There are two widely held explanations for South Asia's failure to attain the level of economic performance achieved by the now developed countries of the world: One is that British imperial policy frustrated economic growth after 1750; the other is that the Indian value system and die social structure that reflected that value system were obstacles to economic growth. It is worthy of note that both interpretations tend to visualize pre-1750 South Asia at a level of economic organization and performance at least equal to that of western Europe in 1750, with the economic gap appearing only subsequently.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate more thoroughly the experience of the urban and agricultural wage earner during the first four decades of American history by focusing on one major city and its environs. While the majority of Americans were engaged in independent agricultural pursuits during this period, the proportion of wage earners to total population was much greater in urban areas. Artisans, laborers, domestics, and mariners were among the largest of wage-earning groups.

In spite of the recognized difficulties of dividing the white population of the antebellum South into two distinct classes—slaveowners and poor whites—historians have persisted in differentiating the roles of the small slaveholder and nonslaveholder vis-à-vis that of the large slaveholder or plantation owner. It is the purpose of this dissertation to evaluate the roles of the nonslaveholding and small slaveholding farmer in comparison with that of the large slaveholder in the westward expansion of the antebellum cotton economy.

One of the most important problems in the study of economic development is the role of technological change in the growth process. My dissertation is an analysis of some of the major variables which influenced the timing of the invention, adoption, and diffusion of the compound marine steam engine. The problem was divided into three parts: (1) all those variables pertaining directly to the invention of the engine, and the very first effects on the cost structure of the steamship industry; (2) the role of the compound marine steam engine in the growth of the German merchant fleet, 1872–1887, with special emphasis on the diffusion of the invention and its productivity effects; and (3) the effect of the compound steam engine on the sailing ship component of the German merchant fleet.

The explanations put forth during the nineteenth century to account for Ireland's economic condition may be grouped under three heads. The first was associated with the conceptual framework of the English classical economists and stressed overpopulation and excessive subdivision. A second approach, which might be called the underdeveloped-country explanation, emphasized the need for social overhead capital—drainage, flood control, communications, and education. The third approach argued that defects in the land tenure system were at the root of Ireland's failure to develop a prosperous economy.