Showing papers in "The Journal of Economic History in 1974"

The Arab Agricultural Revolution and Its Diffusion, 700–1100

Abstract: The rapid spread of Islam into three continents in the seventh and eighth centuries was followed by the diffusion of an equally remarkable but less well documented agricultural revolution. Originating mainly in India, where heat, moisture and available crops all favored its development and where it had been practiced for some centuries before the rise of Islam, the new agriculture was carried by the Arabs or those they conquered into lands which, because they were colder and drier, were much less hospitable to it and where it could be introduced only with difficulty. It appeared first in the eastern reaches of the early-Islamic world—in parts of Persia, Mesopotamia and perhaps Arabia Felix—which had close contacts with India and where a few components of the revolution were already in place in the century before the rise of Islam. By the end of the eleventh century it had been transmitted across the length and breadth of the Islamic world and had altered, often radically, the economies of many regions: Transoxania, Persia, Mesopotamia, the Levant, Egypt, the Maghrib, Spain, Sicily, the savannah lands on either side of the Sahara, parts of West Africa and the coastlands of East Africa. It had very far-reaching consequences, affecting not only agricultural production and incomes but also population levels, urban growth, the distribution of the labor force, linked industries, cooking and diet, clothing, and other spheres of life too numerous and too elusive to be investigated here.

A Tale of Japanese Technological Diffusion in the Meiji Period

Abstract: Fifteen or so years ago and for many decades before that, popularly speaking, it was not uncommon to think of the Japanese as slavish imitators of foreign technology As research workers in economic history, we recognize that slavish imitation of foreign technology is no easy matter Foreign technical practice is hardly uniform Choice among a number of competing technologies is hardly child's play Young Japanese students of a century ago were enjoined to go overseas, discover what was best and make it Japanese Such injunctions by a semi-feudal oligarchy and its intellectual supporters while progressive in spirit were naive One process rarely dominates international industry What was useful for the world's leader might not be appropriate for the human and nonhuman resource endowment of late nineteenth-century Japan Initially, Japan's worldwide search led it to adopt a French-style army, an American-style banking system, and a British-style cotton textile industry In time each of these models were either discarded in favor of other national models or otherwise modified to meet the imperatives of assimilation

The Fishers of Men: The Profits of the Slave Trade

Abstract: Historians of slavery and the slave trade have often left us with the impression that the slave trade was fantastically profitable. The view that it was the profits from the slave trade which financed the British Industrial Revolution and the first industrialization of the United States appears to be gaining adherents. These interpretations seem plausible enough on the surface; indeed, the latter provides part of the historical foundation for the claim by black militants for reparations. Black slaves, whether shipped directly from Africa, or born in the New World into slavery, served their masters against their wills in return for the subsistence allowed them. Surely there was a substantial difference between the value of what they produced and the value of the consumption goods allotted to them to allow survival.

Cotton Competition and the Post-Bellum Recovery of the American South

Abstract: As evidence has accumulated on the prosperity of the American South under slavery prior to the Civil War, attention has turned to a search for explanations for the apparent stagnation of the southern economy after the Civil War. One class of explanations involves the argument that the South experienced special difficulties in recovering her place in the international cotton market during the late 1860's and 1870's. In one version of this hypothesis, the presence of “new” sources of supply, stimulated by the cotton famine of 1861–65, acted to displace American cotton in world markets during this period. A second version, recently proposed by Mark Aldrich, argues that appreciation of the dollar resulting from capital imports and northern economic expansion forced American cotton to compete with the rest of the world on unfavorable terms prior to the resumption of specie payments in 1879.

