The Journal of Political Economy and Economic History
Online ISSN : 2423-9089
Print ISSN : 1347-9660
Volume 50, Issue 4
Displaying 1-15 of 15 articles from this issue
  • Article type: Cover
    2008 Volume 50 Issue 4 Pages Cover2-
    Published: July 30, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • Masanao Ito
    Article type: Article
    2008 Volume 50 Issue 4 Pages 1-
    Published: July 30, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • Akinobu Numajiri
    Article type: Article
    2008 Volume 50 Issue 4 Pages 2-18
    Published: July 30, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This paper aims to clarify characteristics of urban formation in pre-war Japan through discussion of the activities of landowners implementing land readjustment projects in the 1930s. This paper examines Tachibana Village, a rural district adjacent to the City of Amagasaki in Kawabe District of Hyogo Prefecture. In accordance with a plan to create a new station on the Tokaido Line, resident landowners sought to form a land readjustment association. In the land readjustment area, a small number of landowners owning 2 hectares or more of land owned about 40% of the land in the entire district; of these landowners, those residing in the village pushed for association formation. Large-scale landowners residing in the village gathered letters of consent to land readjustment from each community, employed an engineer, and drafted a design for the project. They eliminated the problem of disagreements by paying compensation to peasants cultivating land in the land readjustment area. Hyogo Prefecture approved the project plan, and the Tachibana Land Readjustment Association was established in November 1933. Using the rise in land prices due to the development of rural land into housing, the Association sold the land provided by its members and used the revenue to create Tachibana Station and lay roads and water lines. Construction proceeded as planned, and as a result the number of residents in the district rose sharply. Large-scale landowners residing in the village prepared housing sites by reclaiming rice fields on land they owned and earned rental income by leasing it. There were, however, instances where landowners subdivided the land when leasing it. Some of the landowners who resided outside the village did not reclaim the rice fields on the land they owned. In such cases, the rice fields remained until the post-war period, when peasants cultivating rice fields demanded an end to concentrated land ownership. Thus, a chaotic urban area was formed in the adjustment area; unlike the ordered tracts in the draft design, dense housing construction proceeded on the one hand while on the other hand rice fields were scattered throughout the area, with some even located in front of the station. The project by the Association that the landowners had pushed for did contribute to urban improvement in that roads and water lines were laid, but the project had depended on the landowners, so there was no way to place restrictions on private land use by the large-scale landowners.
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  • Masaoki Izawa
    Article type: Article
    2008 Volume 50 Issue 4 Pages 19-34
    Published: July 30, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The purpose of this paper is to clarify neglected aspects of the canal history of the nineteenth century, focusing on the role of the canal trustees of the Illinois and Michigan canal (1845-1871) in comparison with the failed enterprise managed through the canal commissioners appointed by the state legislature (1836-1843). Previously, the success of private companies has been explained by the financial difficulties of the state government and the increasing influence of private capitalists in the 1850s as compared with the 1830s. However, hostility to private companies prevailing throughout the country overturned a proposal to sell the canal to private business, and led to a movement for the transfer of the deed of the canal to the trustees of the Illinois and Michigan canal appointed by foreign investors and the state government. The canal was not able to make use of lake water when it opened in 1848, because a deep cut canal project to give the canal direct access to the waters of Lake Michigan was too expensive and the state government was short of capital. However, the canal trustees were created with the purpose of abandoning this earlier plan and instead of constructing a canal tapping into the canal feeders. As a result, water power was supplied by pumping water out of the Chicago River and from the canal feeders in order to solve the water shortage in Illinois River. The canal feeders supported by the pumping engine promoted the interrelationship between the inland navigation and the Chicago waterway, and helped to start the city of Chicago on its growth as the great inland lake port of the Midwest. Despite preferable conditions, Illinois and Michigan canal trustees became increasingly unable to control both water power for hydraulic needs and pumping water supply for transportation on inland navigation in the depression years of the late 1850s. As a result, there was no direct relationship between the canal business and regional developments in the Upper Illinois Valley.
