Economic Growth and Biological Innovation: The Development of the European Dairy Sector, 1865–1940

Abstract:In this article we discuss an aspect of economic growth that has not been the subject of much consideration in economic and agrarian history to date: the effect of biological innovations on farming development between the mid nineteenth century and the 1930s. We have focused on dairy farming for two reasons. Firstly, dairy farming played a relevant economic role in a number of European regions during this period. Secondly, one of its products, liquid milk, was probably the most significant food during the early stages of the European nutrition transition. We present new statistical data for the evolution of dairy farming in different Northern European countries as well as Spain, and evaluate the impact of cattle population and milk yields in each case. We also link milk yields and the availability of fodder, but special attention is paid to the breeds kept and techniques for their improvement. The article shows that cattle improvement played a significant role in Central and Northern Europe from the mid nineteenth century, but that this was not the case in Spain. Improvement through inbreeding was soon discarded in Spain, absorbent crossbreeding failed, and the sector became dependent on foreign imports of bulls and cows, first from Switzerland and later from Holland. By taking these factors into consideration we can better understand why the dairy sector in Mediterranean Europe did not really begin until the late nineteenth century and why it stagnated in the wake of the First World War.

Download Full-text

Parallel lives or interconnected histories? Anagarika Dharmapala and Muhammad Barkatullah's ‘world religioning’ in Japan

Modern Asian Studies ◽

10.1017/s0026749x21000330 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-24

Author(s):

Samee Siddiqui

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

South Asian ◽

First World War ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

World War ◽

World Religions ◽

The First World War ◽

Parallel Lives ◽

Late Nineteenth ◽

First World

Abstract This article compares the ideas, connections, and projects of two South Asian figures who are generally studied separately: the Indian pan-Islamist Muhammad Barkatullah (1864–1927) and the Sinhalese Buddhist reformer Anagarika Dharmapala (1864–1934). In doing so, I argue that we can understand these two figures in a new light, by recognizing their mutual connections as well as the structural similarities in their thought. By focusing on their encounters and work in Japan, this article demonstrates how Japan—particularly after defeating Russia in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905—had become a significant site for inter-Asian conversations about world religions. Importantly, exploring the projects of Barkatullah and Dharmapala makes visible the fact that, from the late nineteenth century until the outbreak of the First World War, religion played a central role—alongside nationalism, race, and empire—in conversations about the possible futures of the international order.

Download Full-text

Refugees in the Age of Mass Immigration: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the First World War

Refugees in an Age of Genocide ◽

10.4324/9780203044469-11 ◽

2012 ◽

pp. 57-80

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

First World War ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

World War ◽

The First World War ◽

Late Nineteenth ◽

First World

Download Full-text

Sulle origini del corporativismo

Genealogie e geografie dell’anti-democrazia nella crisi europea degli anni Trenta - Studi di storia ◽

10.30687/978-88-6969-317-5/001 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Rolf Petri

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

First World War ◽

Roman Law ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

Economic Democracy ◽

World War ◽

The First World War ◽

History Of ◽

Late Nineteenth ◽

First World

The purpose of the present chapter is to provide some hints to the history of the concept of ‘corporation’. It aims to illustrate the meaning of corpus in Roman law and the characteristics of medieval guilds, to examine the semantic constants of the concept and its variants up to, and in part beyond, the First World War. The chapter will briefly discuss the ideas of Bentham and Saint-Simon, Mill’s concept of ‘economic democracy’, the communitarian alternatives to late-nineteenth-century liberalism, and the early theories of management and the firm that developed partly in parallel with the rise of fascist policies in Europe and the Technocracy movement in America, which cannot be treated here.

Download Full-text

The Cost of the First World War to the United States

Inquiry@Queen's Undergraduate Research Conference Proceedings ◽

10.24908/iqurcp.9921 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Kristen Tannas

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Economic Growth ◽

Indirect Cost ◽

The United States ◽

First World War ◽

World War ◽

The First World War ◽

The Cost ◽

The Impact ◽

First World

In this paper, a calculation of cost of the First World War to the United States is performed with the aim of evaluating the impact of the War on the American economy. The method used to make this calculation is based on the work of economic historians Claudia Goldin and Frank Lewis, who studied the cost of the American Civil War. This method involves the calculation first of the “direct cost” of the war, which represents the value of economic losses made up of war expenditures, casualties and the opportunity cost of drafted soldiers. The “indirect cost” of the War is also calculated to measure the impact of the War on American economic growth by projecting economic growth in a hypothetical world where the First World War did not occur and comparing it to the economic growth actually experienced in the United States. This calculation is meant to capture any positive effects that the War may have had. For the calculations, data was drawn from a number of primary sources including censuses and government documents. The results of both of these calculations show that the First World War had a negative impact on American growth and represented a massive drain of economic resources. In particular, the indirect cost calculation shows that American growth slowed considerably in the decade following the War. This result is significant as it contradicts the common view of the postwar period prior to the Great Depression as being one of great prosperity in the United States.

