Conditional crisis? Ecological challenges and conditions of growth during the agricultural revolution in southern Sweden,c. 1700–1900†

Was there an agro‐ecological crisis in Europe which preceded and contributed to pushing forward the agricultural revolution? This article presents a new theoretical and empirical approach to this controversial perspective on agricultural transformation and relates to an ongoing debate on conditions of growth in pre‐industrial societies. The results demonstrate that there were indeed indicators of a crisis, which grew stronger during the eighteenth century and culminated in the early nineteenth century. The crisis was, however, not general, but was rather restricted to areas that stand out due to poor natural conditions for agriculture. In other words, the crisis was conditional. Furthermore, the findings show that the crisis could push forward changes that were important for enabling agricultural transformation and growth. However, both the emergence and reversal of the crisis were connected to new opportunities opened up by market development. Enough differences were found between different types of regions to suggest that there were many development paths within the agricultural transformation process, and that they were not necessarily linear.     

‘Real’ wages? Contractors,workers, and pay in London building trades, 1650–1800

Existing series suggest wages in London were higher than in other European cities from 1650 to 1800. This article presents new evidence from the construction sites that supplied the underlying wage data, and uncovers the contractual and organizational context in which they were recorded. Institutional records of wages were profoundly affected by structural changes in the seventeenth century, particularly the emergence of large‐scale building contractors. The actual wages paid to London building workers were substantially below current estimates.     

The ‘light touch’ of the Black Death in the Southern Netherlands: an urban trick?

Although the fanciful notion that the Black Death bypassed the Low Countries has long been rejected, nevertheless a persistent view remains that the Low Countries experienced only a ‘light touch’ of the plague when placed in a broader European perspective, and recovered quickly and fully. However, in this article an array of dispersed sources for the Southern Netherlands together with a new mortmain accounts database for Hainaut show that the Black Death was severe, perhaps no less severe than other parts of western Europe; that serious plagues continued throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and that the Black Death and recurring plagues spread over vast territories—including the countryside. The previous conception of a ‘light touch’ of plague in the Low Countries was created by the overprivileging of particular urban sources, and a failure to account for the rapid replenishment of cities via inward migration, which obscured demographic decimation. We suggest that the population of the Low Countries may not have recovered faster than other parts of western Europe but instead experienced a greater degree of post‐plague rural–urban migration.     

What can we learn from a race with one runner? A comment on Foreman‐Peck and Zhou, ‘Late marriage as a contributor to the industrial revolution in England’

Foreman‐Peck and Zhou's claim that late marriage was a major contributor to the industrial revolution in England cannot be sustained. They consider neither other influences on English industrialization nor other European economies where marriage age was high throughout the early modern period but industrialization came much later. It is not possible to argue that late marriage age was a major contributor to English industrialization without analysing other possible contributing factors. Any consideration of this question must assess marriage age alongside other causes of industrialization and explain why other European economies with a higher marriage age industrialized much later than England.     

Who comprised the nation of shareholders? Gender and investment in Great Britain,c. 1870–1935

This article explores the widening ownership of stocks and shares in Great Britain between 1870 and 1935. It demonstrates the extent of that growth and the increasing number of small investors. Women became more important in terms of the number of shareholders and value of holdings. Factors that encouraged this trend included the issue of less risky types of investments, and legal changes relating to married women's property. We examine the ‘deepening’ importance of stocks and shares for wealth holders, arguing that the growing significance of these kinds of financial assets was as important as the growth in the investor population.     

Why did the industrial diet triumph? The massification of dairy consumption in Spain, 1965–90

The rise of a mass, agri‐industrial diet after the Second World War was crucial for the culmination of the nutritional transition that western countries had been involved in since the second half of the nineteenth century—but why did the industrial diet triumph? This article takes the massification of dairy consumption in Spain 1965–90 as a study case. Using a newly constructed database and qualitative material within an evolutionary socio‐economic framework, the article reaches two conclusions. First, the massification of dairy consumption was linked to most households’ transition to a softer budget constraint, which was driven mainly by increasing household incomes (and only secondarily by consumer price reductions caused by food industrialization). Second, the reason why the softening of the budget constraint played such a major role was that it was joined by a substantial increase in consumer trust in dairy products, which in turn resulted from industrial standardization. The article is in line with recent work that underlines the dietary change brought about by food industrialization, but questions whether the latter's major contribution was of a quantitative, price‐related nature and suggests that more attention should be paid to the qualitative, preferences‐related dimension.     

