English county populations in the later eighteenth century1

When directing the first English census John Rickman was intent not only on discovering the size of the population in 1801 but also on tracing past trends both nationally and for individual counties. He returned to the latter investigation on several later occasions, notably in the 1830s. There have been many subsequent attempts to improve upon his national estimates, but his estimates of county totals have continued to be used extensively, either unchanged or slightly modified. Rickman was aware that his estimates were subject to wide margins of error. For the later eighteenth century it is possible to produce new estimates which are probably substantially more accurate, taking advantage of the fact that after Hardwicke’s Act (1753) the registration of marriages in Anglican parish registers, unlike that of baptisms and burials, was virtually complete. They show that the contrast between population growth rates in ‘industrial’ counties and those in which agriculture continued to predominate were significantly more marked than suggested by Rickman’s estimates. The same exercise that produces county estimates also yields hundredal totals, which will in future allow a more refined account of relative growth and stagnation to be made.     

Finnish mortality in the eighteenth century: A reply

Abstract

In SEHR No.2, 1978, Eino ]utikkala took issue on a number of points with my article published in SEHR No.2, 1977, and I should like to make several comments in reply, Firstly, I have found it misleading to call the results of my data adjustments as ‘correction coefficients’. This term tends to suggest that my corrections produce precise results, an impression which the caveats explicitly stated in my text were designed to prevent. My purpose was to provide a rough suggestion of, and an approximation to the extent of errors, since it would have profited no one had I concluded the study with the simple acknowledgment of gaps in the registers and the admission that there is no way of determining their extent. Because this type of research is still relatively new, and because there seemed to be no other way of assessing the number of infants who died below one year of age, but were omitted from the registers of ‘baptised’ and ‘buried’, the national figures were used for the corrections, and an attempt was made to ensure that this approach did not lead to an overestimation of error.     

Inequality among the poor of eighteenth century Amsterdam

This paper examines nearly 1000 poor to middling citizen households from the city of Amsterdam with a view to assessing their place in the larger wealth distribution of the city as preliminarily sketched in the work of Soltow, van Zanden, and others. It utilizes the probate inventories drawn up by the Amsterdam Municipal Orphanage, which when coupled with the marriage, baptism, and burial records of the city archives, allow for the reconstruction of the household circumstances, material, financial, and demographic, of the families associated with the institution. These data yield detailed information about precisely the kind of people who were systematically excluded from the tax registers and financial records which form the basis for our current knowledge about inequality among historical populations. The lower portion of the wealth distribution is described and then linked via housing rental rates to a more complete distribution of the various social classes in the city. Finally, the determinants of inequality within the ranks of the poor are examined and financial assets of even very small amounts are found to be critical in shaping the socio-economic experience of the lower citizenry.     

Baltic iron and the British iron industry in the eighteenth century

Before the revolution in coal technology that swept the British iron industry in the last years of the eighteenth century, native ironmasters were unable to meet the burgeoning demand for malleable bar iron. The shortfall was made good by imports of bar iron from the Baltic, first from Sweden, then from Russia. This article presents new empirical evidence on the role played by Baltic iron in the Georgian economy. It also considers the impact of Swedish and Russian iron on domestic ironmasters as they sought organizational, as well as technological, ways to overcome the energy constraints facing the industry.     

Labour policy and population thought in eighteenth century Sweden

Abstract

In the eighteenth century Sweden made a pioneering contribution to population statistics, and it is this which gives to the contemporary Swedish debate on population problems its principal claim to international interest. Ideas, policies, and statistics were of course closely interconnected.     

A study of commercial relations in eighteenth century Finland

Abstract

There has been a noticeable trend in recent research towards the use of private archives in the study of the commercial behaviour of and relations between individual businesses. Previously only public records have tended to be used, and attention has been focused on one aspect of an economy as a whole, or of a region, or a single important town. Even if, for example, the names of importers or exporters have been entered in customs records, official sources cannot provide an answer to anything like all the important questions. Many business histories have been published which have not contributed very much because they have generally not advanced beyond the narrative level, leaving untapped the incomparable material contained in accounts and ledgers. A pre-requisite for the study of private business firms is, of course, that documentary series should have been preserved unbroken for a fairly long period. Farmers did not keep account books, and only through the accounts of the merchants with whom they traded may we examine their businesses. Only a small proportion of merchants’ accounts in North Ostrobothnia from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been preserved; but entries may by even a single merchant in respect of goods bought from or sold to farmers add up over several decades to such an enormous material that some form of sampling is called for limiting him to the classification employed in the official statistics.     

