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The Machinery Question during the early Nineteenth Century was the question of the impact of technical progress on the total economy and society. The question was central to everyday relations between, master and workman, but it was also of major theoretical and ideological interest. The very technology at the basis of economy and society was a fundamental platform of challenge and struggle. In the early Nineteenth Century, it was political economy, the 'natural science' of economy and society which took up the theoretical debate on the introduction, diffusion, and social impact of the radically new techniques of production associated with the era. The machine question also came to infuse not only the theoretical realm of political economy, but also the wider culture and consciousness of the bourgeoisie and the working classes. The machine question reflected the close connections of the relations of production to the concerns and conflicts pervading theory, culture and politics. This thesis has analyzed only one part of this many sided issue. It has focused on the attempt of the middle classes to use the new science of political economy to depict technical progress as a natural and evolutionary phenomenon. However, the thesis also shows that the great variety of theoretical traditions in political economy, combined with significant theoretical and working class dissent with the so called doctrine of political economy prevented the unqualified success of this attempt. The depth of the controversy evoked over the machinery issue indicated the still marked uncertainty of the experience of industrialization. By the 1820's and 1830's the factory, urban agglomerations and the coal heaps of mining counties had transformed some parts of the industrial landscape. But the permanence of this change still seemed questionable. Such change was still confined to a very small number of regions, affected small sections of the population, and contributed minimally to national income. The experience of technical change was of great novelty and excitement for those who contemplated the prospects of wealth and power it might bring. On the other hand, for the first generation of factory labour and cast off artisans and domestic workers, it still seemed possible to stop the 'unnatural' progress of technology. Working men and women felt keenly the unprecedented demands for mobility, both geographical and occupational. For them the machine meant, or at least threatened, unemployment, an unemployment which at best was transitional between and within sectors of the economy, and at worst affected the economy as a whole at times of scarce capital. For them the machine was accompanied by a change in the pattern of skills, and involved all too often the introduction of cheap and unskilled labour. In the period before the 1840's, when labour's great onslaught was against the machine itself, the machine question also featured in middle class doctrine. The times were still uncertain enough to demand that the 'cult of improvement' take on the shape of a cultural offensive rather than mere complacency. Thus the 'cult of improvement' during this era sought its -reatest scientific context in political economy. Most of the secondary literature on this period depicts the views of the middle classes and especially of political economy as ones of great pessimism. This thesis shows, to the contrary, that optimism and great faith in the new industrial technology was fundamental to the vision of political economy and to that of its middle class adherents. Ricardo's work was an intellectual and doctrinal tour de force which gripped the whole period, but which, in addition, just as significantly generated a great array of criticism. Curiously, the great historical problem of Ricardo's work was the lack of understanding it met, and the serious distortion it suffered at the hands of his popularizers. The great range of Ricardo criticism in the decades after his death was based often on misconceptions of his work. His own Principles which exuded so much interest in and hope for technical progress generated a wealth of dissident literature which also focused on improvement, skill and technical change. Though the political economy of these years was very diverse, and policy debates were hotly conducted, there is no doubt that the self-defined profession of political economy accepted certain assumptions and outlooks. There were several themes and conceptions which shaped the overall nature of this critique of Ricardo. These themes allow for the demarcation of two epochs of political economy between the 1820's and the 1830's. Political economists of the 1820's placed great emphasis on labour productivity and the skills of the artisan in their attempt to contradict the so called Ricardic predictions of overpopulation and the stationary state. By the 1830's economists still found in 'improvement,' technical change, and increasing returns, the great empirical and theoretical rebuttal to the 'Ricardian' predictions. However, 'improvement' was now discussed as the evolution of capital, and even more crucial to this change was the tendency to see capital as a material embodiment, as fixed capital and machinery. This shift of concepts was accompanied by a new methodological thrust. The political economy of the 1830's reflected a polemically inductivist mood. Unprecedented energy was devoted to debates over abstraction and induction. The political economy which resulted was more empirical, comparative and historical. New interest was given over to visiting factory districts, drawing on government reports, and in using and participating in social surveys. Political economists devoted more time to comparing the course of economic development in Britain to that of other Western economies, that of primitive societies, and that of previous historical epochs. The conceptual shift in political economy over these years seems to parallel certain tendencies and changes in the economy itself. The political economy of the 1820's appears to reflect the concerns underlying the economic-phase defined by Marx as the phase of 'manufactures'. The shift that takes place in theory in the 1830's approximates to the shift in the economy to the phase of 'modern industry.' But the conceptual changes in political economy over the period are also very closely connected to class struggle. This shows in the very seriousness attached by political economists to the 1826 anti-machinery riots in Lancashire and to the 1830 agricultural riots. Discussion of these two disturbances infused the very heights of economic theory. The establishment of political economy reflected the alarm of the middle classes and provided the 'scientific' answers to the working man's critique of machinery. Moreover, in debate with their critics, they helped to generate a new theory of technical change based on the machine and on the evolution and security of capital and the capitalist. The overall effect of these riotc on the middle clashes was a celebration of the cult of technical improvement. The force of this 'scientific' optimism in political economy was given a deep cultural basis in middle class improvement societiesandmdash;the Mechanics Institute Movement of the 1820's and the scientific and statistical societies of the 1830's. These movements were attempts to involve both the working classes and the middle classes in a concerted energetic programme to promote technical advance. They also acted to forge new cultural connections between the provinces and the metropolis. A scientific movement which, in its rhetoric at least, focused on the practical, economic and technological connections of science, created a new nexus simultaneously economic and cultural between province and metropolis. This scientific culture was material and empirical.