An efficient market? Going public in London, 1891–1911

There have been claims that British capital was not well deployed in Victorian Britain. There was, allegedly, a lack of support for new and dynamic companies in comparison to the situation in Germany and the US. We find no evidence to support these claims. The London Stock Exchange welcomed young, old, domestic, and foreign firms. It provided funds to firms in old, existing industries as well as patenting firms in ‘new‐tech’ industries at similar costs of capital. If investors did show a preference for older and foreign firms, it was because those firms offered investors better long‐run performance. In addition, we show some evidence that investors who worked in the same industry and lived close to the firm going public were allotted more shares in high‐quality initial public offerings.     

‘Veritable gold mines before the arrival of railway competition’: but did dividends signal rates of return in the English canal industry?

Dividends can provide a tangible signal of earnings, but this function depends upon characteristics of financial reporting that were not always present in early financial capitalism. Although eighteenth‐century English canal companies offered low‐risk securitized capital approved by Parliament and were important to the development of financial capitalism, little is known about the economic state of the canal industry, beyond observed dividend levels. This article estimates rates of return on equity for a set of major English canals, but shows that their financial reporting under‐represented equity inputs so that dividend rates did not reliably signal operating returns or equity‐based rates of return.     

Is there anything real about real wages? A history of the official British cost of living index, 1914–62

This article explores the history of the cost of living index, tracing its evolution from its introduction in 1914 as a device designed to furnish an adequate evidential base for the tariff reform debate, through to the mid‐twentieth century, when it had become one of the most important measures in the British economy, influencing the wages of millions of workers. By embedding the index within the wider economic, political, and social histories of the period, the article presents a consideration of how it came to exert such influence over the economy, and why, despite its widely acknowledged inadequacies, the index remained tied to a rough estimation of a pre‐1914 pattern of working‐class expenditure until 1947. Through examining the debates surrounding its compilation and the context in which decisions were taken about its modification, it is demonstrated that, far from being a neutral statistical measure, the official cost of living index was essentially political in nature.     

How important were formalized charity and social spending before the rise of the welfare state? A long‐run analysis of selected western European cases, 1400–1850

Poor relief in the pre‐industrial period is a much‐investigated topic, but we still lack an idea of its quantitative importance and development, especially in a comparative perspective. This article estimates the magnitude of the various kinds of formalized relief for three present‐day countries (Italy, England, and the Netherlands) in the very long run (1400–1850). The results show that in this period a substantial share of GDP, up to 3 per cent, could be spent on formal relief, offering subsistence to up to 8–9 per cent of the population, with a gradual rise over time and the highest figures being reached in the Netherlands in the eighteenth century. The three cases show a steep decline around 1800, a pattern found more generally in Europe. Next, these results are placed in a broader geographical perspective. This highlights the sharp differences within countries—which could be even larger than those between countries—and the high levels reached in the regions bordering the southern shores of the North Sea. In the last section, the results are used to discuss the possible causes underlying these long‐run patterns and geographical differences, including urbanization, wealth, religion, and social‐organizational features.     

Going multilateral? Financial markets' access and the League of Nations loans, 1923–8

Why are international financial institutions important? This article reassesses the role of the loans issued with the support of the League of Nations. These long‐term loans constituted the financial basis of the League's strategy to restore the productive basis of countries in central and eastern Europe in the aftermath of the First World War. In this article, it is argued that the League's loans accomplished the task for which they were conceived because they allowed countries in financial distress to access capital markets. The League adopted an innovative system of funds management and monitoring that ensured the compliance of borrowing countries with its programmes. Empirical evidence is provided to show that financial markets had a positive view of the League's role as an external, multilateral agent, solving the credibility problem of borrowing countries and allowing them to engage in economic and institutional reforms. This success was achieved despite the League's own lack of lending resources. It is also demonstrated that this multilateral solution performed better than the bilateral arrangements adopted by other governments in eastern Europe because of its lower borrowing and transaction costs.