ECONOMIC HISTORY

Knowledge and understanding: The module intends to provide the student with useful knowledge and elements for comprehending and interpreting the economic processes which have characterised world economy evolution in the last centuries.

Applying knowledge and understanding: Through the analysis of the evolutionary processes in the socioeconomic layout of various international contexts, the student is expected to acquire the capability to interpret the socio-economic events in their cause-effect relations. He/She will also acquire the panoramic vision of development issues in their complex interdependencies. Therefore, He/she will be able to assess, with awareness, current events and correlate them with political and economic choices in various contexts.

Making judgements: The comprehension of past economic events on an international scale will lead the student to acquire the suitable level of maturity for expressing personal opinions, with fully autonomous judgement, on current economic events and on future consequences of national and international political choices in the economic context.

Communication skills: The study of the module topics will provide the student with the necessary preparation for bearing a debate on economic themes. To facilitate the pursuit of this objective, the exchange of opinions and the debate will be welcome and encouraged during both lectures and reception time.

Learning skills: The module intends to supply the student with notions of economic terminology and with economic and statistic models and tools. The student will then learn to assess economic events, in light of contextual factors of various kinds. This will result in the enhancement of the student’s capabilities to learn new concepts and create links with the topics of other disciplines to which Economic History resorts, for interpreting and comprehending economic events.

Frontal lessons

Economic history. Society and economy in the pre-industrial period. The preconditions for English industrial revolution: population, agriculture, transport and trade. Driving industries and innovation in Great Britain. English industrial revolution: problems. The second comers: France and the United States. The stages of growth (18501914). The conditions of growth: population, transport, banks and currencies. Productive activities. Large size factories. The developed countries: Great Britain and France. The countries with fast growing economy: Germany and the United States. Two particular cases: Russia and Japan. Economy of united Italy. Sicily between 1860 and 1914. World War I and its consequences. Italian economy between World War I and post-war. Analisys of the Sicilian situation. Soviet Union. The great depression. Politics against the depression. The international economy after 1950: demographic problems and productive sectors. Post-war reconstruction. From the golden age to crisis. Neoliberism and globablization. Development and underdevelopment. Developed economies: the United States, Japan and the European Union. Italian economy. Sicilian economy. The end of planned economy in the Soviet Union. The awakening of Asia, Latin America and Africa.

1. E. De Simone, Storia economica. Dalla rivoluzione industriale alla rivoluzione informatica,
FrancoAngeli, Milano 2014.
2. M. Colonna, Breve storia economica della Sicilia dal Medioevo ai nostri giorni, Book Sprint, 2016,
pp. 108-133, 137-147, 164-192.