Showing papers in "The Economic History Review in 2020"

Slavery and Anglo‐American capitalism revisited

Abstract: British and American debates on the relationship between slavery and economic growth have had little interaction with each other. This article attempts intellectual arbitrage by joining these two literatures. The linkage turns on the neglected part two of the ‘Williams thesis’: that slavery and the slave trade, once vital for the expansion of British industry and commerce, were no longer needed by the nineteenth century. In contrast to recent assertions of the centrality of slavery for US economic development, the article argues that part two of the Williams thesis applies with equal force to nineteenth‐century America. Unlike sugar, cotton required no large investments of fixed capital and could be cultivated efficiently at any scale, in locations that would have been settled by free farmers in the absence of slavery. Cheap cotton was undoubtedly important for the growth of textiles, but cheap cotton did not require slavery. The best evidence for this claim is that after two decades of war, abolition, and Reconstruction, cotton prices returned to their prewar levels. In both countries, the rise of anti‐slavery sentiment was not driven by the prospect of direct economic benefits, but major economic interest groups acquiesced in abolition because they no longer saw slavery as indispensable.

An introduction to the history of infectious diseases, epidemics and the early phases of the long-run decline in mortality†

Abstract: This article, written during the COVID-19 epidemic, provides a general introduction to the long-term history of infectious diseases, epidemics and the early phases of the spectacular long-term improvements in life expectancy since 1750, primarily with reference to English history. The story is a fundamentally optimistic one. In 2019 global life expectancy was approaching 73 years. In 1800 it was probably about 30. To understand the origins of this transition, we have to look at the historical sequence by which so many causes of premature death have been vanquished over time. In England that story begins much earlier than often supposed, in the years around 1600. The first two 'victories' were over famine and plague. However, economic changes with negative influences on mortality meant that, despite this, life expectancies were either falling or stable between the late sixteenth and mid eighteenth centuries. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw major declines in deaths from smallpox, malaria and typhus and the beginnings of the long-run increases in life expectancy. The period also saw urban areas become capable of demographic growth without a constant stream of migrants from the countryside: a necessary precondition for the global urbanization of the last two centuries and for modern economic growth. Since 1840 the highest national life expectancy globally has increased by three years in every decade.

The gender division of labour in early modern England

Abstract: This article presents new evidence of gendered work patterns in the pre‐industrial economy, providing an overview of women's work in early modern England. Evidence of 4,300 work tasks undertaken by particular women and men was collected from three types of court documents (coroners’ reports, church court depositions, and quarter sessions examinations) from five counties in south‐western England (Cornwall, Devon, Hampshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire) between 1500 and 1700. The findings show that women participated in all the main areas of the economy. However, different patterns of gendered work were identified in different parts of the economy: craft work showed a sharp division of labour and agriculture a flexible division of labour, while differences of gender were less pronounced in everyday commerce. Quantitative evidence of early modern housework and care work in England indicates that such work used less time and was less family‐based than is often assumed. Comparisons with gendered work patterns in early modern Germany and Sweden are drawn and show strong similarities to England. In conclusion it is argued that the gender division of labour cannot be explained by a single factor, as different influences were at play in different parts of the economy.

What explains the missing girls in nineteenth‐century Spain?

Abstract: Infant and childhood sex ratios in nineteenth‐century Spain were abnormally high, thus pointing to some sort of unexplained excess female mortality. This article analyses internal regional variation and shows that certain economic and social factors mitigated gender discrimination against newborn and/or young girls. In particular, the presence of wage labour opportunities for women and the prevalence of extended families in which different generations of women cohabited had beneficial effects on girls’ survival. Likewise, infant and child sex ratios were lower in dense, more urbanized areas.

