The Institute of Social Studies, the Hague, organised during the last four years, seminars dealing with selected countries during a selected period. Among others: Turkey under Mustapha Kemal, Egypt under Mohammed Ali, Ceylon and Jamaica between 1880 and 1920. They are to be understood as casestudies in gaining a better insight in the general process of economic development and social change. It was realised that the studies concentrated on the pre-take-off period in the Rostovian sense. The outstanding phenomenon in all cases turned out to be the socalled „contraction” of society. It means that tendencies to centralization, to unification and to isolation from its environment, could be pointed out in the different fields of economics, sociology and of political science.
