The course is built around two core themes.

1. Global economic history from the 1500-hundreds until today

2. Modern Norwegian economic history

Global economic history is taught across two levels of analysis, the system and state levels. The two themes are wowen together in such a way that we will shed light on both economic development at the macro level while at the same time studying the role of the firm and the ability of particular companies to thrive and survive at under changing circumstances. It is crucial to understand the interplay between these two levels of analysis.

The first theme will start out with Europe's transformation from a feudal system interspresed by emerging city states to states that later change into what we today term nationstates. Furthermore the course will look at what happens when globalization ("1.0") gathers pace, through trade, colonialism, war, technology transfer and eventually, the creation of global institutions: The establishment of institutional regimes to secure state power, while at the same time, market penetrations within and between states is facilitated. We will study the evolution of modes of economic organization from guilds to limited companies and furthermore how companies are influenced by and interact with a modern, partly globalized financial market. The "end point" will be the the great financial crisis that wrought havoc in world markets in 2008 and 2009, and a central point here is the relationship between China's emergence as the work shop of the world and a global creditor, and the US as the world's largest importer and world's largest debtor.

The second theme will follow and analyze Norway's development from being a relatively poor country in the European economic periphery, through the development of one of the worlds most generous welfare states and becoming one of the worlds richest countries. Norway is a particular good case to illustrate the development of the relationship between government and businesses, and the collaboration and interaction between NGOs, the government, business, the work force and the welfare state.

Subject description ØKH4100

Economic History

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