German Banks and German Growth, 1883–1913: an Empirical View

Abstract: Almost without exception interpretations of the remarkable growth of the German economy before the First World War stress the role of the German banking system, in general, and that of the universal or Kreditbank, in particular. The most subtle and penetrating view of this question is that developed in Alexander Gerschenkron's essays, “Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective” and “Prerequisites of Modern Industrialization.” According to this view, “backward” countries which experience successful industrializations do so by making institutional “substitutions” which enable them to compensate for or even to turn to their advantage their initial deficiencies of productive factors. The institution which is “substituted” in Germany to perform this function is the Kreditbank. This interpretation places special emphasis on the growth-inducing character of these banks, but is also open to the possibility that an industrialization led by such institutions might have entailed certain costs. In fact, Professor Gerschenkron explicitly invites help in assessing these costs in commenting: “it would be a fruitful undertaking in research to explore and perhaps to measure and compare the difficulties, the strains, and the cost which were involved in the various processes of substitution ….” Thanks to the work of Ekkehard Eistert, who has constructed a reliable set of statistics on the German banking system in this era, it is now possible to attempt such a “fruitful undertaking.” Making use of these data, an econometric model has been constructed to test the hypothesis that the manner in which the Kreditbanken allocated credit contributed to the growth of German non-agricultural output. Our findings strongly suggest that the credit allocation policy of these banks was inhibiting rather than stimulating the German economy in the period for which data are available and that previous interpretations are in need of serious revision. It appears that, in Gerschenkron's terms, the “cost” of bank-led industrialization was far greater than anyone has previously suggested.

Railroad Development and Market Integration: The Case of Tsarist Russia

Abstract: Up until the mid-nineteenth century Russia had an enserfed peasantry, a mere 1,000 or so miles of railways, and a small, almost insignificant market sector. When serfdom was abolished (1861) and the expansion of railroads started to occupy a prominent place in development policy toward the end of the nineteenth century, Russia was launched on a transformation from a state of preindustrial and pre-capitalistic backwardness into a path of modernization and industrialization.

Differences in Regional Prices: The United States, 1851–1880

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to examine cost-of-living differences among the various regions of the United States during a thirty-year interval of the nineteenth century. We do this by constructing regional price indexes for the years 1851–1880 using two different base years for pur calculations, 1860 and 1880. The results indicate that the cost of living differed substantially among regions, and specifically that it was lower in the American Midwest than in the East. Although one might have expected these differences among regions to narrow as regional and national markets developed and improved, we find no evidence that they did during this thirty-year period.

The economic development of Manchuria : the rise of a frontier economy

Abstract: The paper we are presenting here is in essence an interim research report, a summary and preliminary analysis of findings based on a larger study still under way. Thus both the findings and the interpretations are subject to revision as we continue and complete our investigation.

The Role of Private Business in the International Diffusion of Technology

Abstract: Clearly, private business is but one agent for the diffusion of technology. Yet it is an important one. In the normal pursuit of business, technological knowledge and skills pass over political boundaries and private enterprise takes part in the international diffusion of technology. In this paper I want to try to delineate the means by which private companies have shared in the international diffusion of technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I will note briefly the “imitation lag” and then what I want to call the “absorption gap.” From generalizations, I will turn to some explicit examples and analysis. Finally, in conclusion, I want to return to my concept of the absorption gap and the role of private enterprise in bridging that gap.

The Industrial Revolution in the Low Countries in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century: A Comparative Case Study

Abstract: The comparative method will accomplish great things. … The historical specialist asks for a method which is a technical instrument, generally used, easily manageable and capable of giving positive results. The comparative method is precisely such an instrument. … I believe that this method can and must penetrate monographic studies. Marc Bloch

Beyond the New Economic History

Abstract: The new economic history has been with us now for almost a score of years. Its practitioners have advanced from young revolutionaries to become a part of the middle-aged establishment; and by all the criteria of publication and training of graduate students, it has indeed transformed the discipline in the United States. From my quite subjective perspective, the new economic history has made a significant contribution to revitalizing the field and advancing the frontiers of knowledge. Yet I think it stops short—far short —of what we should be accomplishing in the field. Our objective surely remains that of shedding light on man's economic past, conceived in the broadest sense of those words; and I submit to you that the new economic history as it has developed has imposed strictures on enquiry that narrowly limit its horizons—and that some of my former revolutionary compatriots show distressing signs of complacency with the new orthodoxy.

