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Ernest Solvay, philanthropist and organizer of the world-famous Solvay conferences on physics, discovered a profitable way of making soda ash in 1861. Together with a handful of associates, he laid the foundations of the Solvay company, which successfully branched out into other chemicals, plastics and pharmaceuticals. Since its emergence in 1863, Solvay has maintained world leadership in the production of soda ash. This is the first scholarly book on the history of the Solvay company, which was one of the earliest chemical multinationals and today is among the world's twenty largest chemical companies. It is also one of the largest companies in the field to preserve its family character. The authors analyze the company's 150-year history (1863–2013) from economic, political and social perspectives, showing the enormous impact geopolitical events had on the company and the recent consequences of global competition.
The authors analyze Solvay's 150-year history, showing the enormous impact geopolitical events had on the company and the recent consequences of global competition.
This book aims to study the departure and reception of refugees in 19th-century Europe, from the Congress of Vienna to the 1870-1880s. Through eight chapters, it draws on a transnational approach to analyze migratory movements across European borders. The book reviews the chronology of exile and shows how European states welcomed, selected, and expelled refugees. In addition to presenting the point of view of nation-states, it reflects the experience of those migrating. The book addresses departure into exile, captured through the material circumstances of crossing borders in the 19th century, and examines the emergence of new ways to pursue political commitments from abroad. The outcasts ar...
The trajectories of pollution in global capitalism, from the toxic waste of early tanneries to the poisonous effects of pesticides in the twentieth century. Through the centuries, the march of economic progress has been accompanied by the spread of industrial pollution. As our capacities for production and our aptitude for consumption have increased, so have their byproducts--chemical contamination from fertilizers and pesticides, diesel emissions, oil spills, a vast "plastic continent" found floating in the ocean. The Contamination of the Earth offers a social and political history of industrial pollution, mapping its trajectories over three centuries, from the toxic wastes of early tanneries to the fossil fuel energy regime of the twentieth century.
Why some of the most vulnerable communities in Europe, from independent cities to new monarchies, welcomed refugees during the Age of Revolutions and prospered “Janet Polasky unearths an unappreciated history of the experience of asylum in Europe and the United States since the Age of the Democratic Revolutions. Facing squarely the destruction of asylum in our own time, she ends with a stunningly optimistic vision of a path toward its reconstruction.”—Linda K. Kerber, author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies Driven from their homelands, refugees from ancient times to the present have sought asylum in worlds turned upside down. Theirs is an age‑old story. So too are the solution...
“When thinking about modern China’s chemical industry, forget not Fan Xudong,” so declared Mao Zedong publicly after 1949. Although Mao might have united front politics in mind when invoking Fan as a paragon of the national bourgeoisie, why would the chairman praise a champion of private enterprise? How did Fan Xudong and his colleagues build Yongli from scratch into one of the largest industrial conglomerates in modern China amid predatory foreign competition and domestic strife? What were his secrets of success? Drawing from company documents, government archives, and personal correspondences, this book traces Yongli’s birth, growth, nationalization, and how Fan and his colleagues pursued a third path of national development between for-profit private enterprise and state ownership.
A prismatic look at the meeting of Marie Curie and Albert Einstein and the impact these two pillars of science had on the world of physics, which was in turmoil. In 1911, some of the greatest minds in science convened at the First Solvay Conference in Physics, a meeting like no other. Almost half of the attendees had won or would go on to win the Nobel Prize. Over the course of those few days, these minds began to realize that classical physics was about to give way to quantum theory, a seismic shift in our history and how we understand not just our world, but the universe. At the center of this meeting were Marie Curie and a young Albert Einstein. In the years preceding, Curie had faced the...
The environmental history of “the most polluted lake in America.” Native Americans have long regarded Onondaga Lake as one of the most sacred spaces in the continent, the place where peace between nations was achieved and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy was created. In the mid-twentieth century, however, it acquired a wholly different reputation as “the most polluted lake in America.” Toxic Lake is an environmental history of this complex ecological system, tracking how it was tarnished, the costly efforts to clean it up, and the controversies those efforts generated. Thomas Shevory argues that the history of Onondaga Lake mirrors the larger environmental history of the US, from...
Fruit de recherches multidisciplinaires, l’histoire de la justice pénale, de la criminalité et de sa régulation est un thème en pleine expansion depuis une quarantaine d’années. Historiens sociaux, historiens du droit, sociologues, criminologues et anthropologues sont à l’origine de ce renouveau. Sur la base de ces diverses traditions intellectuelles, l’histoire de la justice pénale témoigne d’audaces et d’une créativité stimulantes. Cette thématique présente une autre caractéristique : elle a retenu l’attention des spécialistes de toutes les périodes historiques, depuis l’antiquité jusqu’à l’époque la plus récente. À travers douze contributions de chercheurs débutants ou confirmés, issus des universités belges, néerlandaises et françaises, on propose ici une approche renouvelée de différents thèmes relatifs à la criminalité et à sa régulation dans l’histoire.
"In this masterly book, [Alfani] offers an insightful long-run perspective and fascinating lessons for the future. A must-read!"—Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century A sweeping narrative that shows how the rich historically justified themselves by helping their societies in times of crisis, why they no longer do, and what that may mean for social stability The rich have always fascinated, sometimes in problematic ways. Medieval thinkers feared that the super-rich would act 'as gods among men’; much more recently Thomas Piketty made wealth central to discussions of inequality. In this book, Guido Alfani offers a history of the rich and super-rich in the West, exam...