Women's labour force participation in nineteenth‐century England and Wales: evidence from the 1881 census enumerators’ books

Abstract: This article uses a new source of data, namely the full sample of the 1881 census enumerators’ books, to study female labour force participation. It examines the interaction between labour demand and supply to gauge their relative importance in determining female labour force participation rates (LFPRs). Three main findings emerge from the current article. First, there is an unmistakable link between labour demand and female LFPRs. High levels of female labour force participation are found in areas where there were industries with ample demand for female labour. Second, supply‐side factors also had clear effects on female LFPRs. However, they can only operate within the limit imposed by the demand‐side conditions. Third, female migration did not fundamentally change the spatial patterns of female LFPRs. Overall, this article argues that the demand side of the female labour market was the most important factor in determining female LFPRs in nineteenth‐century England and Wales.

Agglomeration externalities and productivity growth: US cities, 1880–1930

Abstract: We investigate the role of industrial structure in labour productivity growth in manufacturing in U.S. cities during the ‘second industrial revolution’. We find that initially greater specialization was associated with faster subsequent productivity growth but that only the very high levels of diversity which obtained in some very large cities had a positive correlation. We interpret our results as demonstrating the existence of dynamic Marshallian externalities. The impact of industrial specialization in our sample of U.S. cities after 1890 is found to have raised the level of labour productivity in manufacturing by about 4 per cent by 1920.

Can school centralization foster human capital accumulation? A quasi‐experiment from early twentieth‐century Italy

Abstract: This article shows that a shift towards a more centralized school system can benefit countries that are characterized by poor levels of human capital and large regional disparities in education. In 1911, Italy moved from a fully decentralized primary school system towards centralization through the Daneo‐Credaro Reform. The design of the Reform allows us to compare treated municipalities with those that retained school autonomy. Our quasi‐experiment, based on propensity score matching (PSM), shows that centralization substantially increased the pace of human capital accumulation. Treated municipalities were characterized by a 0.43 percentage‐point premium on the average annual growth of literacy between 1911 and 1921. We discuss some of the channels through which the new legislation affected primary schooling and literacy, with important implications for long‐term economic growth.

Urbanization and mortality in Britain, c. 1800-50.

Abstract: In the long-running debate over standards of living during the industrial revolution, pessimists have identified deteriorating health conditions in towns as undermining the positive effects of rising real incomes on the 'biological standard of living'. This article reviews long-run historical relationships between urbanization and epidemiological trends in England, and then addresses the specific question: did mortality rise especially in rapidly growing industrial and manufacturing towns in the period c. 1830-50? Using comparative data for British, European, and American cities and selected rural populations, this study finds good evidence for widespread increases in mortality in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. However, this phenomenon was not confined to 'new' or industrial towns. Instead, mortality rose in the 1830s especially among young children (aged one to four years) in a wide range of populations and environments. This pattern of heightened mortality extended between c. 1830 and c. 1870, and coincided with a well-established rise and decline in scarlet fever virulence and mortality. The evidence presented here therefore supports claims that mortality worsened for young children in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, but also indicates that this phenomenon was more geographically ubiquitous, less severe, and less chronologically concentrated than previously argued.

Infant and child mortality by socio‐economic status in early nineteenth‐century England †

Abstract: Historical relationships between socio‐economic status and mortality remain poorly understood. This is particularly the case in England, due to a lack of status indicators in available sources especially before c. 1850. This study uses the paternal occupational descriptors routinely recorded in Anglican baptism registers from 1813–37 to compare infant and early childhood mortality by social status. The sample consists of eight of the Cambridge Group family reconstitution parishes, which make it possible to investigate the contributions of environment as well as household characteristics. The main variable of interest was an individual‐level continuous measure of wealth based on ranking paternal occupations by the propensity for their movable wealth to be inventoried upon death. The findings show that wealth conferred no clear survival advantage in infancy, once differences in average mortality levels between parishes were adjusted for. However, wealth was associated with higher survival rates in early childhood, especially in the second year of life, and this pattern persisted after adjustment for parish‐level effects. The striking exception to this pattern was labourers, who were among the poorest of fathers but whose children enjoyed relatively low mortality. Thus socio‐economic differentials in mortality were present in early nineteenth‐century England; however, they were small, age‐specific, and non‐linear.

