Through a case-study of cocoa-farming in Ghana, this paper takes up the longrunning but recently neglected debate about the ‘cash crop revolution’ in tropical Africa during the early colonial period. It focuses on the supply side, using quantitative evidence as far as possible, to test the much criticised but never superseded ‘vent-for-surplus’ interpretation of the export expansion as a substitution of labour for leisure. The paper argues that while the model captured certain features of the case, such as the application of labour to underused land, its defining claim about labour is without empirical foundation. Rather, the evidence points to a reallocation of resources from existing market activities towards the adoption of an exotic crop, entailing a shift towards a new, qualitatively different and more profitable kind of production function. This innovation is best understood in the context of the long-term search of African producers for ways of realising the economic potential of their resource of relatively abundant land, while ameliorating the constraints which the environment put upon its use.
{"title":"Vent for Surplus or Productivity Breakthrough? The Ghanaian Cocoa Take‐Off, C. 1890–1936","authors":"G. Austin","doi":"10.1111/1468-0289.12043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0289.12043","url":null,"abstract":"Through a case-study of cocoa-farming in Ghana, this paper takes up the longrunning but recently neglected debate about the ‘cash crop revolution’ in tropical Africa during the early colonial period. It focuses on the supply side, using quantitative evidence as far as possible, to test the much criticised but never superseded ‘vent-for-surplus’ interpretation of the export expansion as a substitution of labour for leisure. The paper argues that while the model captured certain features of the case, such as the application of labour to underused land, its defining claim about labour is without empirical foundation. Rather, the evidence points to a reallocation of resources from existing market activities towards the adoption of an exotic crop, entailing a shift towards a new, qualitatively different and more profitable kind of production function. This innovation is best understood in the context of the long-term search of African producers for ways of realising the economic potential of their resource of relatively abundant land, while ameliorating the constraints which the environment put upon its use.","PeriodicalId":287161,"journal":{"name":"Wiley-Blackwell: Economic History Review","volume":"89 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122495718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
type="main"> This article uses newspaper advertisements to chart the changes in speeds and fares of stage coaches, identifying the main periods of increasing speeds among London coaches as the 1760s–80s and 1810s–20s, separated by a period when speeds declined. It then measures productivity growth. Fares of London coaches in 1835–6 were about 27 per cent of what they would have been but for improvements in horses, vehicles, and roads from 1750, and the two main periods of productivity growth correspond to those of rising speeds. Speeds and productivity of regional coaches increased more smoothly. The rising productivity firmly identifies road transport as one of the modernizing sectors of the economy. New figures are put forward for the growing number of London and regional coaches, indicating rapid growth in passenger miles. While turnpike trusts had little impact before the 1750s, their increasing effectiveness, together with the use of steel springs and improved horses, was crucial to the rising productivity of the 1760s–80s, and even more so to that of the 1810s–20s. The cross roads were apparently poorer than London roads in the late eighteenth century, but thereafter the gap narrowed.
{"title":"The Development of Stage Coaching and the Impact of Turnpike Roads, 1653–1840","authors":"D. Gerhold","doi":"10.1111/1468-0289.12048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0289.12048","url":null,"abstract":"type=\"main\"> This article uses newspaper advertisements to chart the changes in speeds and fares of stage coaches, identifying the main periods of increasing speeds among London coaches as the 1760s–80s and 1810s–20s, separated by a period when speeds declined. It then measures productivity growth. Fares of London coaches in 1835–6 were about 27 per cent of what they would have been but for improvements in horses, vehicles, and roads from 1750, and the two main periods of productivity growth correspond to those of rising speeds. Speeds and productivity of regional coaches increased more smoothly. The rising productivity firmly identifies road transport as one of the modernizing sectors of the economy. New figures are put forward for the growing number of London and regional coaches, indicating rapid growth in passenger miles. While turnpike trusts had little impact before the 1750s, their increasing effectiveness, together with the use of steel springs and improved horses, was crucial to the rising productivity of the 1760s–80s, and even more so to that of the 1810s–20s. The cross roads were apparently poorer than London roads in the late eighteenth century, but thereafter the gap narrowed.","PeriodicalId":287161,"journal":{"name":"Wiley-Blackwell: Economic History Review","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122504339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
type="main"> This article explores the role of culture in encouraging the diffusion of cooperation for the production and marketing of agricultural products, an organizational innovation that can be related to technical progress in the rural sector and higher living standards for farmers. The results of the zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) pooled regressions show that trust and religion were significant determinants of the diffusion of cooperatives among farmers in western countries. Results of the logit portion of these regressions suggest that the density of production was positively related to cooperation and that cooperation decreased where higher inequality in land distribution predominated.