Railroads, Prices, and Peasant Rationality: India 1860–1900

Abstract: In the literature on India's economic history, there has been a long debate on the influence of railroad development on the welfare of Indian farmers. Some economists and historians have argued that rail development increased welfare by providing new markets for agricultural products and permitting rising rural incomes. Others have argued that railroads had detrimental effects on welfare because, by encouraging cultivation of non-food crops (like cotton) and export crops (like wheat), they reduced the domestic food supply. Those who have stressed the adverse effects of railroads have seen these effects as a consequence of imperialist economic relations between Britain and India. In this view, the combination of British land revenue policy and rail construction transformed the rural economy. The need to pay the land revenue in cash forced fanners to grow some crop for sale; the railroads permitted non-local (or even non-Indian) demand to influence the prices at which different crops could be sold.

Farm Labor and Power Politics: Germany, 1850–1914

Abstract: Understanding the political impact of economic growth requires knowledge of the timing of structural changes within a national economy. The decline of agriculture's share in the national economy and variations in regional economic structures are of particular importance. The corrected figures on farm employment discussed in Section II indicate that between 1861 and 1907 the share of agriculture in national employment in Germany declined considerably more rapidly than appears in the census results; regional shares also tended to diverge from each other and from the average throughout the period. New international competition and the thrust of urban and industrial development required regional readjustments within German agriculture. They also made it progressively more difficult for agricultural regions to compete for resources and markets without outside help. In the absence of internally generated pressure from commerce and industry, the elite in the eastern regions of Prussia opposed outside help whenever it threatened the local economic structure. The result was to increase the dependence of the region's labor for jobs on relatively declining regional industry. The response of the landowners to these changes in turn strongly influenced national political groupings. The whole experience laid a foundation for the reaction in German political life to the social discontents and economic miseries of the First World War and decades following.

Watersheds and Turning Points: Conjectures on the Long-Term Impact of Civil War Financing

Abstract: What accounts for the “epochal” changes in capital formation shares and capital goods' prices during the 1860's? The pages following document an epochal rise in American gross saving rates centered on the Civil War decade. They also establish a symmetrical episodic shift in the relative price of manufactured durable investment goods. Not only did the American investment share in GNP rise dramatically (and permanently) between the 1850's and 1870's, but the relative price of capital goods declined sharply over the same period. This relative price change was pronounced and it was never again repeated in a subsequent century of development.

The social rate of return on investment in public health, 1880-1910.

Abstract: The period 1880–1910 saw great improvement in the health of city dwellers. Life expectancy at birth for males in Boston rose from 37 in 1880 to 46 in 1910; in New York City it rose from 29 in 1880 to 45 in 1910. The improvement in the state of health came largely from a decline in the incidence of infectious disease. Recent studies have suggested that most of this decline is fairly attributable to improvements in the standard of living—especially as reflected in diets and housing—and, for cities, to new public health measures—especially the installation of sanitary sewers and the provision of central supplies of pure drinking water. Government installation of public health projects in the United States was a part of the “sanitation movement,” which began some time around 1880. During the thirty-year period 1880–1910 there was a rapid increase in the fraction of the urban population served by sanitary sewers and improved water systems. For example, in 1875 fewer than 30,000 urban citizens were supplied with filtered water. By 1910 the figure had risen to over 10,000,000. That the improved health resulting from these public health measures must have been regarded by its recipients as an increase in their well being is clear. What is not clear is whether the recipients of improved health would have been even better off if the resources used in constructing and maintaining public health projects had been put to alternative uses unrelated to health. In this article I shall estimate the social rates of return on the cumulated investments in public health projects as could have been perceived by their builders and show that it may have exceeded the market rate of return on capital by several times.