Sanitary infrastructures and the decline of mortality in Germany, 1877-1913

Abstract: Clean water provision is considered crucial for eradicating waterborne diseases. However, the benefits of piped water can be limited in environments characterized by the inadequate storage and disposal of waste. This article studies the impact of waterworks and sewerage on mortality in German cities during the period 1877–1913. The results show that the supply of safe drinking water reduced the number of deaths, although to a lower extent than suggested previously. In the absence of efficient systems of sewage removal, contact with faeces and water contamination created a favourable environment for the spread of enteric ailments, offsetting some of the positive effects of waterworks. Moreover, the study shows that sanitary investments had important heterogeneous effects. First, their impact was markedly lower in municipalities with high levels of economic inequality and employment in the textile sector. Second, cities located in non-Prussian territories experienced lower declines in mortality following the construction of sanitary infrastructures. The results in this article highlight the importance of analysing public health measures jointly as well as their interaction with local socioeconomic and institutional factors to understand historical progress against ill health and premature death.

Patents and invention in Jamaica and the British Atlantic before 1857

Abstract: Before 1852 the English patent system operated at both a domestic and a global level, allowing inventors to extend its operation beyond England to the colonies, where it interacted in territories such as Jamaica with a colonial system of patents and grants. It therefore provides one of the few examples of a workable global patent system, and an important case study of the structures that supported the development and circulation of technology within the British Atlantic during the early stages of the industrial revolution. Providing a framework of ‘tiered’ rather than ‘parallel’ powers and jurisdictions, the imperial patent system was a flexible instrument that inventors could use strategically to promote transnational technological innovation, in which people, ideas, and skills moved back and forth between Britain and colonies such as Jamaica. Patenting, which was concentrated in wealthy plantation colonies that sought greater productivity, was therefore a key part of the economic development of empire.

The rise of coffee in the Brazilian south‐east: tariffs and foreign market potential, 1827–40†

Abstract: During the period spanning independence in 1822 to mid‐century, Brazil's south‐east shifted from specializing in the export of cane sugar to coffee. This article explores the mechanism underlying this shift by exploiting a wealth of new monthly data on the Brazilian and international coffee and cane sugar markets during the period 1827–40. It argues that the timing of the coffee boom was driven by a rapid increase in foreign market potential associated with the abolition of the tariff on coffee in the US. It estimates that American tariff reform served to increase coffee exports and African slave imports by around one‐fifth. American firms, with indirect links to the slave trade, rapidly became major players in the export market in Rio de Janeiro, while non‐American firms, traditionally specialized in continental European destinations, turned their sights on the American market.

Inadequate supply and increasing demand for textiles and clothing: second‐hand trade at auctions as an alternative source of consumer goods in Sweden, 1830–1900

Abstract: Drawing on a study of historical national accounts and statistics, this article shows that a growing supply of mass-consumption textiles and clothing in Sweden during industrialization did not full ...

Institutions for the taking: property rights and the settlement of the Cape Colony, 1652–1750

Abstract: We examine the formation of property rights in land during the early settlement by the Dutch of the Cape Colony at the southern tip of Africa. After its founding in 1652 as a provisioning outpost for ships of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the colonial government promoted settlement initially by granting land with well‐specified and enforced property rights in restricted zones near Cape Town. By 1714 it transitioned to accommodate rapidly expanding settlement by creating a weaker form of property rights, the loan farm, which was imprecisely defined and had limited government enforcement. We develop a profit‐maximizing monopsony model to explain the VOC's choice to transition from the better‐specified land grant to the less well‐specified loan farm. We conclude that the decline in the population size and ability of the Khoikhoi, the Cape's original inhabitants, to organize effective resistance to the Dutch invasion was critical to the transition, as it lowered the costs of private enforcement of settlers’ territorial claims. The choice of property rights thus enabled and encouraged the rapid taking by European settlers of the western Cape of Africa for the expansion of the Dutch colony's pastoral economy.