{"title":"Trust, Religion, and Cooperation in Western Agriculture, 1880–1930","authors":"E. Fernández","doi":"10.1111/1468-0289.12027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0289.12027","url":null,"abstract":"type=\"main\"> This article explores the role of culture in encouraging the diffusion of cooperation for the production and marketing of agricultural products, an organizational innovation that can be related to technical progress in the rural sector and higher living standards for farmers. The results of the zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) pooled regressions show that trust and religion were significant determinants of the diffusion of cooperatives among farmers in western countries. Results of the logit portion of these regressions suggest that the density of production was positively related to cooperation and that cooperation decreased where higher inequality in land distribution predominated.","PeriodicalId":287161,"journal":{"name":"Wiley-Blackwell: Economic History Review","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115449243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
type="main"> This article explores how far estate management and institutional constraints help to explain the transformations of rural society in England from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. The monks of Durham Cathedral Priory and the bishops of Durham faced many of the same exogenous pressures in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries but they responded differently to these challenges. By the seventeenth century all of the dean and chapter's lands were consolidated holdings on 21-year leases, whereas a confused mixture of copyhold and leasehold land had developed on the bishops' estate. This had a significant impact upon the challenges and opportunities facing their tenants. Institutional constraints were often crucial factors in the transformation of the English countryside: these two neighbouring ecclesiastical estates faced broadly the same problems and yet the composition of their estates diverged significantly across this period, having a profound effect not only on levels of rent, but also on the tenure of holdings and ultimately their relative size; three of the most important factors in the formation of agrarian capitalism. This article also argues that how rural society adapted to the fifteenth-century recession greatly affected the ability of their sixteenth-century counterparts to respond to inflation.
{"title":"Estate Management and Institutional Constraints in Pre‐Industrial England: The Ecclesiastical Estates of Durham, C. 1400–1640","authors":"A. C. Brown","doi":"10.1111/1468-0289.12036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0289.12036","url":null,"abstract":"type=\"main\"> This article explores how far estate management and institutional constraints help to explain the transformations of rural society in England from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. The monks of Durham Cathedral Priory and the bishops of Durham faced many of the same exogenous pressures in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries but they responded differently to these challenges. By the seventeenth century all of the dean and chapter's lands were consolidated holdings on 21-year leases, whereas a confused mixture of copyhold and leasehold land had developed on the bishops' estate. This had a significant impact upon the challenges and opportunities facing their tenants. Institutional constraints were often crucial factors in the transformation of the English countryside: these two neighbouring ecclesiastical estates faced broadly the same problems and yet the composition of their estates diverged significantly across this period, having a profound effect not only on levels of rent, but also on the tenure of holdings and ultimately their relative size; three of the most important factors in the formation of agrarian capitalism. This article also argues that how rural society adapted to the fifteenth-century recession greatly affected the ability of their sixteenth-century counterparts to respond to inflation.","PeriodicalId":287161,"journal":{"name":"Wiley-Blackwell: Economic History Review","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127756106","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2013-08-01DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2012.00663.x
J. Humphries
The newly dominant interpretation of the British industrial revolution contends that Britain was a high wage economy (HWE) and that the high wages themselves caused industrialization by making profitable labour-saving inventions that were economically inefficient in the context of other relative factor prices. Once adopted these macro inventions put Britain on a growth path that transcended the trajectories associated with more labour-intensive production methods. This account of the HWE economy is misleading because it focuses on men and male wages, underestimates the relative caloric needs of women and children and bases its views of living standards on an ahistorical and false household economy. A more realistic depiction of the working-class family in these times provides an alternative explanation of inventive and innovative activity based on the availability of cheap and amenable female and child labour and thereby a broader interpretation of the industrial revolution.