Patterns of Farm Rental in the Georgia Cotton Belt, 1880–1900

Abstract: The story of the post-bellum reorganization of southern agriculture has been told many times, and the main features of the transition from slave to free labor are well known. Throughout the cotton economy the initial experiments with wage labor gave way to share-rent tenancy; later fixed-rent tenancy became common as well. That these changes resulted from an adjustment process in which both landlords and laborers increasingly recognized different contractual arrangements as mutually beneficial seems clearly established. The existing literature is deficient, however, by failing to account for the continuing diversity of contractual arrangements in southern agriculture. By 1880 the organizational variety that would persist for more than a half century could be clearly discerned: some farms were cultivated by their owners, often with the assistance of wives and children; others by hired workers receiving a fixed wage; some by tenants paying a stipulated amount of products (standing rent) or money (cash rent) for the use of the land; still others by tenants paying a definite share of the crops as rent. The “mix” of these arrangements varied widely from place to place, even within a given state, and changes occurred over time. How can one explain the proportions in which these various arrangements were employed and account for differences over time and space? In particular, what determined the proportion of the farms rented? Of the rented farms, what determined the proportion rented under share contracts? Did the farmer's race influence the form of the rental contract he obtained? This article attempts to answer these questions with reference to the Georgia cotton belt in the late nineteenth century.

The Origin of the American Civil War

Abstract: The causation of the American Civil War has been one of the largest issues in the historiography of this nation's past. Explanations for the question have been offered, debated, and reinterpreted ever since the time of the war; indeed, even before 1860 some individuals were setting forth reasons why an “irrepressible conflict” must come. Furthermore, the debate among scholars does not appear to be diminishing or approaching any consensus of interpretation. New hypotheses and critiques appear to be emerging as fast today as during preceding periods. Some of these proffered explanations prove to be more popular than others but none has won substantial favor to the exclusion of others and few have been completely discredited. As a result, there now exists a large inventory of previously suggested interpretations building upon such diverse mechanisms as slavery, sectionalism, political ineptitude, a slave-power conspiracy, economic conflicts and abolitionist activism. Many of these explanations have been thoughtfully prepared and then further polished by cross-examination, yet when all these efforts have been objectively considered they yield few definitive conclusions.

The Second Bank of the United States: An Instrument for an Interregional Monetary Union

Abstract: The Second Bank of the United States, a public bank chartered by the Congress in the early part of 1816, was the pre-eminent banking institution of its period. Its historical prominence, however, is derived primarily from the emphasis that has been placed on its role in the Bank War—a major political controversy of the nineteenth century. Certainly, the legacy of that struggle, that is, its impact on American political and economic institutions, transcends the importance of the operations undertaken by the BUS in the more normal years that preceded the Bank War. Nevertheless, because of the extent of its influence on the American economy during its tenure, the economic character of BUS operations during its earlier years also deserves the attention of the economic historian. By the close of the 1820's, its operations touched virtually every aspect of the nation's economic life—ranging from its role as the largest single issuer of bank notes to the development of financial arrangements that played an instrumental role in the conduct of interregional and international trade. In addition, the Second Bank carried out under the provisions of its charter a variety of quasi-governmental functions— including the imposition of a uniform national currency. In the course of its emergence in the 1820's, then, the Second Bank forged a set of institutional arrangements that had an important impact on the nation's economic activity throughout the remaining years of its tenure.

A Study in Meteorological and Trade Cycle History: The Economic Crisis Following the Napoleonic Wars

Abstract: The factors regulating the production and distribution of material wealth cannot be reduced exclusively to market relationships. This being the case, the economic historian cannot limit his borrowings to economics alone. The present article uses meteorology both in its theoretical and historical dimensions to show the interaction between economic and meteorological fluctuations. The attempt of W. S. Jevons to find a theoretical connection between solar cycles and trade cycles is well known. Economic historians of preindustrial Europe have identified weather patterns as a primary independent variable determining prosperity or depression. The impact of meteorological fluctuation on economic activity has also been noticed for the nineteenth century, acknowledged by theorist and historian alike as one of the major variables inducing trade cycles. But in these accounts weather patterns are introduced as a run of good or bad luck, affecting essentially regional or national economies.

