Volume 75-Issue 2-May 2022
ISSUE INFORMATION
Pages 295-296
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13091
TAWNEY LECTURE
History as heresy: Unlearning the lessons of economic orthodoxy
Mary A. O'Sullivan
Pages 297-335
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13117
Abstract: Unprecedented liquidity injections by central bankers have gained legitimacy in recent years to stave off economic crisis and enjoy strong support from prominent economists and economic historians. Such radical action by central bankers is underpinned by a remarkable agreement on a specific interpretation of the Great Depression of the 1930s in the US, an interpretation proposed by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz in A monetary history of the United States (1963). This article explores the origins, the limits, and the influence of A monetary history’s interpretation of the Great Depression for the insights it offers on theory and history in the study of economic life. The book was inspired by Wesley Clair Mitchell's mobilization of historical research to insist on the inherent instability of capitalism. Friedman and Schwartz exploited the heretical potential of historical research to dismiss any claim that the crisis reflected a systemic dysfunction of the US economy. Now that their interpretation has become our orthodoxy, this article shows how we can develop the fertile link between history and heresy to open up new lines of research on the causes of the greatest crisis in the history of capitalism.
SYMPOSIUM - ECONOMIC HISTORY AND INDIA
Introduction to the symposium on economic history and India
Tirthankar Roy
Pages 371-373
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13167
Cotton cultivation under colonial rule in India in the nineteenth century from a comparative perspective
Klas Rönnbäck,Dimitrios Theodoridis
Pages 374-395
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13094
Abstract: India has played an important role in recent debates on the development of agriculture during colonial rule, and on the performance of US cotton plantations during the nineteenth century. The debates suffer from a lack of quantitative evidence on the productivity of Indian cotton cultivation. In this article, we examine levels of land and labour productivity in cotton cultivation in nineteenth-century India, and compare this data with corresponding productivity figures from the US. Average yields in India were much lower than previous research would suggest, and trends were generally stagnant or even negative. The difference between the cost of labour in India and the US was also lower than previous research would suggest.
Credit risk in colonial India
Maanik Nath
Pages 396-420
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13108
Abstract: Credit was scarce and expensive in colonial India. Existing explanations assume a lack of market competition let moneylenders charge high interest rates. The article challenges this view and constructs a novel framework to explain the rationality and strategies of lenders. Using new evidence from the Madras Presidency, the study finds that the interconnected issues of climate volatility and enforcement costs shaped the supply and prices of credit. Climate volatility and uncertain seasonal incomes led to high default rates. Enforcement of contracts through courts was expensive and not appropriate where there was no wilful breach of contract. Moneylenders responded to risk in innovative ways. They rationed credit and imposed inflexible enforcement terms in the dry regions that faced higher climatic risk, but used contracts and flexible pricing strategies in the irrigated zones where risks were lower.
Between unfreedoms: The role of caste in decisions to repatriate among indentured workers
Neha Hui,Uma S. Kambhampati
Pages 421-446
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13115
Abstract: Indian indentured labour migration followed slavery in providing cheap labour to British plantation colonies. To make this migration characteristically distinct from slavery, the workers were offered a subsidized trip back at the end of the indenture period. However, despite this guaranteed and subsidized return passage, only about a third of the workers returned to India. In this article, we consider the role of caste in the decision to return home using data from ship registers for more than 16 000 Indian indentured workers in British Guiana between 1872 and 1911. Our results indicate that individuals from very low castes were significantly less likely to return home in comparison to other caste groups. We argue that this was because while caste hierarchy played a very significant role in every aspect of the workers’ lives back in India, their lives in the plantation economies did not allow the reproduction of caste hierarchies. Low caste workers who stayed on in British Guiana were therefore able to escape the unfreedom of caste. This trend is not robust for other caste groups. While the association of higher caste groups and return is positive and significant, the significance disappears when we include economic conditions.
Indian cotton textiles and British industrialization: Evidence of comparative learning in the British cotton industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
Alka Raman
Pages 447-474
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13143
Abstract: This article contributes to a topic central to interpretations of British industrialization and the role of Indian cotton textiles in shaping notions of cloth quality and, eventually, innovations. Textual evidence indicates that manufacturers in the early British cotton industry compared the quality of their products to that of Indian cottons. These texts suggest the hypothesis that there was a shift towards finer cotton textiles in Britain, via attempts to make the cotton warp yarn match Indian quality. Using a novel dataset of surviving British and Indian textiles of the period, the article puts this hypothesis to the test, and concludes that between 1746 and 1820 there was an increase in the quality of British cottons, leading to a convergence with the quality of handmade Indian cottons.
ARTICLES
Inequality in early life: Social class differences in childhood mortality in southern Sweden, 1815–1967
Martin Dribe,Omar Karlsson
Pages 475-502
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13089
Abstract: This article analyses the long-term development of social class differences in infant and child mortality in an area of southern Sweden, spanning from the early stages of the mortality transition at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to the late 1960s when both infant and child mortality had reached very low levels. Our findings show that infant and child mortality was fairly equal at the beginning of the study period. We find no clear pattern of class differentials in childhood mortality in the first half of the nineteenth century when both infant and child mortality declined. Later in the nineteenth century, class differences started to emerge. This is clear for both post-neonatal mortality and child mortality, while we do not find any class differences in neonatal mortality. Over time, a more or less full gradient emerged for post-neonatal mortality, and a weak gradient also emerged for child mortality. Strikingly, the disadvantaged position for unskilled and lower-skilled workers remained throughout the 1960s, also at a time when mortality levels were very low, and living standards had increased dramatically for all classes in the population.
