Volume 1 of The Cambridge History of Global Migrations documents the lives and experiences of everyday people through the lens of human movement and mobility from 1400 to 1800. Focusing on the most important typologies of preindustrial global migrations, this volume reveals how these movements transformed global paths of mobility, the impacts of which we still see in societies today. Case studies include those that arose from the demand for free, forced, and unfree labor, long- and short-distance trade, rural/urban displacement, religious mobility, and the rise of the number of refugees worldwide. With thirty chapters from leading experts in the field, this authoritative volume is an essential and detailed study of how migration shaped the nature of global human interactions before the age of modern globalization.

How was consumption able to rise so dramatically before the age of the Industrial Revolution? The consumer revolution was the result of incremental changes in urban growth, agricultural specialization, commercial development, and proto-industry. Global trade was also a major factor. While agriculture, industry, and intra-European trade expanded gradually in the eighteenth century, intercontinental trade between Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas soared, expanding the horizons of the European material world. Global trade introduced European consumers to an array of products from distant lands, from Chinese porcelain and tea to Indian cotton textiles to American tobacco, coffee, chocolate, and sugar. Slavery was integral to global trade. On the west coast of Africa, European merchants traded Indian cloth for human captives, whom they shipped to the Americas in the largest forced migration in human history. In the Americas, European-descended enslavers brutally forced the enslaved to produce large quantities of commodities (tobacco, sugar, and coffee) for European consumption. Global trade also gave rise to import substitution as Europeans producers made cheap imitations of Asian porcelain and textiles. Such import substitution was part of a broad shift from the consumption of high-quality, durable materials that stored value over long periods of time to cheaper, more fragile semidurables that were rapidly replaced. This shift marked the birth of modern materiality and accelerated the fashion cycle.

We analyze the economic policies of both democratic and military governments and the role of Import Substitution policies used to promote industrialization. We also explain the military intervention.

Nuclear power epitomizes the unusual combination of quantitative expansion, rapid upgrading of technological, managerial and regulatory capabilities, growing competitiveness, burgeoning global involvement, and also potential economic, environmental and security risk surrounding Chinese innovative efforts. A combination of domestic upgrading and international cooperation has delivered a rapid buildup of capabilities in design, construction, operation, equipment manufacture and regulatory capacity alongside ambitious nuclear investment. Surprising features of China’s nuclear buildup include the centrality of enterprise initiative in an industry seemingly dominated by government controls; the strength of nuclear safety oversight in an economy with limited institutional capacity for prudential regulation; and China’s sudden and unexpected emergence as a major player in the global market for nuclear power installations – an apparent instance of Christensen’s theory of “new market disruption.” Despite its impressive advance, China’s nuclear sector faces multiple challenges arising from institutional limitations, corruption, conflicts between supply-chain inadequacies and pressure for import substitution, and an ironic confluence of overseas market success with a sudden erosion in the financial underpinnings of nuclear electricity production in China itself.

From modest beginnings, China’s renewable energy sector is today the world’s largest. We contrast the evolution of China’s solar and wind sectors, with an eye to the effect of differences in technology, government policies, and markets. In solar, relatively modest barriers to entry and returning Chinese with industry experience, combined with rapid growth in overseas demand and high quality standards to propel the sector forward. Localization of the supply chain lowered costs and conferred important advantages on the largely private sector, much as it had done in other successful export sectors in the electronic industry. In sharp contrast, the growth of China’s wind turbine sector has been tied to a “government-made” domestic market and highly protectionist measures favoring local firms. Although there are signs of upgrading, the sector remains SOE-dominated throughout the value chain, and uncompetitive internationally. Moving forward fortunes of solar and wind turbine manufacturers will be tied to an increasingly crowded domestic electricity market in which excess capacity, lackluster demand growth and regulatory issues are the new normal. In this setting, political connections rather than firm capability will determine winners and losers. The experience of the renewable sector reveals both the strengths and weaknesses of China’s industrial policy.