Volume 75-Issue 1-February 2022
ISSUE INFORMATION
Pages 1-2
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13090
ARTICLES
The private mint in economics:evidence from the American gold rushes
Lawrence H. White
Pages 3-21
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13086
Abstract: Prominent economists have supposed that the private production of full-bodied gold or silver coins is inefficient: due to information asymmetry, private coins will be chronically low-quality or underweight.An examination of private mints during gold rushes in the US in the years 1830-63, drawing on contemporary accounts and numismatic literature, finds otherwise. While some private gold mints produced underweight coins, from incompetence or fraudulent intent,such mints did not last long. Informed by newspapers about the findings of assays, money-users systematically abandoned substandard coins in favour of full-weight oins. Only competent and honest mints survived.
After the great inventions: technological change in UK cotton spinning, 1780–1835
Peter Maw,Peter Solar,Aidan Kane,John S. Lyons
Pages 22-55
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13082
Abstract: This article analyses the improvement of cotton-spinning technologies in the years after the great inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Crompton. While these ‘macro-inventions’ have attracted considerable historical attention, our understanding of the major changes in types and sizes of spinning machines used in the UK between the 1780s and the onset of state-collected factory statistics in the 1830s is still largely based on the experience of high-profile firms or specific technologies and regions. A new dataset of 1,465 machinery advertisements published in newspapers in England, Scotland, and Ireland between 1780 and 1835 allows us to examine the temporal and spatial dimensions of the market for cotton-spinning machinery, the timings of transitions between different spinning machines, and increases in machine size. The article demonstrates the importance of post-invention technical improvements in the cotton industry, showing that the productivity increases associated with the initial transition from hand to machine spinning have been overstated and that larger gains were made in the ‘micro-invention’ phase, when spinning machines became larger and faster, and required fewer workers to operate them.
Making the municipal capital market in nineteenth-century England
Ian Webster
Pages 56-79
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13084
Abstract: How did local authorities in nineteenth-century England raise the money to finance the building of roads, sewers, gasworks, schools, and hospitals? The literature on local government and capital markets is silent on this question. This article reveals the size of the municipal capital market, how and why it developed, and how it performed. It shows that most of the capital came from private individuals and institutions, with central government having only a modest role. Avoiding defaults, protecting lenders, the move towards standardization, and the development of open markets were all important in improving the credibility of borrowers and reducing the cost of debt. The article also reveals that the municipal capital market shared many similarities with the wider capital market.
How hungry were the poor in late 1930s Britain?
Ian Gazeley,Andrew Newell,Kevin Reynolds,Hector Rufrancos
Pages 80-110
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13079
Abstract: This article re-examines energy and nutrition available to British working-class households in the late 1930s using individual household expenditure and consumption data. We use these data to address a number of questions. First, what was the extent of malnutrition in late 1930s Britain? Second, how did the incidence change over time? Third, what were the nutritional consequences of the school meals and school milk schemes? We conclude that, for working households, energy and nutritional availability improved significantly compared with current estimates of availability before the First World War. These improvements were not equally shared, however. In the late 1930s, homes with an unemployed head of household had diets that provided around 20 per cent less energy than their working counterparts and female-headed households had diets that provided around 10 per cent fewer kcal per capita than the average male-headed household. The availability of most macro- and micronutrients showed similar relative reductions. State interventions designed to improve diet and nutrition, such as school meals and school milk, made children's diets significantly healthier, even if they did not eliminate macro- and micronutrient deficiencies completely. Not surprisingly, they made the greatest difference to children in households where the head of household was unemployed.
Rethinking age heaping: a cautionary tale from nineteenth-century Italy
Brian A'Hearn,Alexia Delfino,Alessandro Nuvolari
Pages 111-137
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13087
Abstract: Age heaping is widely employed as an indicator of human capital, more specifically of numeracy. We re-examine the age heaping–numeracy link in the light of evidence from nineteenth-century Italian censuses, in which education explains little of the variation in age heaping. We argue that in general age heaping is most plausibly interpreted as an indicator of cultural, economic, and institutional modernization rather than a straightforward measure of individual cognitive skills. We do not rule out the use of age heaping as a numeracy indicator, but this needs to be done with research designs that are alert to historical specificities of the context under investigation.
Perceptions of plague in eighteenth-century Europe
Paul Slack
Pages 138-156
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13080
Abstract: Major epidemics of plague in Germany and France in the early eighteenth century and in Moscow in the 1770s brought an end to a series of epidemic disasters in Europe which had started with the Black Death. The article examines what they had in common, and seeks to understand why they should have ended when they did. It shows that European governors were unanimous in insisting on rigid quarantine and other measures for containing the disease developed over previous centuries, despite their ignorance of plague's precise causes. It shows also that physicians across Europe were more deeply divided than they had ever been on the issue of contagion, and now engaged in an international dispute about whether the acknowledged cruelties inflicted by compulsory quarantines were wholly counterproductive, or a price worth paying for the prevention of still worse disasters. The article concludes by drawing on recent work on plague in the Ottoman Empire, and on research into the ancient DNA of the second pandemic in order to set the epidemic history of stern Europe in a wider comparative context.