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  • Chihiro Watanabe
    Article type: Article
    2008 Volume 50 Issue 4 Pages 35-45
    Published: July 30, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This paper analyzes in detail the SGI (la Societe Generate d'lmmigration), which developed and managed the recruitment and introduction of immigrant workers to France. This analysis will enable us to clarify the characteristics of the 1920s in the history of French immigration policy. The SGI was a recruitment company founded by the professional organization of the mining and agriculture industries, which were demanding immigrant workers. Under "a mixed system" (un systeme mixte) constituted of the State and the management, the SGI intervened in the recruitment of immigrant workers in Eastern European countries including Poland and Czechoslovakia; this activity contributed to the introduction of about four hundred thousand immigrant workers into France. Thus I infer that the activities of the SGI related to the organized recruitment, introduction and transport of foreign workers were one of the factors behind the rapid increase of foreign population experienced by France in the interwar period. When the SGI as established, it functioned on the basis of the rules of the Convention of France and Poland. However, as a cooperative relationship was gradually built up between administrative organs of the State and the SGI, the society began to take on responsibilities for immigration control. Moreover, while it made a huge profit from the transport of short-term contracted immigrant workers, it also introduced family immigrants in order to solve the problem of labor force instability from which management in the mining and agricultural industries had suffered. In the mining industries, immigrant workers and their families were included in this paternalism, permitting them to settle according to their nationalities and allowing their descendants the opportunity to learn their native language and history. In the domain of agriculture, the SGI ran a settlement business and in particular established a settlement company with the cooperation of the Polish government, aiming at introducing Polish immigrants into the wasteland areas of southwest France. Therefore I argue that these activities of the SGI exercised an important influence upon the organization of immigrant workers in the interwar period. In the 1920s, the State depended on the SGI for the introduction and control of immigrant workers. This dependence not only resulted in a laissez-faire French immigration policy, it was also a major reason that the problems related to immigration were not analyzed from an overall perspective.
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  • Mark Spoerer, Jochen Streb, [in Japanese], [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2008 Volume 50 Issue 4 Pages 46-58
    Published: July 30, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    More than half a century after the collapse of the Third Reich, satisfactory economic explanations for the most important economic processes of the Nazi period are still lacking. That is why these economic processes are often christened "miracles" by historians. Recently, however, a group of German economic historians started the attempt to demystify these "miracles" with the help of modern economic theory and econometrics. In this review article, we present both the new methods and the new results of this research programme to Japanese scholars. In section 2, under the headline "Deformed economic miracle" we analyse the distorted macroeconomic development of the Third Reich until the outbreak of the Second World War. In section 3, headed "The 'miracle' of the armament industry", we show that the Nazis directed the German economy generally not by compulsion and the threat of violence but by setting adequate economic incentives which secured the voluntary cooperation of profit-oriented entrepreneurs.
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  • Michio Akama
    Article type: Article
    2008 Volume 50 Issue 4 Pages 59-60
    Published: July 30, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2017
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  • Bunji Nagura
    Article type: Article
    2008 Volume 50 Issue 4 Pages 61-62
    Published: July 30, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2017
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  • Daisuke Suzuki
    Article type: Article
    2008 Volume 50 Issue 4 Pages 63-64
    Published: July 30, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2017
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  • Keiji Ushiyama
    Article type: Article
    2008 Volume 50 Issue 4 Pages 65-66
    Published: July 30, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2017
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  • Tachihiko Masuda
    Article type: Article
    2008 Volume 50 Issue 4 Pages 67-69
    Published: July 30, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2017
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  • Tomohiko Takayanagi
    Article type: Article
    2008 Volume 50 Issue 4 Pages 69-70
    Published: July 30, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2017
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  • Asobu Yanagisawa
    Article type: Article
    2008 Volume 50 Issue 4 Pages 70-72
    Published: July 30, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2017
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  • Eiji Hotori
    Article type: Article
    2008 Volume 50 Issue 4 Pages 72-74
    Published: July 30, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2017
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  • Akira Yamazaki
    Article type: Article
    2008 Volume 50 Issue 4 Pages 74-76
    Published: July 30, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2017
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