This article describes the features of the international mercury marketduringthe firsthalfofthetwentiethcentury.Itanalyzes the various market agreements made, their effectiveness, and their consequences. The period studied is little understood, although it was one in which mercury production greatly increased. It was also one that saw persistent efforts at market manipulation, owing to a series of agreements between Spanish and...

The article examines the evolution of the debate on deindustrialization in Italy since its first appearance in 1980's up to the present day. Dramatic alarms alternate with long silences in a framework, both national and international, in which the most important economic organizations are struggling, apparently without success, to find a common definition of deindustrialization.

The article is divided into two parts. In the first one, it highlights the role of commodities in real economy and it observes the coincidence of their price increase after 2003 and their importance as a research topic particularly in the framework of global history. In the second one, it propose a comparative analysis of two recent books on cotton, considering similarities and differences of their approaches, and the difficult...