Finnish mortality in the eighteenth century: The sources and the reality

Abstract

Mr. Niels Steensgaard, in his ‘Consuls and Nations in the Levant from 1570 to 1650’¹ referred in note 4, p. 14, to my article on the beginning of Anglo-Turkish relations, and stated: ‘Apparently Horniker is not aware of the existence of the French capitulations of 1569’. There is no point in arguing whether or not I am aware of them, but later on I will give my reasons for omitting reference to them in my article. The implication of Steensgaard's statement, however, is that they were new capitulations, which, of course, they were not. They were a renewal, in the form of a grant,² by Sultan Selim II of the treaty concluded between his predecessor Suleiman I Kanuni and Francis I in 1536.³ Revised capitulations were granted to France in 158l.4 These, and the treaty of 1536, gave the French certain exclusive privileges in the Ottoman Empire. And until 1593, when Elizabeth I of England obtained capitulations which gave her subjects the same privileges as those enjoyed by the French, France was the paramount capitulatory nation in the Levant.     

Structural change in the Dutch trade with the baltic in the eighteenth century

Abstract

Affluence easily veils failure and cripples creativity. In the eighteenth century, the Dutch Republic probably enjoyed the world's highest national per capita income. The Republic was the first state to ascend beyond the modest pre-industrial income levels, interestingly enough without itself industrializing. Yet, economically the Republic stagnated visibly. Ships on the international routes increasingly passed Amsterdam by and trade — the old foundation of prosperity — declined in the midst of a general revival of North and West European commerce. The stagnation affected all walks of economic life and created a feeling of resignation that baffled many attempts at redress.¹ The fascination with the fate of the Dutch Republic in the eighteenth century arises in part from this juxtaposition of affluence and decay. Did structural change cause the decline of Dutch trade or was it precisely the want of structural adjustments that became fatal? There is a great deal of confusion in Dutch historiography on this issue. Johan de Vries — to start with the Nestor among the historians of the Dutch decline — speaks of ‘structural alterations in the trade’ that ultimately undermined the position     

The changing role of fairs in the long eighteenth century: evidence from the north midlands1

Despite the recent interest of historians in retailing and distribution, little attention has been paid to fairs. It has often been assumed that by 1800 they were mainly occasions for entertainment. Using a range of sources and focusing mainly on the north midlands, this article argues that many fairs remained significant during the eighteenth century for agricultural marketing, some business and financial transactions, and retailing. By the early nineteenth century, rapidly changing economic conditions, coupled with changed attitudes, threatened these traditional roles and fairs had to adapt or face inevitable decline.     

Working days in a London construction team in the eighteenth century: evidence from St Paul's Cathedral

This article provides new information and data on the work and pay of skilled and semi-skilled men on a large London construction project in the early 1700s. It offers firm-level evidence on the employment relation in the construction industry at the time and sheds some light on the number of days worked per year and per week, showing that employment was more irregular and seasonal than current estimates of income infer. The patterns are considered in the context of new debates about industriousness and economic growth.     

Swedish shipping with the Netherlands in the second half of the eighteenth century

Abstract

In March 1792 the Amsterdams Galley of 90 lasts (ca. 180 metric tons), commanded by Captain Henrik Melle Feddes of Stockholm, left for Amsterdam. It carried 260 shippounds (à 136 kg) of bar iron, 900 barrels of tar, 240 barrels of pitch and 42 shippounds of alum. Five Stockholm merchants were responsible for the cargo, which was valued at 2,374 Swedish rix-dollars. The ship was registered as having arrived in Amsterdam on 6 July 1792. The Dutch customs officers determined its lastage as 126 gross and 82 net, but registered no further details about its cargo.     

Seeing credit and property rights from below: The experience of Catalan smallholders in the eighteenth century

The Catalan case in south-western Europe offers us the opportunity to take a detailed look at the impact a lowering of the interest rate may have had on the poor of a specific area. It is vital to examine how property rights operated in specific contexts, given the close relationship between land and credit markets. Our working hypothesis is that, in some instances where property rights were redefined, as happened in eighteenth-century Catalonia, the reduction of the interest rate in secured loans benefitted the poorer social groups. The findings of this research, in line with those of some development economists, suggest that only an empirical and bottom-up perspective allows for a proper analysis of the eradication of poverty by placing it within the real picture of social change.     

面向二十一世纪的日俄木材贸易--兼论中国的作用

本文分析和研究了2000年以后日俄木材贸易的基本特征和发展前景，指出中国将在二十一世纪的日俄木材贸易中发挥举足轻重的作用。