{"title":"The Lure of Aggregates and the Pitfalls of the Patriarchal Perspective: A Critique of the High Wage Economy Interpretation of the British Industrial Revolution","authors":"J. Humphries","doi":"10.1111/j.1468-0289.2012.00663.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0289.2012.00663.x","url":null,"abstract":"The newly dominant interpretation of the British industrial revolution contends that Britain was a high wage economy (HWE) and that the high wages themselves caused industrialization by making profitable labour-saving inventions that were economically inefficient in the context of other relative factor prices. Once adopted these macro inventions put Britain on a growth path that transcended the trajectories associated with more labour-intensive production methods. This account of the HWE economy is misleading because it focuses on men and male wages, underestimates the relative caloric needs of women and children and bases its views of living standards on an ahistorical and false household economy. A more realistic depiction of the working-class family in these times provides an alternative explanation of inventive and innovative activity based on the availability of cheap and amenable female and child labour and thereby a broader interpretation of the industrial revolution.","PeriodicalId":287161,"journal":{"name":"Wiley-Blackwell: Economic History Review","volume":"92 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115831925","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2010-03-29DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00498.x
A. Atkinson, B. Nolan
Data from the Irish Census of Industrial Production are used to illuminate changes in the distribution of earnings from 1937 to 1968, an important period in Irish economic history, relevant to debates about globalization and inequality. Between the late 1930s and mid-1950s there was a greater compression of earnings than in the US's ‘great compression’ of the same period. Sectoral data suggest that this occurred quite generally. The degree of integration with the British labour market is key, and the impact of out-migration, wage controls during the Second World War, and industrial protection all merit in-depth investigation.
{"title":"The Changing Distribution of Earnings in Ireland, 1937 to 1968","authors":"A. Atkinson, B. Nolan","doi":"10.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00498.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00498.x","url":null,"abstract":"Data from the Irish Census of Industrial Production are used to illuminate changes in the distribution of earnings from 1937 to 1968, an important period in Irish economic history, relevant to debates about globalization and inequality. Between the late 1930s and mid-1950s there was a greater compression of earnings than in the US's ‘great compression’ of the same period. Sectoral data suggest that this occurred quite generally. The degree of integration with the British labour market is key, and the impact of out-migration, wage controls during the Second World War, and industrial protection all merit in-depth investigation.","PeriodicalId":287161,"journal":{"name":"Wiley-Blackwell: Economic History Review","volume":"44 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113972103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2009-07-09DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2008.00454.x
Anne L. Murphy
This article uses data from the ledgers of the financial broker Charles Blunt to explore the market in equity options that emerged in London during the stock market boom of the early 1690s. Blunt's ledgers provide a unique opportunity to observe the workings of an early modern derivatives market. They reveal a broadly based and highly active trade in options. The market functioned well, determined value using agreed criteria, and was utilized by a diverse range of individuals to facilitate both risk-seeking and risk-averse investment strategies.
{"title":"Trading Options Before Black-Scholes: A Study of the Market in Late Seventeenth-Century London","authors":"Anne L. Murphy","doi":"10.1111/j.1468-0289.2008.00454.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0289.2008.00454.x","url":null,"abstract":"This article uses data from the ledgers of the financial broker Charles Blunt to explore the market in equity options that emerged in London during the stock market boom of the early 1690s. Blunt's ledgers provide a unique opportunity to observe the workings of an early modern derivatives market. They reveal a broadly based and highly active trade in options. The market functioned well, determined value using agreed criteria, and was utilized by a diverse range of individuals to facilitate both risk-seeking and risk-averse investment strategies.","PeriodicalId":287161,"journal":{"name":"Wiley-Blackwell: Economic History Review","volume":"202 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113982971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2009-07-09DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00476.x
By E. A. Wrigley
In the 1830s, Rickman, who had supervised the taking of the first four censuses, secured additional returns of baptisms, burials, and marriages from all Anglican incumbents whose registers began early. He made use of the returns to produce new estimates of the population of each county from the sixteenth century onwards. His estimates were published in the 1841 census after his death and have been very widely quoted ever since. This article presents new county estimates, taking advantage of the fact that it is now possible to avoid some of the logical difficulties that Rickman encountered because independent estimates of national population totals are now available.
