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Angus Bylsma

@angusbylsma.bsky.social

Writing about economic history at https://unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com

97 Followers  |  249 Following  |  71 Posts  |  Joined: 29.11.2023  |  2.1614

Latest posts by angusbylsma.bsky.social on Bluesky

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Cultivating Seeds Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy, Avner Greif, 2006.

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…

07.10.2025 15:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Thank you, Sam!

24.09.2025 07:35 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Sharks and Remoras The Donkey and the Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950-1180, Chris Wickham, 2023.

This week’s review — THE FINAL WICKHAM POST. Sizing up the mediaeval Italian city-states properly.

23.09.2025 16:03 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Out of Italy The Donkey and the Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950-1180, Chris Wickham, 2023.

This week’s review! — more Chris Wickham, this time about the mediaeval commercial revolution. What, where, why and whether it was even a thing.

10.09.2025 20:38 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Downsizing The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000, Chris Wickham, 2009.

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.

26.08.2025 15:19 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Peasants and Pots Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400-800, Chris Wickham, 2004.

This week’s review! — pt. 2 on Chris Wickham’s Framing the Early Middle Ages. Peasants, Pots, and Pirenne!

12.08.2025 10:55 — 👍 4    🔁 3    💬 0    📌 0
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The Heights of Darkness Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400-800, Chris Wickham, 2004.

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.

29.07.2025 12:32 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 1
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Surprising Persistence The Decline of Sterling: Managing the Retreat of an International Currency, 1945-1992, Catherine R. Schenk, 2010.

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).

02.07.2025 11:15 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Thank you, David!

17.06.2025 21:03 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

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.

17.06.2025 15:38 — 👍 8    🔁 3    💬 1    📌 0
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Out of Empire The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth Century History, David Edgerton, 2018.

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!

17.06.2025 11:40 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 1
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Final maths exam next week… here we go!

05.06.2025 11:04 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Some absolutely fantastic Grossberg paintings here

05.06.2025 10:16 — 👍 0    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
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Reglued, Unstuck British Imperialism 1688-2015, P. J. Cain and A.G Hopkins, 2016.

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!

02.06.2025 11:40 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Economic historians getting creative

20.05.2025 11:55 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

The Apple Music Classical app has no right being as good as it is

20.05.2025 11:16 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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The City and the Mill British Imperialism 1688-2015, P. J. Cain and A.G Hopkins, 2016 (1993).

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)…

19.05.2025 10:48 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Development and Diplomacy In the Global Vanguard: Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan, James Lin, 2025.

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!

05.05.2025 10:57 — 👍 2    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 1
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The Helmsmen Lords of Finance: The Bankers who Broke the World, Liaquat Ahamed, 2009.

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!

22.04.2025 10:48 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

The right to watch television should be conditional on first having seen Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation. The Peano axioms of culture.

14.04.2025 11:12 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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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…

08.04.2025 11:42 — 👍 4    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
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Couldn't, Wouldn't The World in Depression 1929-1939, Charles P Kindleberger, 1973 (2012).

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)

07.04.2025 22:53 — 👍 1    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 1

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!

26.03.2025 11:55 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

The first shows British coal exports (1864), while the second is a representation of Napoleon’s Russia campaign, where the thickness of the line shows the number of men alive, yellow for advance and black for the retreat! (From 1869).

26.03.2025 11:49 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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You can’t help but fall in love with Charles Joseph Minard’s flow maps!

The godfather of data visualisation.

26.03.2025 11:49 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Thank you! I remember Timothy Mitchell wrote about Veblen’s sabotage in Carbon Democracy.. Arun seems to be picking up the same point!

25.03.2025 01:36 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Crime and Responsibility Money and Empire: Charles P Kindleberger and the Dollar System, Perry Mehrling, 2022.

This week’s review! - on Charles Kindleberger’s unrealised vision for the dollar system, according to Perry Mehrling.

24.03.2025 20:23 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Pipes and Pipemakers The New Lombard Street: How the Fed Became the Dealer of Last Resort, Perry Mehrling, 2011.

This week’s review! - on how a changing money market changed central banking, according to Perry Mehrling. Check it out!

10.03.2025 19:54 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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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)

07.03.2025 12:07 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

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