all brilliant and harrowing. But still the strangest thing to me is that the main subsistence food of those who fought, killed and died at and around Stalingrad was… watermelons! The least harrowing of all melons.
12 months ago
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People in Aus/NZ got really quite worried about the Russian Pacific Fleet in the 1880s — which is silly because they really needn’t have! Not exactly the world’s most storied naval force…
12 months ago
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reposted by
Angus Bylsma
Benjamin Braun
12 months ago
Considering Mexican real wages, the "but Sheinbaum" retort doesn't seem to do all that much damage to the "incumbents-hammered-by-inflation" hypothesis. No one is saying that inflation hammers regardless of what happens to real wages.
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Finally wrapped up Capitalism and Civilisation with a review of the third and final instalment, The Perspective of the World. Genoa and the 1970’s…. read and enjoy!
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Roaming Predators
The Perspective of the World, Fernand Braudel, 1985.
https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com/p/roaming-predators
12 months ago
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As an Australian I would like to ask the UN to please let us swap our Albanese for their superior Albanese
about 1 year ago
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One day, the Ljung-Box-Jenkins-Pierce-Akaike-Dickey-Johansen-Granger test statistic will solve all our problems, I’m sure of it
about 1 year ago
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Today, my little economic history blog reached two milestones. First, I passed 500 subscribers - thank you! Second, it is exactly 1 year, 29 books, and ~50,000 words since I started. To mark the occasion, a 🧵 of the 5 reviews that I think hold up the best.
about 1 year ago
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