Jessica Maliszewski
A Brief History of the Global Economy
Final Economic Timeline
4/27/15

Paleolithic Era: People traded tools, foods, skins, and other commodities, and for the exchange of mates.

Neolithic Era: Cattle was most likely the first physical thing used as money.

Bronze and Iron Ages: Sumerians used the shekel (weight of barley), Babylonians developed the earliest system of prices using a metric of various commodities.

Classical Era: The first economist is considered to be Hesiod

650-600 BC: the first stamped coins were minted

Middle Ages: World economy slowly expanded with the increase of population and trade. By the later Medieval period the first modern accounting and finance systems were created.
1440: Johannes Gutenberg developed his printing press

1492: The “New World” was discovered

1500-1800: Mercantilist Era
1550-1700: Scientific Revolution
1568: Netherlands revolted against Spanish rule
1603-1868: Tokugawa period in Japan, they invented technology that increased the employment of labor in order to raise the productivity of land, capital, and materials.
1637: Dutch Tulip Mania, Tulips were seen a luxury and over time a necessity, price began to inflate
1681: wheat was an export within the Americas
1684: Mississippi Company was founded
1688: Glorious Revolution
1700: The Enlightenment
1720: Mississippi Bubble, a large amount of people tried to take their money out at the same time
1760: The Industrial Revolution began and the gap between the Indian and English prices dropped by 85% during that time
1776: Adam Smith publishes An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
1769: First steam engine was patented by James Watt, transportation was much cheaper that way
1848: Karl H. Marx and Friedrich Engles publish The Communist Manefesto
1760-1850: The Industrial Revolution
1789: The French Revolution
1800-1914: Catch Up Period in Japan, a unified national market was established with international tariffs and the railway
1837: Samuel Morse created the Morse Code
1840: Opium Wars took place, Britain received massive profits from China
1861: Southern states in the US received massive profits from exporting a large quantity of cotton
1868-1905: Meiji period in Japan, property rights came into play
1900: Rise of Labor Unions
1905: Automobile was created
1905-1940: Imperial period in Japan, exports were tea, silk, and cotton. The imports were machinery and raw materials.
1908: Assembly line was launched
1924: Europe has recovered
1929: US Stock Market Crashed—Black Tuesday
1930: Most of the industrialized world sinks into a global economic depression and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff is passed in the US, which severely restricts foreign trade. The world population hits 2 billion people.
1939: The first Worlds Fair is held and WWII begins, crippling the global economy.
1914-1945: Big Rush in Japan
1944: International Monetary Fund, America beat the Great Depression

1945: World War II ends
1960: The European Free Trade