Volume 76- Issue 1-February 2023
ISSUE INFORMATION
Pages 1-2
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13170
ORIGINAL ARTICLES
The role of sentiment in the US economy: 1920 to 1934
Ali Kabiri, Harold James, John Landon-Lane, David Tuckett, Rickard Nyman
Pages 3-30
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13160
Abstract: This paper investigates the role of sentiment in the US economy from 1920 to 1934 using digitised articles from The Wall Street Journal. We derive a monthly sentiment index and use a 10-variable vector error correction model to identify sentiment shocks that are orthogonal to fundamentals. We show the timing and strength of these shocks and their resultant effects on the economy using historical decompositions. Intermittent impacts of up to 15 per cent on industrial production, 10 per cent on the S&P 500 and bank loans, and 37 basis points for the credit risk spread suggest a large role for sentiment.
The effect of settler farming on indigenous agriculture: Evidence from Italian Libya
Mattia C. Bertazzini
Pages 31-59
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13166
Abstract: What effect did the settlement of European farmers have on the indigenous agricultural sector during the colonial period? On the one hand, European immigrants imported skills and capital but, on the other, they took control of local resources. By looking at the short-term effect of Italian farming in colonial Libya, I shed new light on this question. Through regression analysis on a novel village dataset covering the entire country, I show that, in 1939, proximity to Italian farms was associated with significantly lower land productivity relative to distant locations. Lower yields can be explained by the adoption of land-extensive cultivation techniques, implemented by indigenous farmers to counteract a labour drain operated by Italian farms through factor markets. The combined mitigating effect of monetary wages and land-extensive farming only partially compensated for the fall in income linked to reduced land productivity.
Demographic trends in late-slavery Jamaica, 1817–32
J. R. Ward
Pages 60-86
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13168
Abstract: Early nineteenth-century demographic trends on sugar estates in Jamaica, the most important British Caribbean colony, are examined through the 1817–32 public slave registers. We seek evidence regarding the background to the island's 1831–2 popular insurrection, the immediate cause of the London parliament's vote in 1833 to abolish colonial slavery. Some historians argue that the revolt occurred as ‘political’ effect from a sudden upsurge of metropolitan anti-slavery activism in 1830–1. They believe the uprising broke out despite improvement in enslaved people's material welfare, favoured by many slaveholders to secure population increase after the closure of the British transatlantic slave trade in 1808. Alternative ‘economic’ assessments judge that increasing workloads had been aggravating popular unrest before the revolt. Commercial pressures, and the imminent likelihood of emancipation, allegedly outweighed welfare concerns. The excess of slave deaths over births widened between 1817 and 1832. However, the registers show that demographic deficits resulted mainly from the ageing of the last Africa-born cohorts. Jamaica-born enslaved people became self-reproducing. There was no general pre-1831 regime deterioration. Most slaveholders sought to maintain their Jamaican assets for the long term through pro-natalist measures, and did not expect emancipation. The revolt's causes were thus more ‘political’ than ‘economic’.
Ad maiorem Dei gloriam: Numeracy levels in the Guarani Jesuit missions
Èric Gómez-i-Aznar
Pages 87-117
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13169
Abstract: This work provides data on human capital for the Guarani Jesuit missions during the eighteenth century. Based on the age heaping methodology, the results of a large sample (over 3600 observations) suggest that the knowledge of numerical skills in these missions was exceptional. A comparison with other regions and locations with different institutional frameworks, religious or otherwise, or led by other religious orders, confirms the exceptionality of the Guarani Jesuit missions. The model of these missions, based on productive self-sufficiency and egalitarian and cohesive social organisation, as well as respect for the pre-existing culture exemplified by their Guaranisation and adaptation to the Guarani world view and language, could explain their successful educational performance and the intergenerational transmission of human capital beyond the disappearance of the Jesuit missions after 1767.
Evaluating early modern lockdowns: Household quarantine in Bristol, 1565–1604
Charles Udale
Pages 118-144
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13176
Abstract: We know the policy of quarantining plague victims and their families together within their households entailed considerable costs and controversy in early modern Europe. Less clear is the extent to which the authorities implemented the policy in the face of this. This paper presents a novel approach to the measurement of enforcement which relies on linking deceased individuals listed in parish registers into household groups and then measuring changes in within-household mortality between parishes and epidemics. This provides a more complete assessment of the scale of implementation than would be possible using documentary sources alone. Measuring within-household mortality allows us to understand patterns of quarantine enforcement in settlements across early modern Europe. Here the focus is restricted to three epidemics that occurred in Bristol – one of England's most populous and prosperous cities. The analysis reveals household quarantine was enforced in 1603–4 with unprecedented vigour. The effects of quarantine are particularly pronounced in the affluent parishes where elite residence was highest. Greater evidence for enforcement is explained by greater elite oversight and control, as well as their desire to protect their own households. The scale of the impact is shocking. Household quarantine could double within household mortality.
