Rules of Exchange

Alessandro Stanziani is a professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and Senior Researcher at the Centre National des Recherches Scientifiques (CNRS) in Paris. He earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Naples and a Ph.D. in history from the EHESS, Paris. He has received numerous grants for his research, including one from the CNRS for a project on bonded labour in the Indian Ocean and one from the British Academy and French Ministry of Research Program on food policies in France and Britain in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries (with Peter Atkins). Stanziani has written approximately 80 articles and book chapters in English, French, German and Russian. He is the author of L'économie en révolution. Le cas russe, 1870–1930 and Histoire de la qualité alimentaire, 18e–20e siècles. He is the editor of La travail contraint en Asie et en Europe, XVIIe–XXe siècles and La qualité des produits en France XVIIIe–XXe siècles and co-editor of Nomenclatures et classifications. Enjeux économiques et dynamiques historiques (with Martin Bruegel and Jérôme Bourdieu).

• Introduction; Part I. Building Ideal Markets: Economic and Legal Culture: 1. Economic thought and competition; 2. Codes, customs and jurisdictions; Part II. Trade and Marketplace: 3. Covered markets; 4. The world of shop; 5. Intangible trade and the produce exchange; Part III. Market as Transaction: 6. Contracts and the quality of goods; 7. Trademark, quality and reputation; 8. Expertise and product specification; 9. Rules of international trade; Part IV. General Rules of Competition: Speculation, Trusts and Fair Competition: 10. Hoarding and speculation; 11. The law of competition and unfair competition in other 'Western' countries; General conclusion: market, exchange and the ideal of non-competition.

'Stanziani explores European economic development from a fresh angle, substituting a focus on law, credit, institutions, regulation, and organizational innovations for the customary centrality of technology and industry. The result is a provocative, practice-centered analysis, stretching across four centuries. An extraordinary recasting of economic history, as arresting as it is engaging.' Philip Scranton, Rutgers University