Income inequality and famine mortality: Evidence from the Finnish famine of the 1860s
Miikka Voutilainen
Pages 503-529
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13095
Abstract: This article examines whether economic inequality intensified the adverse effects of harvest, price, and income shocks during a famine. Using a parish-level longitudinal dataset from the Finnish famine of the 1860s, it shows that a substantial proportion of the excess mortality experienced during the famine resulted from a decline in agricultural production, a decline in incomes, and a surge in food prices. The findings indicate that the adverse effects of food output fluctuations were intensified by increasing income inequality and decreasing average income, while the market-transmitted shocks were weakened by a contraction of disposable income. The results are corroborated with multiple alternative estimation techniques, including the introduction of spatial spill-overs. The results show that even a pre-industrial famine affecting an impoverished society was meaningfully defined by the distribution of incomes.
Beyond the male breadwinner: Life-cycle living standards of intact and disrupted English working families, 1260–1850
Sara Horrell,Jane Humphries,Jacob Weisdorf
Pages 530-560
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13105
Abstract: This article provides a novel framework within which to evaluate real household incomes of predominantly rural working families of various sizes and structures in England in the years 1260–1850. We reject ahistorical assumptions about complete reliance on men's wages and male breadwinning, moving closer to reality by including women and children's contributions to family incomes. Our empirical strategy benefits from recent estimates of men's annual earnings, so avoiding the need to gross up day rates using problematic assumptions about days worked, and from new data on women and children's wages and labour inputs. A family life-cycle approach which accommodates consumption smoothing through saving adds further breadth and realism. Moreover, the analysis embraces two historically common but often overlooked family types alternative to the traditional male-breadwinner model: one where the husband is missing having died or deserted, and one where the husband is present but unwilling or unable to find work. Our framework suggests living standards varied widely by family structure and dependency ratio. Incorporating detailed demographic data available for 1560 onward suggests that small and intact families enjoyed high and rising living standards after 1700, while large or disrupted families depended on child labour and poor relief until c. 1830. A broader perspective on family structures informs understanding of the chronology and nature of poverty and coping strategies.
Colonizer identity and trade in Africa: Were the British more favourable to free trade?
Federico Tadei
Pages 561-578
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13107
Abstract: It has often been claimed that the structure of export trade between Africa and Europe during the colonial period depended on the colonizer's identity, with the British relying on free trade and the French, in contrast, employing monopsonistic policies. However, due to the lack of systematic data on colonial trade, this claim has remained untested. This study uses recently available data on export prices from African colonies to estimate monopsonistic profit margins for British and French trading companies. The results challenge the view of the British colonizers as champions of free trade. The level of profit margins was determined much more by the local conditions in Africa (history of trade and the presence of European producers) than by the identity of the colonial power. The British did not necessarily rely on free trade more than the French and did so only when implementing monopsonies was not a viable option.
The politics of last resort lending and the Overend & Gurney crisis of 1866
Sabine Schneider
Pages 579-600
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13113
Abstract: News of the insolvency of Overend, Gurney, & Company on 10 May 1866 generated a scramble for funds in the City of London and urgent appeals to the Bank of England. The banking panic triggered by the collapse of the prominent British discount house became one of the Bank's most tumultuous modern crises. This article investigates the politics of the Bank's liquidity provision during the 1866 crisis, and in the ensuing months of financial stringency. By assessing the correspondence, speeches, and publications of Governors, City figures, and financial journalists, the article finds that the Bank's evolving approach to crisis lending was decisively shaped by its commercial objectives and a prolonged struggle to preserve its autonomy. When confronted with the 1866 crisis, the Bank adopted a pragmatic stance towards the market, which accommodated the credit needs of the City without sacrificing either its privileged legal status or its shareholders’ interests. Its Governors’ rhetorical pursuit of ‘constructive ambiguity’ during the post-crisis months succeeded in both limiting moral hazard and consolidating the Bank's discretionary powers.
Becoming a central bank: The development of the Bank of England's private sector lending policies during the Restriction
Carolyn Sissoko
Pages 601-632
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13110
Abstract: This article studies the changes that took place in the Bank of England's Restriction-era policies governing private sector lending. The findings show that the Bank was adapting to novel monetary circumstances, created both by the evolution of the English financial system and by the Restriction itself, and that, although the process was far from smooth, the Bank was learning to act as a central bank: during this period the Bank transformed its internal operating procedures to put regulation-based constraints on its private sector lending, established regular reviews of its policies and their effects on the money market, and adopted a distinct crisis-orientated lending policy. In addition to establishing that these core central bank activities developed over this period, the article also shows that for 18 months starting in 1809 the Bank's policies were destabilizing, and that the Bullion Committee probably played a role in a shift in Bank lending policies that took place in mid-1810. Overall, this study finds that the 1810 crisis was a turning point in the Bank's understanding of its role in the economy: the Bank directors both acknowledged privately the Bank's duty to the public, and restructured its discount policies with a view to promoting financial and monetary stability.
BOOK REVIEWS
Johan Fourie, Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom. Lessons from 100 000 Years of HistoryCape Town: Tafelberg, 2021. pp. 255. ISBN 9780624091615
Felix Meier Zu Selhausen
Pages 633-634
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13161
William Quinn and John D. Turner, Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. pp. viii+288. 25 figs. 14 tabs. ISBN Hbk. 9781108421256
Jason Lennard
Pages 634-635
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13162
Robert E. Gallman and Paul W. Rhode, Capital in the Nineteenth Century, Chicago: The Chicago University Press, 2019. pp. vii+381. 131 tabs. 10 figs. Hbk. ISBN 9780226633114 Hbk. $65.00
Stephen Broadberry
Pages 636-638
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13163
Claudia Goldin Career and Family: Women's Century-Long Journey toward Equity, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022. pp. 344. ISBN 9780691201788 Hbk £22.00
Jane Humphries
Pages 638-640
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13164