During the three years following the 1988 Olympic Games the Soviet Union and all of the East European countries established official relations with South Korea. This study is an economic history, focusing on the establishment of direct commercial relations between these countries, a process that began in 1968. It examines the development of direct economic relations between East Central Europe, the Soviet Union and South Korea from 1970 to 1990 to identify areas of conflict, competition and cooperation. The work begins with a historical overview of Russian/Soviet relations with the Korean peninsula from 1240 to 1970 and East Europe between 1950 and 1970. The second chapter uses a comparative model for communist countries to show the degree of centralization in South Korea, which helps to explain why South Korea, a "democratic" country, could develop and consistently maintain a policy, such as Nordpolitk, for over twenty years. The remaining chapters study development of formal and informal relations during the periods of 1970-1979, 1980-1988 and 1989-1991. The "people diplomacy" conducted through nonpolitical contact, such as trade, sports and cultural exchanges, during this period clearly aided the establishment of official relations between the Soviet Union, East European countries and South Korea. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-09, Section: A, page: 2937. / Major Professor: Edward D. Wynot. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.

In Mexican urban life of the eighteenth century, the artisan guilds dominated the economy. The guild system controlled production and trades, regulated apprenticeship and entrance into the trades, and meditated between the interests of the guilds and an intrusive state. Beginning in the latter part of that century, however, and continuing on into the latter part of that century, however, and continuing on into the nineteenth century, economic pressures from merchant capitalists and unlicensed petty producers undermined the guilds paramount position in the local economy. While this process is well known (although little understood), nearly unknown is the role played by the craft-cofradias (confraternities) within the artisan community. My dissertation focuses on the inter-relationship between the guilds and the cofradias, the secular and the sacred. It is my belief that whereas the separate interests of the shopowning artisans and their wage-earning journeymen tended to divide along social class lines, especially with the formal abolition of the guild in 1814, the cofradias melded and mediated the different socio-economic interests of their members. Masses, processions and cofradia administration brought craftsmen together, strengthening and consecrating existing bonds, and gave an added dimension to craft membership. The institutions of the guild-cofradias remained the nuclei around which the city's artisans clustered to maintained their secular and spiritual community. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-01, Section: A, page: 0412. / Major Professor: Rodney D. Anderson. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

A comprehensive study of bank failures during the Florida land boom of the mid-1920s. This dissertation is the first work to analyze state and national banking records to determine the causes of specific bank failures during the banking panic of 1926. Previously confidential government documents, which are now public records because of this study, were utilized to establish why 150 Florida and Georgia banks failed in that year. / In ten days of July 1926, after uncontrollable depositor runs, one hundred and seventeen banks closed in the two states. Uninsured depositors lost an estimated $30 million, and several suicides followed the financial havoc. / Florida suffered through a banking crisis during the years preceding the stock market crash of 1929. Bank assets in Florida fell more than $300 million in 1926 alone. Between 1926 and 1929, bank assets declined from \$943 million to $375 million. / Regulatory secrecy permitted the banking debacle to grow beyond control as regulators concealed the magnitude of the problem. After lawsuits disclosed bank fraud, the public panicked. The ensuing depositor runs caused the banking crash. / Heretofore, the banking debacle has been blamed on the collapse of the Florida land boom. It was believed that the precipitate drop in real estate values created a regional recession which caused the banks to fail. Bankers were not regarded as the problem. In fact, they were defended by bank regulators, who blamed the crisis on the public. / This work concludes that banks which were operated prudently survived the deceleration of the land boom. Many bankers, however, looted the financial institutions they pledged to protect. They tried to get rich by wildly speculating with depositors' money in the real estate frenzy. When their schemes failed, so did their banks. This study proves that despite official disclaimers and previous historical accounts, virtually every bank failure which occurred in Florida and Georgia during 1926 involved massive insider abuses, a conscious conspiracy to defraud, or both. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-04, Section: A, page: 1365. / Major Professor: Edward F. Keuchel. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

This research is an attempt to clarify the confusion and controversy concerning the content and meaning of Islamic economics. The objective of this dissertation is two fold. The primary objective is to attain a definition for the term "Islamic economic system" based on a thorough investigation of the origin and the evolution of Islamic economic thought. The second objective is to examine the extent to which early Islamic economic thought or its ideological concepts compares to the medieval economic thought of the West. / In order to identify what might be termed an "Islamic economy," this dissertation uses a Schumpeterian approach--that in order to understand the present, one needs to know the past. Apart from the importance of the Schumpeterian approach in economic analysis, the argument for pursuing the primary objective of this research is to recognize a neglected area in the field of economic thought. / The dissertation reveals a basic continuity of ideas on various economic subjects by Islamic scholars during the ascendancy of Islamic civilization. This provides the basis necessary to refute the thesis propounded by Meyer that the "Arabic, Turkish and Persian speaking East has experienced no continuity of economic ideas such as those which come from the Judeo-Christian West." The study further points to a certain unity of economic thought between the medieval West and the Muslim East. Both systems were primarily concerned with the quality of life, which in turn depended on the moral and ethical character of the individual. Both also traced their origins to Greek philosophy, in particular Neo-Platonism. / The study concludes with a discussion of the reasons for the divergence in economic growth observed in the Islamic East as compared to the Christian West in the period after the Renaissance. These reasons include a number of factors relating to socioeconomic and political institutions in the East, but do not arise from restrictions imposed by Islamic religious ideology. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-10, Section: A, page: 3666. / Major Professor: Philip Sorensen. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.