Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Teller
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
New Institutional Economics ◽  
Financial Success ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of

The book makes three main interventions. First is the use of Jewish economic history to understand both the development of Jewish society and its relations with the surrounding world. The methodology of New institutional economics, emphasizing the connection between economic and cultural factors, is employed. Second is the study of the Jews’ economic roles in the specific context of magnate estates in eighteenth-century Poland-Lithuania. In this late feudal setting, Jews achieved enormous financial success, which they translated into improved social status and even power. This process is at the heart of the analysis here. Third is the history of the Radziwiłł family and its estates in Lithuania. From a low point at the beginning of the period, the family reached the pinnacle of its power at the end. This rise was based on increased estate incomes, the importance for which of Jewish economic activity is examined here.

Money, Power, and Influence in Eighteenth-Century Lithuania

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Teller
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Institutional Economics ◽  
New Institutional Economics ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
System A ◽  
System P ◽  
Archival Record ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Formed Part

This study demonstrates how Jewish economic activity on the magnate estates in the eighteenth-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth enriched, empowered, and reshaped Jewish—and Polish-Lithuanian—society. The analysis follows the New institutional economics (NIE) approach to detail Jews’ roles in the estates’ economic institutions—especially the markets, often overlooked in studying the feudal economy. It examines the economic roles played by Jews on the estates of the Radziwiłł magnate dynasty. This was a late feudal economy, so its study demonstrates how Jews formed part of a pre-capitalist system—a highly beneficial setting for them. Jewish businessmen formed the majority of merchants on the estates and also dominated the leasing of the monopoly on alcohol sales—a crucial way of marketing surplus grain. This economic niche became an ethnic economy, giving Jews market superiority. Their social status improved dramatically since they enjoyed Radziwiłł support and acted as their unofficial agents in various contexts. A new Jewish socioeconomic elite appeared, wielding power and authority over all groups on the estates. Based on the rich archival record, the study focuses on the Radziwiłł family’s Lithuanian holdings, the heart of its estates. It shows that the Jews’ integration into the estate economy was at the family’s invitation, in order to increase revenues. The Jews’ success in doing this allowed the Radziwiłłs, like similar magnate families, to become the most powerful force in Poland-Lithuania. Jewish economic activity, therefore, helped shape the Commonwealth’s eighteenth-century political system.

The Private Credit Market, the Bibliotheke Enkteseon, and Public Services in Roman Egypt

2012 ◽  
Vol 67 (04) ◽  
pp. 629-659 ◽  
Author(s):  
François Lerouxel
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Credit Market ◽  
New Institutional Economics ◽  
Roman Egypt ◽  
History Of ◽  
Private Credit ◽  
Positive Effect

This article examines the history of the private credit market in Roman Egypt between 30 BCE and approximately 170 CE. After examining how the notion of the market and the New Institutional Economics are employed with regard to ancient economic history, it explains the positive effect that systems of drafting and registering contracts had on the private credit market and, in particular, the role of the bibliotheke enkteseon, created by the Roman administration between 68 and 72. The article concludes with an explanation of how this institution was created by analyzing the interaction between the private credit market and the way public services were financed in the Roman world.

Knowledge, attitudes and practice of family planning: profile of a Bedouin community in Saudi Arabia

1974 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zohair A. Sebai
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Family Planning ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Age Group ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
Or History

SummaryFamily planning is not being practised in Wadi Turaba in western Saudi Arabia, which is a Bedouin community with different stages of settlement. Children are wanted in the family, and the more children, especially boys, the better the social status of the family in the community. The desire of a mother for more children does not appear to be affected by her age group, history of previous marriages or history of previous pregnancies.Knowledge about contraceptives practically does not exist, except on a small scale in the settled community. Every woman, following the Koranic teachings, weans her child exactly at the age of 2 years, which obviously leads to the spacing of births. In rather rare situations, coitus interruptus is practised.

An Economic History of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century

1964 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 471
Author(s):  
Jacob M. Price ◽  
Henry Hamilton ◽  
T. C. Smout
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Economic History ◽  
History Of

The Fanciful World of Clio

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Boldizzoni
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Path Dependence ◽  
Multiple Equilibria ◽  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
New Institutional Economics ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Contemporary Western Society

Cliometrics has evolved into a literary genre having little to do with numbers in the sense of econometric testing, though a lot to do with the deductive stance of the new institutional economics and of rational choice theory. At times these two approaches, which are not completely compatible, coexist even in the same author's work, giving rise to a sort of analytic schizophrenia. This chapter analyzes the recent developments in economic history. From the standpoint of methodology, it shows the confusion between history and path dependence or presence of “multiple equilibria” in a predetermined deductive schema. It argues that underlying these trends is an ideological slant, whether conscious or unconscious, aimed at exalting values such as individualism and materialism, which are typical of certain segments of contemporary Western society, and at projecting them unduly onto the past.

The Catholic Recusancy of the Yorkshire Fairfaxes. Part I.

1956 ◽  
Vol 3 (02) ◽  
pp. 68-114
Author(s):  
Hugh Aveling
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Personal Choice ◽  
Family Ties ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Landed Gentry

In the middle ages the Fairfaxes ranked amongst the minor landed gentry of Yorkshire. They seem to have risen to this status in the thirteenth century, partly by buying land out of the profits of trade in York, partly by successful marriages. But they remained of little importance until the later fifteenth century. They had, by then, produced no more than a series of bailiffs of York, a treasurer of York Minster and one knight of the shire. The head of the family was not normally a knight. The family property consisted of the two manors of Walton and Acaster Malbis and house property in York. But in the later fifteenth century and onwards the fortunes of the family were in the ascendant and they began a process of quite conscious social climbing. At the same time they began to increase considerably in numbers. The three main branches, with al1 their cadet lines, were fixed by the middle of the sixteenth century – the senior branch, Fairfax of Walton and Gilling, the second branch, Fairfax of Denton, Nunappleton, Bilhorough and Newton Kyme, the third branch, Fairfax of Steeton. It is very important for any attempt to assess the strength and nature of Catholicism in Yorkshire to try to understand the strong family – almost clan – unity of these pushing, rising families. While adherence to Catholicism could be primarily a personal choice in the face of family ties and property interests, the history of the Faith in Yorkshire was conditioned greatly at every point by the strength of those ties and interests. The minute genealogy and economic history of the gentry has therefore a very direct bearing on recusant history.

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