Trade in the shadow of power: Japanese industrial exports in the interwar years

Abstract: During the interwar years, Japanese industrialization accelerated alongside the expansion of industrial exports to regional markets. Trade blocs in the interwar years were used as an instrument of imperial power to foster exports and as a substitute for productivity to encourage industrial production. The historiography on Japanese industrialization in the interwar years describes heavy industries’ interests in obtaining access to wider markets to increase economies of scale and reduce unit costs. However, this literature provides no quantitative evidence that proves the success of those mechanisms in expanding exports. In this article we scrutinize how Japan—a relatively poor country—used colonial as well as informal power interventions to expand regional markets for its exports, especially for the most intensive human capital sector of the industrializing economy. Our results show that Japanese exports in 1938 would have been around one‐third smaller had no empire ever existed, which indicates an outstanding effect of empire in the international context.

The limiting factor: energy, growth, and divergence, 1820–1913

Abstract: On the basis of a new series on the consumption of traditional and modern sources of energy between 1820 and 1913, this article addresses the start of modern growth and the great divergence on the world scale. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the greater availability of modern energy sources expanded working capacity well beyond the potential of previous agricultural civilizations. Growth of energy consumption rose primarily in western Europe, northern America, and Oceania. As a result, labour productivity rose, leading to an increase in real wages, which was an incentive to replace labour with mechanical engines. The higher energy consumption in these three macro‐areas led to global inequality in productive capacity and technology which peaked on the eve of the First World War.

Asia's 'Little Divergence' in the 20th Century: Evidence from PPP-based direct estimates of GDP per capita, 1913-1969

Abstract: This article uses expenditure‐based purchasing power parities (PPPs) to estimate GDP per capita in comparable prices for 12 Asian countries for six benchmark years during the period 1913–69. The article finds that in 1913 levels of real GDP per capita in several countries were comparable to those in Japan. GDP per capita in Japan and other Asian countries diverged during and after the First World War. The article questions whether Asia's ‘little divergence’ between Japan and other Asian countries dates back to the late eighteenth century. It draws attention to the different resource endowments of Japan, China, and India compared to other Asian countries, and their implications for the development trajectories of Asian countries. The article demonstrates that using historical PPP estimates yields estimates of GDP per capita that diverge from those based on retropolations of the single 1990 PPP‐converted benchmark year. It concludes that historical estimates of PPPs are needed to confirm analyses of comparative economic performance based on available GDP per capita data.

UK investment trust portfolio strategies before the First World War

Abstract: UK investment trust companies were at the forefront of financial innovation during the so-called first globalization era before the First World War. This study examines in detail their portfolio strategies using a unique dataset of 115 portfolio observations for 30 different investment trust companies, comprising a total of 32,708 portfolio holdings. Our results reveal strong performance and relatively sophisticated asset management, which was based on a mixture of a buy-and-hold investment strategy and active portfolio management. Investment trusts employed global rather than domestic diversification. The early predominant investment in bonds in the 1880s gradually declined in favour of ordinary and preferred shares. North and Latin American markets were the main geographical target of UK investment trusts, with less appetite for domestic investments and negligible interest in continental European financial securities. There is significant cross-sectional variation in asset allocation between investment trusts; they thus avoided herding behaviour in portfolio choice and developed a wide range of different portfolio strategies.

Origins of regional divergence: economic growth in socialist Yugoslavia†

Abstract: Relative to western Europe, we know very little about the determinants of economic growth at the regional level within socialist Europe. This is somewhat unusual, given that socialist policy‐makers have put great emphasis on equitable regional development. This article analyses the regional patterns of growth and divergence in socialist Yugoslavia. New estimates of output and inputs are constructed, and an analysis of output growth, factor accumulation, structural modernization, and productivity is provided. Two novel empirical findings are uncovered. The first is that the sources of growth across the regions were fundamentally different. Total factor productivity was a much more important source of growth in the richer regions than it was in the poorer ones. The second finding is that the source of the regional income divergence lies in the failure of the less developed regions to converge towards the employment rates and total factor productivities of the more developed regions. These failures are interpreted, at least partially, as symptoms of the governing objective and the soft budget constraint of the labour‐managed firms that operated in Yugoslavia. It is argued that Yugoslavia's development model was less suited to the pre‐conditions that prevailed in the less developed parts of the country.

