New Books in Economic and Business History

In the first half of the twentieth century, Asia's colonial trade, commerce, and enterprise pivoted on five cities- Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Calcutta, and Bombay. Today, among these, only Calcutta no longer plays a significant role in the Asian or global economy. Why? Agents of Inertia: Business, Urban Crisis, and Economic Decline in Twentieth-Century Calcutta (Cambridge UP, 2026) answers this question by investigating how Calcutta's British and Indian businesses have engaged with the city's infrastructural and economic challenges. It throws up a startling result: through the first seven decades of twentieth century, Calcutta's businesses, in contrast to their counterparts elsewhere, staunchly resisted several measures that intended to update and improve the city's infrastructure. It is this resistance, Agents of Inertia argues, that led to Calcutta's postcolonial urban crisis and contributed to capital- flight and economic decline. One of the first full-length monographs on Calcutta's postcolonial urban-economic decline, it shows how big businesses not only make but can also break a city's fortunes.

Gaurav C. Garg is a historian of modern South Asia, cities, mountains, and international development at Ashoka University, Delhi NCR.

Soumyadeep Guha is a fifth-year PhD student in the History Department at Binghamton University, New York. He is interested in historical research focusing on themes such as Agrarian/Environmental History, History of Science and Tech, Global History, and their intersections. His prospective dissertation questions are on the pre-history of the ‘Green Revolution’ in Eastern India.

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Black Market Intimacies: The Transpacific Sexual Economy of the Korean War (Stanford UP, 2026) reveals how illicit exchanges of money and commodities involving sexual encounters between Korean and Japanese women and US soldiers provided the material foundations of the regional economy across Korea and Japan during the Korean War. Against the conventional view that illicit exchanges exist outside the formal economy and legal regulations, Dr. Jeongmin Kim examines how the interlinked markets for transactional sex and goods crucially constituted the transpacific formation of US military base capitalism in post-World War II East Asia. Going beyond what is commonly categorized as prostitution and violence in Cold War archives, Dr. Kim weaves together stories from the myriads of mundane records scattered around multilingual archives to document larger transnational webs of the war economy.
From Korean women who brought camel blankets and whiskey to local markets in Seoul, to middle-aged Okinawan women dealing in US military notes, Dr. Kim uncovers the crucial roles that local women played in circulating war supplies and currency across the region through their sexual and intermediary labor. The result is an intimate and global history of the Korean War that urges us to rethink the often-antithetical relationship between sexual intimacy and market economies in the context of war and occupation.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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The oil industry today sponsors dozens of citizen advocacy organizations. Often called 'front groups' or 'astroturf,' they have become key actors in fossil fuel companies' political efforts across the US and Canada. People For Oil: Citizen Mobilization in the U.S. and Canadian Fossil Fuel Industries (Cambridge UP, 2026) by Dr. Tim Wood digs into these groups and the day-to-day ways they shape our energy future. Drawing on interviews with pro-oil organizers and citizen joiners, Dr. Wood explains why these groups form, why people join, and how these organizations intervene in governance. He shows that while we tend to think of all corporate grassroots mobilization as financially secretive, many campaigns today are openly sponsored and long-lasting. This allows industry lobbyists to stake a claim to representing citizen voice. By making sense of the backstage logics and affective politics of pro-oil organizing, People for Oil equips readers to better understand important new players in today's climate and energy politics.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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In 2018, Gyula Remes died in the underpass at Westminster tube station, just steps from the Houses of Parliament and luxury developments worth millions. How could this happen in one of the richest cities on Earth?
Episode one introduces Gyula and the world he died in: a Westminster plagued by the twin crises of homelessness and empty homes. In a London borough where extreme wealth exists alongside extreme poverty, Kojo traces the circumstances of Gyula’s death and a troubling question emerges.
What begins as a local tragedy opens the door to a much larger system, which we open onto a strange land called ‘offshore’.
Kojo Karam is a Professor in Law and Political Economy at the School of Law at Loughborough University.

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How do poor Black communities co-exist with downtown revitalization? How do Black social movements respond to urban renewal to ensure access to better housing and city spaces? Dr. John Tilghman investigates these interlocking questions in Jim Crow from the Harbor: Black Freedom Struggle and Downtown Baltimore, 1945–1980 (Temple UP, 2026). Looking at Baltimore, Maryland’s redevelopment in the post-war era of deindustrialization and population decline through white flight, Dr. Tilghman tells the story of how Black activists clashed with urban regimes.
Dr. Tilghman follows the money—redevelopment profits—which created tensions that prompted anti-freeway campaigns and affirmative action efforts. Through grassroots activism, protests, and community building, participants in the Black Freedom Struggle undermined downtown interests’ efforts to reinforce racial segregation as well as other civil, political, and economic inequalities.
While their efforts met with both success and limitations, Dr. Tilghman emphasizes the strengths of this minority majority population as they strove for urban equality. Jim Crow from the Harbor provides a new perspective that helps explain what has provoked today’s struggles in Baltimore for Black Americans.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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