Institut für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte

Prof. Dr. Alexander Engel

Im Buchhandel / Books at display





Engel, Alexander, Risikoökonomie. Eine Geschichte des Börsenterminhandels, Frankfurt/Main and New York (Campus) 2021, 542 pages.

Engel, RisikoökonomieRisks are part of modern capitalism. In this history of futures trading and speculation, it is shown how the managing of market risks developed - from the emergence of the European and North American commodity exchanges in the 19th century, as a result of new trading and storage technologies, to the digital derivatives markets of the present day. Futures markets, this book makes clear, initially served to contain risks. Later, however, they helped to explicitly commodify them, to produce them anew and to manage them productively: they became the core of a "risk economy". The history of futures trading is therefore a key to understanding contemporary risk culture and the logic of our economy today.




Bürkert, Karin; Engel, Alexander; Heimerdinger, Timo; Tauschek, Markus u. Werron, Tobias (eds.), Auf den Spuren der Konkurrenz. Sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven, Münster (Waxmann) 2019, 292 pages.

Spuren_der_konkurrenzCompetition is omnipresent. In business, sports, politics, but also in fields like art, pilgrimage and even amongst parents, people evaluate, compare, optimize and seek to excel. How can competition and adjacent concepts like emulation and rivalry be analyzed in the social and cultural sciences? How have our notions of competition evolved historically? What role do such concepts play in everyday life, i.e. how do they shape everyday practices and our awareness of ourselves and others? This interdisciplinary anthology offers contributions that capture the concept of competition theoretically and historically, and analytical case studies on how competition affects our lives.




Engel, Alexander, Farben der Globalisierung. Die Entstehung moderner Märkte für Farbstoffe 1500-1900, Frankfurt/Main u. New York (Campus) 2009, 386 Seiten.

Engel_FarbenTaking world markets for dyestuffs as an example, this book follows processes of globalization from the European expansion of the 16th century into the modern industrial world. It shows how global market connections were forged to satisfy the European demand, and how non-European systems of production were integrated and altered. This long-term study illuminates the way in which today's world markets emerged from the institutional and cultural transformation of economic activities in the long 19th century.




Gerhard, Hans-Jürgen u. Engel, Alexander, Preisgeschichte der vorindustriellen Zeit. Ein Kompendium auf Basis ausgewählter Hamburger Materialien (Studien zur Gewerbe- und Handelsgeschichte der vorindustriellen Zeit, Band 26), Stuttgart (Franz Steiner Verlag) 2006, 358 pages.

Engel_PreisgeschichteTo compile and interpret historical price data is often tricky. Yet until now, no modern introduction into the price history of pre-modern times was available. Written in German language, "Preisgeschichte der vorindustriellen Zeit" fills this gap, being both a vade mecum to the methods of price history and an edition of more than a hundred series of prices and wages from the ledgers of Hamburg hospitals, running from 1442 to 1821. The volume sketches the history of price history research, and--harking back to the Hamburg data--thoroughly clarifies the main aspects of handling historical price data and their sources. A bibliography facilitates access to remote German sources and literature.