Working days in a London construction team in the eighteenth century: evidence from St Paul's Cathedral

Abstract: This article provides new information and data on the work and pay of skilled and semi‐skilled men on a large London construction project in the early 1700s. It offers firm‐level evidence on the employment relation in the construction industry at the time and sheds some light on the number of days worked per year and per week, showing that employment was more irregular and seasonal than current estimates of income infer. The patterns are considered in the context of new debates about industriousness and economic growth.

Commodity option pricing efficiency before Black, Scholes, and Merton

Abstract: It is often thought that the arrival of the Black–Scholes–Merton (BSM) model of option pricing in the early 1970s allowed traders to understand how to price and value options with greater precision. However, our study suggests that interwar commodity options traders may have been able to intuit ‘fair’ value and to adjust their prices to changes in the market environment well before the advent of this innovative model. A scarcity of historical price data has limited empirical tests of option price efficiency well before BSM to studies of stock options in the 1870s and the early twentieth century which revealed contrasting findings. This study deals with option pricing in a different market—commodities—during the interwar period. We conclude that option prices were closer to their BSM theoretical values than prior studies suggest. Institutional differences between interwar commodity options markets and stock options markets in the 1870s and the early twentieth century may partly account for this result. Furthermore, we find that interwar option prices were no more mispriced than in modern times, and were as sensitive to changes in volatility—the key valuation parameter in the BSM model.

Unequal access to food during the nutritional transition: evidence from Mediterranean Spain†

Abstract: Unequal access to food is one of the main issues in nutritional history, but scarcity of sources has hampered the quantification of this phenomenon. This study uses hospital diets to address this gap. It uses records from between 1852 and 1923 concerning hospital diets in the psychiatric section of the Hospital General de Valencia (Spain), from which it is possible to infer the actual intake of nutrients for six groups of patients and members of staff. The results reveal considerable differences in terms of diet and nutrition. While the most favoured groups (nuns and well‐off patients) had by 1852 reduced their relative intake of cereals and increased that of meat, in line with the general trend of the nutritional transition, the poor and orphans were still behind the trend by 1923. Hospital staff were on a high‐calorie diet that was adequate for carrying out physically demanding tasks, yet still suffered from a significant deficit in nutrient intake. These inequalities indicate that the nutritional transition was an uneven and non‐linear process, with substantial differences according to social group.

Factor endowments on the ‘frontier’: Algerian settler agriculture at the beginning of the 1900s

Abstract: This article examines rural settlement in Constantine, a departement in French Algeria, at the beginning of the 1900s. By taking into account the timing of colonial settlement for almost 100 municipalities, it shows how the changing geographical conditions and the relative quantities of land and labour shaped the colonial land policy and settler modes of production. As fertile land grew scarcer on the settlement ‘frontier’, the ability of settlers to participate in the export market was increasingly dependent on the capacity to make use of modern agricultural techniques that required larger fields and intensive labour. Thus, the outcome of rural settlement was determined by the relative abundance of indigenous labour and the adaptation of the land policy to Algeria's agricultural needs. The results demonstrate that—even within a country itself and during the settlement process—the colonial land policy and settler modes of production change significantly, depending on the region being occupied.

Currency devaluations and beggar-my-neighbour penalties: evidence from the 1930s

Abstract: The currency devaluations of the 1930s facilitated a faster recovery from the Great Depression in the countries depreciating, but their unilateral manner provoked retaliatory and discriminatory commercial policies abroad. This article explores the importance of the retaliatory motive in the imposition of trade barriers by gold bloc countries during the 1930s and its effects on trade. Relying on new and existing datasets on the introduction of quotas, tariffs, and bilateral trade costs, the quantification of the discriminatory response suggests that these countries imposed significant beggar‐my‐neighbour penalties. The penalties reduced trade to a similar degree that modern regional trade agreements foster trade. Furthermore, the analysis of contemporary newspapers reveals that the devaluations of the early 1930s triggered an Anglo‐French trade conflict marked by tit‐for‐tat protectionist policies. With regards to global trade, the unilateral currency depreciations came at a high price in political and economic terms. These costs must have necessarily reduced their benefit to the world as a whole.