Railroads and the Equity Receivership: An Essay on Institutional Change

Abstract: “Mr. Jay Gould doth at this hour bestride the narrow Wall Street like a colossus. He is indeed the Autolycus of the western world. No pickpocket, either ancient or modern, has been more successful.” Such florid mixing of metaphors, even in the late Victorian era of railroad chaos, was rare for the financial editor of the staid London Railway Times. He had just read the plan by which the arch “robber baron” proposed to reorganize the wobbly, poorly integrated and ill-financed Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway that Gould had sought to build out of at least two dozen railroads between Kansas City and Detroit. The editor's indignation a few weeks earlier is not recorded, but it was doubtless monumental, for on May 28, 1884 Gould had successfully sent his lieutenants into a United States District Court in St. Louis with a brazen request for appointment of receivers for the Wabash, under a concept of receivership which broke nearly every important precept of this old branch of equity law.

Agricultural Terms of Trade in Four Midwestern States, 1870–1900

Abstract: From the end of the Civil War down to 1900, the American agricultural sector was subject to continuous political and social upheaval. While the South and Far West were a part of this movement, the heartland of protest remained in the Midwest. The traditional view has been that this unrest and protest was at least partially based on the worsening economic position of the farmer. Farmers complained of being exploited by moneylenders, victimized by railroads and other middlemen, cheated by speculators and faced with prices received falling faster than prices paid, thus reducing real purchasing power. This last view is put forth by Faulkner: “While the prices of farm commodities declined, those of manufactured products, dominated by monopoly practices, remained high or did not decline proportionally.”

Conditions for the diffusion of agricultural technology : an Asian perspective

Abstract: A unique aspect of agricultural production as a biological process is that it is basically conditioned by natural environments. Agricultural technology is so developed as to be efficient in the given environmental conditions in addition to being consistent with relative factor and product prices. In consequence, there is a tendency for agricultural technology to become location-specific, and its direct transfer is limited within a small area of similar environmental conditions.

International Diffusion of Agrarian Technology

Abstract: Improved techniques of production have been an important part of the history of agricultural change in all modern economies The search for policies to bring about the rapid introduction of improved techniques of production in traditional or less developed agricultural sectors has been a central focus of development agencies for the past two decades It has proven to be a very difficult task, however, to develop policies which actually achieve the transfer of new techniques The record of success in development efforts towards this end in agriculture has been, on the whole, rather poor

The Early Diffusion of Steam Power

Abstract: If the Town of Birmingham or Sheffield etc. have reason to apprehend that Manufactories are set up from time to time in any foreign Countries, thro' the means or by the assistance of English workmen from hence, who not finding the advantages such as they expected etc. may be desirous of returning—and if any set of Traders chuse to enter into an agreement to encourage the return of such men by promising them Employment the same as before and to contribute to the expence of their Journey home in such Terms as they shall Judge best, the King's Minister at the respective Courts shall have orders to make it a particular object to enquire about such Manufactories and Men, to make them acquainted of such an Agreement, and to give them every Assistance and Encouragement possible for their Return…. Lord Dartmouth to Matthew Boulton, n.d., Assay Office Library, Birmingham

Slavery and Technological Change

Abstract: Much of the confusion in the debate on slavery and technology derives from the belief that identifies technological change with progress. Not only the Awkwrights and Seniors thought this way; Marx and, from what I have heard from my colleagues at this conference, a fair proportion of economic historians maintain that the salvation of society depends upon changes in the techniques of production.