Mercantilist inequality: wealth and poverty in Stockholm, 1650–1750
Erik Bengtsson,Mats Olsson,Patrick Svensson
Pages 157-180
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13081
Abstract: This article describes and analyses social structure, poverty, wealth, and economic inequality in Stockholm from 1650 to 1750. We begin by establishing the social structure, using census data and other sources. To study wealth and poverty, the main sources are a complete record of the wealth tax of 1715, comprising 17,782 taxpayers, and a total of 1,125 probate inventories sampled from the years 1650, 1700, and 1750. These provide detailed and sometimes surprising insights into the living standards of both the poor and the rich. Stockholm in this period was a starkly unequal city, with the top decile of wealth holders owning about 90 per cent of total wealth. We relate this inequality to mercantilist policies. The city was run as an oligarchy and the oligarchical political institutions engendered policies that were rigged for inequality. The case of Stockholm thus shows the need for the historical inequality literature to consider class and power relations to understand the determinants of inequality.
Revising growth history: new estimates of GDP for Norway,1816-2019
Ola Honningdal Grytten
Pages 181-202
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13085
Abstract: This article offers revised historical national accounts for Norway for the period 1816-2019.The revisions have been carried out on both the production side and the expenditure side.The major difference is that the new series inc ude a significanty broader set of data than the previous series. This makes it possible to calculate GDP for a wider set of industries with more detailed and precise data, in a way that is more in line with modern national accounting methodology.The new series deviate at some points from the previous series.In particular, they show higher growth rates during the last half of the nineteenth century until 1906 and lower growth rates from 1918 to 1930. This is basically due to improved quality of deflators and partly due to the extended use of a double deflation technique. The revised output and input figures play a less important role. In light of the revised series, parts of Norway's economic growth and development history should be revised. Comparisons with Denmark and Sweden reveal a relatively higher level of GDP per capita for Norway during the second half of the nineteenth century than according to the previous series.
Workplace accidents and workers’ solidarity: mutual health insurance in early twentieth-century Sweden
Lars Fredrik Andersson,Liselotte Eriksson,Paul Nystedt
Pages 203-234
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13088
Abstract: During the industrialization period, the rate of workplace-related accidents increased. Because of the lack of public insurance, mutual health insurance societies became the main providers of workplace accident insurance among workers. Due to large differences in accident risk, health insurance societies were potentially exposed to the risk of adverse selection, since they employed equal pricing for all members regardless of risk profile. This article investigates the impact of workplace accident risk on health insurance selection and outcomes. We employ household budget surveys encompassing urban workers in Sweden during the early twentieth century. We find evidence for a redistribution from low- to high-risk-exposed workers, as workplace accident risk had a significant and positive impact on receiving health insurance benefits, also when controlling for a variety of factors. Workers exposed to greater risks in the workplace were more likely to have health insurance but did not pay higher premiums. The redistribution from low- to high-risk-exposed workers was largely accepted and viewed as an act of solidarity between workers. Given that health insurance societies were aware of this redistribution, we argue for the presence of informed, rather than adverse, selection.
REVIEW OF PERIODICAL LITERATURE
Review of periodical literature for 2020: (i) 400–1100
Jane Kershaw
Pages 235-240
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13149
Review of periodical literature for 2020: (ii) 1100–1500
Spike Gibbs
Pages 240-249
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13150
Review of periodical literature for 2020: (iii) 1500–1700
Charmian Mansell
Pages 249-255
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13151
Review of periodical literature for 2020: (iv) 1700–1850
Karolina Hutková
Pages 256-263
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13152
Review of periodical literature for 2020: (v) 1850–1945
Brian D. Varian
Pages 263-275
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13153
Review of periodical literature for 2020: (vi) Since 1945
Ewan Gibbs
Pages 275-287
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13154
BOOK REVIEWS
Ben Marsh, Unravelled dreams: Silk and the Atlantic World 1500–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. v+500. ISBN 9781108418287 Hbk. £29.99)
Manuela Martini
Pages 288-289
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13144
Henning Hillmann, The corsairs of Saint-Malo: Network organization of a merchant elite under the Ancien Régime (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021. Pp. xii+322. 35 figs. 26 tabs. ISBN 9780231180382 Hbk. £108; ISBN 9780231180399 Pbk. £28)
Pierre Gervais
Pages 289-290
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13145
W. G. Miller, British traders in the East Indies 1770–1820 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2020. Pp. i+222. ISBN 9781783275533 Hbk. £75.00)
Michael Aldous
Pages 290-291
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13146
Rebecca Earle, Feeding the people: The politics of the potato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, Pp. xiv+306. 24 figs. ISBN 9781108484060 Hbk. £17.99)
Vicente Pinilla
Pages 292-293
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13147
Stephen L. Morgan, The Chinese economy (Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda Publishing, 2021. Pp. xvii+316. 35 figs. 38 tabs. ISBN 9781788210805 Hbk. £60.00; ISBN 9781788210812 Pbk. £16.99)
Meng Wu
Pages 293-294
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13148