Living standards and the life cycle: reconstructing household income and consumption in the early twentieth-century Netherlands.

Abstract: Conventional methods of measuring historical household living standards are often criticized because of the omission of women's and children's wages and non-wage income; the focus on urban centres; and the exclusion of life-cycle changes in household composition, income, and consumption This article presents a method that accounts for these issues and applies it to agricultural and textile households in the early-twentieth century Netherlands It uses total household income, as opposed to the husband's wage, as the enumerator for calculating alternative welfare ratios The results show that welfare ratios were not only structurally higher than those based on the male-breadwinner model, but also followed a different life-cycle trajectory Furthermore, household portfolios were diversified and depended on local labour market structures Thus, the study concludes that analyses based on men's wages only reflect the rough outlines of how households functioned

Poverty or prosperity in northern India? New evidence on real wages, 1590s–1870s†

Abstract: hese files contain all the data used in the publication "Poverty or Prosperity in Northern India? New Evidence on Real Wages, 1590s-1870s". This paper introduces a new dataset on wages in northern India (from Gujarat in the West to Bengal in the East) from the 1590s to the 1870s. It follows Allen’s subsistence basket methodology to compute internationally comparable real wages to shed light on developments in Indian living standards over time, as well as to test some of the assumptions underlying the comparative real wage methodology. It adjusts the comparative cost of living indices to take into account differences in caloric intake due to variances in heights. Furthermore, the paper discusses the male/female wage gap in northern India. We demonstrate that the Great Divergence started somewhere in the late seventeenth century. This gap widens further after the 1720s and especially after the 1800s. It is subsequently primarily England’s spurt and India’s stagnation in the first half of the nineteenth century which brought about most serious differences in the standard of living in Eurasia. If the British colonial state is to blame – as often happens in the literature on India’s persistent poverty – it is in their failure to improve the already deteriorated situation after they had become the near-undisputed masters of India since 1820.

Losing the thread: a response to Robert Allen†

Abstract: In an earlier article we used archival and printed primary sources to construct the first long‐run wage series for hand spinning in early modern Britain. This evidence challenged Robert Allen's claim that spinners were part of the ‘high wage economy’, which he sees as motivating invention, innovation, and mechanization in the spinning section of the textile industry. We respond to Allen's subsequent criticism of our argument, sources, and methods, and his presentation of alternative evidence. Allen contends that we have understated both the earnings and associated productivity of hand spinners by focusing on part‐time and low‐quality workers. His rejoinder rests on an ahistorical account of spinners’ work and similarly weak evidence on wages as did his initial claims. Our augmented version of the spinners’ wages dataset confirms our original findings. Spinners’ wages were low even compared with other women workers, and neither wages nor the piece rates that determined unit labour costs followed a trajectory that could explain the invention and spread of the spinning jenny.

A leader in an emerging new international market: the determinants of French wine exports, 1848–1938

Abstract: The objective of this article is to provide an in‐depth study of France's performance in the new international wine market that began to take shape from the middle of the nineteenth century. We analyse the main determinants of its success in exporting ordinary and high‐quality wine using a gravity model for both types of wine. The article shows how France lost foreign markets in the ordinary wine sector, due to difficulties in maintaining its exports, which resulted from the decrease in production caused by the phylloxera plague and increasing competition from growing numbers of producers who were more efficient at producing these types of wines. However, in the high‐quality wine market, French exporters enjoyed considerable success, increasing their exports thanks to their efforts to offer a product that was highly valued abroad and the use of modern marketing and sales techniques. The exports benefited from the fall in transport costs and French colonial expansion. However, exports of both products were severely affected by a series of major events, including the First World War, the Russian Revolution, Prohibition in the US, and the Great Depression. This case study of the wine market shows that the collapse of the first globalization was not the same for all products.