Economic and Social History

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 488-505
Author(s):  
Giorgio Riello
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
The Core ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Economic

Abstract The last quarter of a century has been one of great changes for the field of early modern economic history. My argument is that, in this period, early modern economic history has shown a remarkably innovative spirit. However, this is most apparent not at the core of the discipline, but in how economic history has interacted with other branches of early modern history, be they social, cultural, environmental, or material. This argument is supported by the analysis of quantitative evidence. I then move on to consider two important developments in early modern economic history since the late 1990s: global economic history and the history of consumption and trade. This article concludes with a reflection on recent developments in the so-called New History of Capitalism (NHC) and on studies of pre-modern inequality, sustainability, and the environment.

Historia magistra vitae – ad acta oder ad nauseam?

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 651-714
Author(s):  
Philipp Robinson Rössner
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
Economic Divergence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
The Right

Summary Historia magistra vitae – ad acta or ad nauseam? Early Modern Research and Economic History in the Age of Neoliberalism und Trump (1973 – 2018) Recent decades have seen the rise of neoliberal interpretations in the economic history of capitalism, development and economic growth. Free trade and free markets are said to have been the epitome of good economic development, whilst protectionism and mercantilism are seen as the antinomy of economic modernity. The economic history of early modern Europe, including processes of global economic divergence have often been written accordingly. The present paper, whilst not laying any judgemental claims to the right or wrongs of neoliberalism, wishes to trace the influence of neoliberal philosophy on writing early modern economic histories and the history of capitalism. It studies some of its most obvious implications, including Eurocentrism, economic determinism and the new historical materialism inherent in cliometrics and the New Economic History as it emerged in the 1960 s and 1970 s in the West.

scholarly journals The Economic Theory of Sharecropping in Early Modern France

1984 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip T. Hoffman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Early Modern France ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Contract Choice ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern France ◽  
History Of ◽  
Simple Economic

This paper uses a simple economic model of contract choice to explain the growth of sharecropping in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France—a topic that figures in much of the social and economic history of the period. The theory turns out to fit both qualitative and quantitative evidence, and although the results are as yet only preliminary, the theory does provide a better account of the spread of sharecropping than the explanations upon which early modern historians have tended to rely.

Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain. By Keith Wrightson. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000. Pp. xii, 372. $35.00.

2001 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 1124-1125
Author(s):  
Craig Muldrew
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Student Interest ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Rutgers University ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
English Society ◽  
History Of

For almost 20 years now, Professor Wrightson's book English Society 1580–1680 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1982) has probably been the most widely used text to introduce the social history of England in this period. But at the same time it is much more than this, in that it presents a powerful argument about change in religious belief, education, social hegemony, and concepts of order, all of which has provoked much scholarly debate. Now Wrightson has produced a volume on the economic history of Britain in the longer period from 1470–1750, which deserves to become as central and as widely read. Its arrival is doubly welcome because, since Christopher Clay's Economic Expansion and Social Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) went out of print some time ago, there has been no current text covering the economic history of early modern England or Britain. In part this unfortunate situation has reflected declining student interest, as economic history became identified with econometrics. But this lucid and engaging work should revive interest in a vitally important subject. As its title indicates, this is economic history with a human face, in which the main focus of analysis is always the social context and meaning of economic change to those whom it affected.

Globalising the History of Capital: Ways Forward

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 143-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jairus Banaji
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Merchant Capital ◽  
History Of ◽  
Atlantic Slavery ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractAnievas and Nişancıoğlu’s attempt to shift the terms of the debate about early modern capitalism by a major widening of its perspectives is a welcome move. Accepting this, the paper suggests that their argument can be more forcefully made if the theoretical residues of earlier traditions of Marxist historical explanation are purged from the way they expound that argument. The most ambivalent of these relates to their continued use of the idea of a ‘coexistence of modes of production’. This permeates the confused way they present Atlantic slavery. A second, comparable source of confusion concerns their description of the relationship between merchant capital and the absolutist state. The alliance between the modern state and mercantile capital is radically misrecognised thanks to an uncritical espousal of Anderson’s view of absolutism. The paper suggests that Anievas and Nişancıoğlu might have written a stronger book had they reconceptualised the economic history of capitalism by allowing for a whole epoch dominated by powerful groups of merchant capitalists. In conclusion, I argue (pace Marx) that the commercial capital of the later middle ages/early modern period was the first form in which production began to be subordinated to capital.

The perils and dangers of these knights (and undead peasants): Interpreting English and Scottish Extent Rolls of 1297–1305

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Donnelly
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Compte Rendu ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Sources

Medieval Scottish economic and social history has held little interest for a unionist establishment but, just when a recovery of historic independence begins to seem possible, this paper tackles a (perhaps the) key pre-1424 source. It is compared with a Rutland text, in a context of foreign history, both English and continental. The Berwickshire text is not, as was suggested in 2014, a ‘compte rendu’ but rather an ‘extent’, intended to cross-check such accounts. Read alongside the Rutland roll, it is not even a single ‘compte’ but rather a palimpsest of different sources and times: a possibility beyond earlier editorial imaginings. With content falling (largely) within the time-frame of the PoMS project (although not actually included), when the economic history of Scotland in Europe is properly explored, the sources discussed here will be key and will offer an interesting challenge to interpretation. And some surprises about their nature and date.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Innes ◽  
Michael J. Braddick
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Recent Interest ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Political Economy ◽  
Later Phase

The Introduction offers a brief overview of Paul Slack’s contribution to early modern history, distinguishing between an earlier phase concerned with social policy and the ideas which informed it, and a later phase concerned with the history of political economy, and particularly the shifting discourse of happiness which, he argued, informed it. It then explores recent interest in the history of emotions, distinguishing a variety of approaches to that subject. Reviewing three broad approaches taken by the contributors to the volume, it goes on to suggest that the history of emotions is most stimulating when seen as a focal point for different kinds of history rather than as a discrete subject of enquiry. A further implication is that a variety of forms of expertise need to be brought to bear.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
History Of Collecting ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Renaissance

This chapter explores the material culture of everyday life in late-Renaissance Paris by setting L’Estoile’s diaries and after-death inventory against a sample of the inventories of thirty-nine of his colleagues. L’Estoile and his family lived embedded in the society of royal office-holders and negotiated their place in its hierarchy with mixed success. His home was cramped and his wardrobe rather shabby. The paintings he displayed in the reception rooms reveal his iconoclastic attitude to the visual, contrasting with the overwhelming number of Catholic devotional pictures displayed by his colleagues. Yet the collection he stored in his study and cabinet made him stand out in his milieu as a distinguished curieux. It deserves a place in the early modern history of collecting, as his example reveals that the civil wars might be a stimulus as much as a disruption to collecting in sixteenth-century France.

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