Women's work and wages in the sixteenth century and Sweden's position in the ‘little divergence’
Jakob Molinder, Christopher Pihl
Pages 145-168
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13177
Abstract: We use a unique source from the Swedish royal demesnes to examine the work and relative wages of women in sixteenth-century Sweden, an economic laggard in the early modern period. The source pertains to workers hired on yearly contracts, a type more representative of historical labour markets than day labour on large construction sites, and this allows us to observe directly the food consumed by workers. We speak to the debate on the ‘little divergence’ within Europe, as women's work and gender differentials in pay is a key indicator of women's relative autonomy and seen as a cause for the economic ascendency of the North Sea region during the period. We find small gender differentials among both unskilled and skilled workers, indicating that Sweden was a part of the ‘golden age’ for women. We argue that despite superficial equality, women's economic outlooks were restrained in many other ways – including their access to higher-skilled work and jobs in the expanding parts of the economy – adding important nuance to the discussion about the relationship between women's social position and economic growth in the early modern period.
Industrialisation in a small grain economy during the First Globalisation: Bulgaria c. 1870–1910
Martin Ivanov, Michael Kopsidis
Pages 169-198
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13185
Abstract: In Bulgaria the share of secondary production in GDP remained constantly low between c. 1870–1910. To explain the country's exceptionally weak growth, we use endogenous and unified growth theory. Gerschenkron and Palairet blame a self-sufficiency-oriented peasant economy for rising labour and raw material costs in industry, which destroyed the competitiveness of Bulgarian manufacturing and prevented industrialisation. We refute the existence of any long-lasting cost increases in industry after 1878. Quite the opposite was true: the expansion of Bulgaria's secondary sector was restricted by detrimental changes on the demand side, for which peasants were not responsible. Recent research claims that, around 1910, Bulgarian textile production was significantly lower than in 1870. Our study brings to light new data and information that clearly disproves this view. Until around 1910, a booming modern manufacturing sector more than replaced the country's proto-industries’ textile outputs, which had plummeted dramatically during the early years of the newly founded Bulgarian state. However, as the rise of modern manufacturing in textile production coincided with the decline of the entire large sector of traditional manufacturing, secondary production as a whole stagnated.
Serbia on the path to modern economic growth
Boško Mijatović, Milan Zavadjil
Pages 199-220
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13186
Abstract: Given the scanty and inadequate studies on Serbia's growth performance before the First World War, this paper presents production-side GDP estimates for Serbia for six years between 1867 and 1910. It probes into the growth dynamics, assessing convergence with the more developed countries of north-western Europe, as well as progress towards achieving modern economic growth. Although the economy showed some dynamism in terms of overall GDP, per capita GDP in pre-First World War Serbia grew by only 0.28 per cent per annum, as much of the overall GDP growth was eroded by rapid population growth. Far from converging with north-western Europe, Serbia continued to fall behind. Sluggish structural transformation and slow income per capita growth suggest that Serbia's transition to modern economic growth was in its infancy. Growth in the dominant agricultural sector was extensive, driven by expanding arable land and population growth. Land was affordable and easy to obtain; hence, peasants invested little in new technologies. Meanwhile, the modern industrial and service sectors were below a threshold that could sustain rapid growth. Nevertheless, this study also highlights the rapid expansion of a small modern sector and export diversification that reflected emergent ‘green shoots’ in 1905–10.
Fuelling the urban economy: A comparative study of energy in the Low Countries, 1600–1850
Wouter Ryckbosch, Wout Saelens
Pages 221-256
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13187
Abstract: What was the role of energy in shaping modern economies and fuelling the transition to sustained economic growth? In the historiography on the industrial revolution, the transition to fossil energy carriers plays a central role. Despite recent efforts to gather new empirical evidence, long-term comparative studies on energy transitions and their economic impact before and during the first industrial revolution remain rare. As a contribution to this literature, this article presents new quantitative data on energy consumption from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries in the Low Countries. To explore differences in the chronology and impact of energy transitions, we compare the total levels of energy consumption, the energy mix, and the prices of fuels between two cities in the northern and southern Low Countries: Leiden and Ghent. This analysis enables us to explore more clearly which factors played a key role in the interaction between energy, economic growth, and industrialisation. The transition towards a cheap-energy economy in Holland was associated with economic growth, but not with mechanisation. On the other hand, the rapid mechanisation process in Ghent was associated not with a cheap-energy economy (relative to that of Leiden), but more specifically with a cheap-coal economy.
