From the Eighty Years War to the Second World War. New Perspectives on the Economic Efffects of War
Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: Most historians used to regard war as economically destructive.They focused on short-term damage to the economy, guided by archives that were dominated by documents related to reparation demands and offi cial statistics that did not take into account the black market and the re-routing of trade.Gradually, scholars began to acknowledge the positive role played by wartime stimuli with regard to state fi nances, innovative management and new industries.Wartime expenditure proved to have been an impetus for domestic production and demand.Wartime economic downturns often turned out to have been infl uenced by pre-war economic trends.Over the last hundred years, the Eighty Years War, the Napoleonic Wars and the Second World War have all received new interpretations, as historians have gathered new data and shifted their focus to the effi ciency of governments and redistributive economic eff ects.
DOI: 10.18352/tseg.141
Author: Marjolein 't Hart
Language: Dutch
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2269005775