The structure of the USA and the countries that emerged from the remains of Gran Colombia ultimately took different shapes from those suggested in the era immediately after independence, particularly in regard to the extent of each state's fiscal and monetary capacities. This article applies Oszlak's model of ‘stateness’ to the early financial and monetary histories of the USA (roughly 1776–93) and Gran Colombia (roughly 1819–35) to assess and compare the role of financial and monetary capacities in long-run state consolidation and economic development. The US was ultimately more successful than Gran Colombia at adapting its financial and monetary capacities and institutions, creating better conditions for the attainment of ‘stateness’, stronger economic growth, and greater endurance as a national entity. The comparison ultimately suggests a reciprocal relationship between the legitimization of a state's authority (that is, state consolidation) and the development and solidification of fiscal and monetary capacities.

This article explores Russian perceptions of ‘America’ as they emerged in the eighteenth century when traders, explorers, and scholars approached the North American continent from the Pacific side. It argues that these perceptions were fundamentally different from the European mental discovery of America via the Atlantic. Rather than imagining a ‘new world’, the protagonists saw the north-west American coastline as a part of the North Pacific basin, which, in turn, was considered a part of the Russian empire. Only in the early nineteenth century did Russian geographic and cultural concepts change, becoming more similar to those of Europeans and to contemporary ideas of continents and global structures.

Traditional American historiography has dismissed the Liberian settlement scheme as impractical, racist, and naïve. The movement of Americans to Liberia, and other territorial and extraterritorial destinations, however, reveals the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors that influenced movement in the African diaspora. The reaction of different African Americans to these factors influenced the political and social development of Liberia as well as the colony's image at home. Africans migrating within and beyond US borders participated in a broader movement of people and the development of settler ideology in the nineteenth century.

While English nationalism has recently become a subject of significant scholarly consideration, relatively little detailed research has been conducted on the emigrant and imperial contexts, or on the importance of Englishness within a global British identity. This article demonstrates how the importance of a global English identity can be illuminated through a close reading of ethnic associational culture. Examining organizations such as the St George's societies and the Sons of England, the article discusses the evolving character of English identity across North America, Africa, Southeast Asia and the Antipodes. Beginning in the eighteenth century, when English institutions echoed other ethnic organizations by providing sociability and charity to fellow nationals, the article goes on to map the growth of English associationalism within the context of mass migration. It then shows how nationalist imperialism – a broad-based English defence of empire against internal and external threats – gave these associations new meaning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The article also explores how competitive ethnicity prompted English immigrants to form such societies and how both Irish Catholic hostility in America and Canada and Boer opposition in South Africa challenged the English to assert a more robust ethnic identity. English associationalism evinced coherence over time and space, and the article shows how the English tapped global reservoirs of strength to form ethnic associations that echoed their Irish and Scottish equivalents by undertaking the same sociable and mutual aspects, and lauded their ethnicity in similar fashion.

If we take recent income per capita estimates at face value, they imply that the average medieval European was at least five times ‘better off’ than the average Congolese today. This raises important questions regarding the meaning and applicability of national income estimates throughout time and space, and their use in the analysis of global economic history over the long term. This article asks whether national income estimates have a historical and geographical specificity that renders the ‘data’ increasingly unsuitable and misleading when assessed outside a specific time and place. Taking the concept of ‘reciprocal comparison’ as a starting point, it further questions whether national income estimates make sense in pre-and post-industrial societies, in decentralized societies, and in polities outside the temperate zone. One of the major challenges in global history is Eurocentrism. Resisting the temptation to compare the world according to the most conventional development measure might be a recommended step in overcoming this bias.