{"title":"1rickman Revisited: The Population Growth Rates of English Counties in the Early Modern Period","authors":"By E. A. Wrigley","doi":"10.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00476.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00476.x","url":null,"abstract":"In the 1830s, Rickman, who had supervised the taking of the first four censuses, secured additional returns of baptisms, burials, and marriages from all Anglican incumbents whose registers began early. He made use of the returns to produce new estimates of the population of each county from the sixteenth century onwards. His estimates were published in the 1841 census after his death and have been very widely quoted ever since. This article presents new county estimates, taking advantage of the fact that it is now possible to avoid some of the logical difficulties that Rickman encountered because independent estimates of national population totals are now available.","PeriodicalId":287161,"journal":{"name":"Wiley-Blackwell: Economic History Review","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129339483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2008-03-27DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2007.00405.x
A. Howkins, N. Verdon
This article argues that farm service was an adaptable and sustainable system of hiring labour in areas of midland and southern England after 1850, having much in common with the model recently identified for northern England and Scotland. Analysing the Census Enumerators Books from selected parishes in seven counties in 1851, 1871, and 1891, we reveal an intricate pattern of farm service ‘survival’ both within and between counties. We then use a range of reports printed between the 1860s and 1920s to examine the national picture. The later regional persistence of farm service has implications for broader debates on the rural workforce and social relations.
{"title":"Adaptable and Sustainable? Male Farm Service and the Agricultural Labour Force in Midland and Southern England, C.1850-1925","authors":"A. Howkins, N. Verdon","doi":"10.1111/j.1468-0289.2007.00405.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0289.2007.00405.x","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues that farm service was an adaptable and sustainable system of hiring labour in areas of midland and southern England after 1850, having much in common with the model recently identified for northern England and Scotland. Analysing the Census Enumerators Books from selected parishes in seven counties in 1851, 1871, and 1891, we reveal an intricate pattern of farm service ‘survival’ both within and between counties. We then use a range of reports printed between the 1860s and 1920s to examine the national picture. The later regional persistence of farm service has implications for broader debates on the rural workforce and social relations.","PeriodicalId":287161,"journal":{"name":"Wiley-Blackwell: Economic History Review","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133460416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2008-03-27DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2007.00400.x
Nicholas Draper
Through analysing the composition of the founding shareholders in the West India and London Docks, this article explores the connections between the City of London and the slave economy on the eve of the abolition of the slave trade. It establishes that over one-third of docks investors were active in slave-trading, slave-ownership, or the shipping, trading, finance, and insurance of slave produce. It argues that the slave economy was neither dominant nor marginal, but instead was fully integrated into the City's commercial and financial structure, contributing materially alongside other key sectors to the foundations of the nineteenth-century City.
{"title":"The City of London and Slavery: Evidence from the First Dock Companies, 1795-1800","authors":"Nicholas Draper","doi":"10.1111/j.1468-0289.2007.00400.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0289.2007.00400.x","url":null,"abstract":"Through analysing the composition of the founding shareholders in the West India and London Docks, this article explores the connections between the City of London and the slave economy on the eve of the abolition of the slave trade. It establishes that over one-third of docks investors were active in slave-trading, slave-ownership, or the shipping, trading, finance, and insurance of slave produce. It argues that the slave economy was neither dominant nor marginal, but instead was fully integrated into the City's commercial and financial structure, contributing materially alongside other key sectors to the foundations of the nineteenth-century City.","PeriodicalId":287161,"journal":{"name":"Wiley-Blackwell: Economic History Review","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125288860","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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