Did it pay to be a pioneer? Wealth accumulation in a newly settled frontier society
Jeanne Cilliers, Erik Green, Robert Ross
Pages 257-282
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13188
Abstract: European settler colonies are often thought to have been characterised by a continued expansion of the landed frontier, which impacted the distribution of wealth across their settler populations. Hampered by a lack of data, few studies have been able to study this in depth. How does settlement timing affect wealth and wealth accumulation when frontier expansion is not a smooth, continuous process? Was it the case that pioneers reaped greater economic benefits from locating their farms on superior land, or would they be disadvantaged compared with later arrivals owing to limited infrastructure or greater risk of conflict with indigenous populations? In this paper, we use a unique dataset that allows us to analyse the link between time of arrival and wealth accumulation in a colonial agrarian frontier society: the Graaff-Reinet district in South Africa's Cape Colony between 1786 and 1850. We find that those who arrived early located their farms in the more climatologically suitable areas of the district and utilised their superior lands to accumulate wealth more quickly than latecomers. However, owing to institutional changes that favoured later British arrivals, we also show that the existence of an early-arrival premium did not mean persistence in land ownership.
An annual index of Irish industrial production, 1800–1913
Seán Kenny, Jason Lennard, Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke
Pages 283-304
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13189
Abstract: We assemble the Irish industrial data currently available for the years 1800–1921, the period during which the entire island was in a political union with Great Britain, and construct an annual index of Irish industrial output for 1800–1913. We also construct a new industrial price index. Irish industrial output grew by an average of 1.3 per cent per annum between 1800 and the outbreak of the First World War. Industrial growth was slightly slower than previously thought, especially during the two decades immediately preceding the Great Famine. While Ireland did not experience absolute deindustrialisation either before the Famine or afterwards, its industrial growth was disappointing when considered in a comparative perspective.
Not an ordinary bank but a great engine of state: The Bank of England and the British economy, 1694–1844
Patrick K. O'Brien, Nuno Palma
Pages 305-329
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13191
Abstract: From its foundation as a private corporation in 1694, the Bank of England extended large amounts of credit to support the British private economy and to support an increasingly centralised British state. The Bank helped the British state reach a position of geopolitical and economic hegemony in the international economic order. In this paper, we deploy recalibrated financial data to analyse an evolving trajectory of connections between the British economy, the state, and the Bank of England. We show how these connections contributed to form an effective and efficient fiscal–naval state and promote the development of a system of financial intermediation for the economy. This symbiotic relationship became stronger after 1793. The evidence that we consider here shows that although the Bank was nominally a private institution and profits were paid to its shareholders, it was playing a public role well before Bagehot's doctrine.
BOOK REVIEWS
Youssef Cassis and Catherine R. Schenk (eds.), Remembering and Learning from Financial Crises. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. pp. xiii +213. 7 figs. ISBN 9780198870906. Hbk £65.00
Rui Esteves
Pages 330-331
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13223
John F. Wilson, Ian G. Jones, Steven Toms, Anna Tilba, Emily Buchnea, and Nicholas Wong, Business History: A Research Overview. London & New York: Routledge, 2022. pp. ix+ 137. ISBN 9781138326989 £35.99.
Leslie Hannah
Pages 331-332
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13224
Jeppe Mulich, In a Sea of Empires: Networks and Crossings in the Revolutionary Caribbean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. pp. xxii+204. ISBN 9781108489720. Hbk £75.00 Tessa Murphy, The Creole Archipelago. Race and Borders in the Colonial Caribbean. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. pp. 352. 16 figs. ISBN 9780812253382. Hbk £36.00
Aaron Graham
Pages 333-335
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13225
Robin Fleming, The Material Fall of Roman Britain 300–525 CE. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. pp. xii + 303. 22 figs. ISBN 978-0-8122-5244-6. $45/£37
Rory Naismith
Pages 335-336
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13226
REVIEW OF PERIODICAL LITERATURE
Review of periodical literature for 2021(i) 400–1100
Máirín MacCarron
Pages 337-342
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13229
Review of periodical literature for 2021(ii) 1100–1500
Spike Gibbs
Pages 342-353
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13230
Review of periodical literature for 2021(iii) 1500–1700
Charmian Mansell
Pages 353-361
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13231
Review of periodical literature for 2021(iv) 1700–1850
Karolina Hutková
Pages 361-367
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13232
Review of periodical literature for 2021(v) 1850–1945
Brian D. Varian
Pages 367-378
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13233
Review of periodical literature for 2021(vi) Post 1945
Ewan Gibbs
Pages 378-387
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13234
Correction to ‘Evesham Abbey and Local Society in the Late Middle Ages. The Abbot's Household Account 1456–7 and the Priors’ Registers 1520–40’
Pages 388-388
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13241