Download Full-text

Toward the “Crustacean Type of Nation”: The Proliferation of Identification Documents From the Late Nineteenth Century to the First World War

The Invention of the Passport ◽

10.1017/cbo9780511520990.005 ◽

1999 ◽

pp. 93-121

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

First World War ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

World War ◽

The First World War ◽

Identification Documents ◽

Late Nineteenth ◽

First World

Download Full-text

The Eleventh Hour? Monitoring the English Rural Tradition in the 1990s and Beyond

Rural History ◽

10.1017/s0956793300003265 ◽

1990 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 131-142 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

J. D. A. Widdowson

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

National Level ◽

Academic Disciplines ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

World War ◽

Language History ◽

Wide Range ◽

The First World War ◽

Treat All ◽

First World

It is something of an irony that in many ways the rural tradition in English life was studied more intensively and systematically a century ago than is the case today. The burgeoning of scholarly interest in language, history, tradition and society at both local and national level in the late nineteenth century provided a wealth of data for modern researchers across a wide range of disciplines. While some of this material inevitably appears dated and indeed at times inaccurate or erroneous, there is a great deal of value in the records of rural life painstakingly set down by those pioneering chroniclers, notably in the last three decades of the nineteenth century and up to the time of the First World War. It has been fashionable in recent years to denigrate the work of these early writers and collectors, or indeed to dismiss them altogether. The label ‘antiquarian’, so glibly attached to several generations of nineteenth-century scholars, has become a pejorative, redolent of the amateur, the dilettante and the pedant. While it cannot be denied that a proportion of antiquarian writing is trivial, mundane or self-indulgent, it is manifestly incorrect to treat all such work with contempt. Indeed we are greatly indebted to these individuals, and especially to those whose methods and observations were as rigorous and scholarly as possible, given the criteria and standards of their day. Nor did they confine themselves within the constricting limits of our modern academic disciplines. Their interests were wide-ranging, and they closely observed the rural scene from many different perspectives, thus building up a much fuller picture of life and society in a given locality than would usually be the case today.

Download Full-text

Ideas of Nationhood

The Oxford Handbook of Australian Politics ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198805465.013.4 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Carolyn Holbrook

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

British Empire ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

World War ◽

The First World War ◽

History Of ◽

Democratic Rights ◽

Nationalist Sentiment ◽

Late Nineteenth ◽

First World

This chapter describes the principal ideas of nationhood that have operated during the European history of Australia. It describes how late Enlightenment beliefs in liberty and progress and their expression in revolutionary France and North America informed campaigns for democratic rights in Australia. While some activists were influenced by republican sentiment, most sought to claim what they believed to be their British birthright. The independent nationalism of the late nineteenth century, with its secular and socialist inflections, dissipated as geopolitical uncertainty drove Australians more deeply into the arms of the British Empire. Federation was driven by a progressive and idealistic nationalism, less radical than the late-nineteenth century version, which was soon snuffed out by the geopolitical ructions that resulted in the First World War. Contemporary Australians are more likely to source their nationalist sentiment from the Anzac mythology than from the literal moment at which the nation was created, leaving Australian ideas of nationhood curiously detached from the civic apparatus of the nation state.

Download Full-text

Exporting Godliness: The Church, Education and ‘Higher Civilization’ in the British Empire from the late Nineteenth Century

Studies in Church History ◽

10.1017/stc.2018.6 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 55 ◽

pp. 381-409

Author(s):

Mark Chapman

Keyword(s):

Public Schools ◽

British Empire ◽

Indian Subcontinent ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

World War ◽

Educational Method ◽

Church Education ◽

The First World War ◽

The Impact ◽

First World

This article discusses the impact of the educational method pioneered in the English public schools on the development of education in Anglican schools in the British empire, with a particular focus on the Indian subcontinent from the turn of the twentieth century until the outbreak of the First World War. It discusses how the focus of missionary activity changed from a desire for overt evangelism into a sense of the transmission of moral and ethical values though a system of education in the Christian virtues. An educational understanding of salvation began to supplant the doctrinal. This is connected with the thinking on ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ civilizations of the period. A central focus is on the preparatory work for, and discussions around, the Pan-Anglican Congress of 1908 and the role played by Bishop H. H. Montgomery.

Download Full-text